Photo taken June 6, 2021 |
The Thames Valley District School Board intends to rename
Ryerson Public School on Waterloo Street. Then they’re going to review all
school and facility names to determine if any others should be changed. The next may be Sir John A. Macdonald Public School near Highbury and
Cheapside.
This, of course, follows the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, BC. Today we’re being told there may be three times as many burials at Marieval School in Saskatchewan. The deaths were apparently undocumented by the school administration, their families never told the children died.
Egerton Ryerson argued way back in 1847 that Indigenous children should be educated in boarding schools and his ideas were later applied to the residential school system. In 1883, when Macdonald was Prime Minister, Canada’s Parliament approved the funding for the first three residential schools. Ryerson died in 1882, Macdonald in 1891.
Here’s what else they did:
Egerton Ryerson
- A founder of Victoria College, its first principal, and benefactor.
- An advocate for secularization, to keep power and influence away from any particular church.
- Chief Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada after 1844. His major innovations included school libraries, professional development conventions for teachers, and a central textbook press using Canadian authors.
- Lobbyist for free universal education to provide schooling for those less privileged.
- Creator of a system of school inspection to ensure provincial polices were enforced.
- A founder of the Toronto Normal School in 1847. Canada’s first publicly funded museum was established in this building in 1857, using a collection based largely on artwork and scientific apparatus Ryerson himself acquired in Europe.
Sir John A. Macdonald
- A leading figure in the discussions and conferences which resulted in the BNA Act of 1867 and the birth of Canada as a nation.
- As Prime Minister, the builder of a successful national government for the new country.
- The builder of a railway across the continent, a project many believed to be impossible. It was the largest engineering project of its kind in the world.
- Creator of the NWMP in 1873 to patrol the North-West Territories.
- Creator of Canada’s first national park, Banff Hot Springs Reserve, in 1885.
- Proponent of Indigenous people gaining the franchise without losing any of their rights under either the Indian Act or any of their treaties. (They did not gain the vote until 1960 under Diefenbaker.)
- Proponent of votes for women, the first world leader to do so, in 1885.
While Macdonald and Ryerson were involved in the creation of
the residential school system and no doubt intended Indigenous children to be
culturally assimilated, it is doubtful whether either man intended the children
to be abused or neglected. Their goals were likely to ensure the children graduated
as English-speaking Christians who could farm or practice a trade, a not unreasonable
goal given the time period. While the system appears outrageous to modern
sensibilities, the instances of abuse and neglect at the schools were the
responsibility of individual teachers, principals, and workers, not Ryerson and
Macdonald.
What names will go next?
Emily Carr: Her depictions of coastal Indigenous culture have
been called cultural appropriation. One writer has called her a “narcissistic
white colonizer.”
F. D. Roosevelt: He sanctioned the imprisonment of Japanese
Americans during WWII.
Lord Elgin: During the Second Opium War in China, he ordered
the destruction of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, along with its collections
of artworks and antiques, inflicting invaluable loss of cultural heritage.
Lord Nelson: Some aspects of his life and career are
controversial, including his affair with Emma Hamilton. He may have opposed
William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the slave trade.
Prince Charles/Princess Anne/Princess Elizabeth/Victoria:
Clearly these names are offensive to anyone wishing to sever Canada’s connection
with Britain and be a republic instead of a "colonial settler state."
Sir Arthur Currie: He embezzled ten thousand dollars meant
for regimental uniforms into his personal accounts to pay off debts. Arguably,
he wasted the lives of the soldiers under his command by taking Mons, Belgium
on the final day of WWI.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier: He raised the Chinese head tax to $100
in 1900. In 1903 he raised it to $500. And in 1898, he removed the right to
vote from the few Indigenous men given the franchise under Macdonald’s 1885
reform bill.
Sir Frederick Banting: It’s said he had a prickly
personality and was subject to fits of rage. He even punched one of his
colleagues in his laboratory. Some think he took much of the credit for the
discovery of insulin, without giving much to fellow researchers Best, Collip
and Macleod.
How shall we rename the schools? Number them like in New
York City? Bland. Rename them after the streets they’re on? That won’t do.
Our street names aren’t always PC either, often being named after colonial officials, streets in the other London, or battles the British won. Example: We could rename Lord Roberts School ... Princess Avenue School. But Princesses are elitist.
Let's face it. Most people before the 1960s were racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted by today’s standards. The concept of empathy for others is quite modern. Abuse and neglect were rampant everywhere before our own enlightened age, and not just at residential schools. Is it reasonable to remove all personal names? Cancel all our historical figures? Create a decolonized country with no history?
Senator Mary Jane McCallum has referred to the residential school system as the “genocide of children.” Let's consider the term genocide. Traditionally, genocide is the intentional murder of a group of people. It’s been practiced worldwide in such hideous examples as the Nazi Holocaust, Bosnia, and Rwanda. The term "cultural genocide," however, is new, an example of concept creep in which a term broadens to take on meanings outside its original context. So while forced assimilation may be a disgrace, doesn't calling it genocide trivialize this worst of crimes?
I believe extremists are damaging the Indigenous cause by alienating moderates such as myself, cancelling our historical figures, denigrating our patriotism, and insulting our ancestors. I simply can’t support those tell me my country committed genocide. Or those who rename schools to signal their virtue.
Update February 2022: The school has been renamed Old North Public School. Completely generic and inoffensive. And boring.