Wayne’s Word

I used to be an athlete of sorts in my younger days and occasionally I will have people who know me comment on this. My joking response always is “The older I get, the better I was.” I think it’s funny, but there is also some truth to the impact of time on things like athletics.

Standards and skills in sports have changed quite dramatically over the years making it nearly impossible to compare an athlete today to one 50 years ago. In actuality, I was a fairly good athlete in my day, but by today’s standards I would be mediocre at best. Over the last number of years, things have also gone through changes in areas like history. The result is that many areas of history have been “revised”. One of the results of this revision has been that opinions about events in the past have changed and also these revisions have and are being used to help achieve personal agendas. I can provide numerous examples of this, but, for the purposes of this blog, I will focus on one. And the one I will focus on is our first Prime Minister’s fall from grace and honour in our country to a place of dishonour and even revulsion with some in Regina. We have not missed our opportunity to express our recent opinion of John A. Macdonald; we have had his statue removed from a place in Victoria Park to a place unknown, hidden away in some storage facility. Did we do the right thing? Should we continue to do this?

Recently, there are many Canadians who are re-thinking John A’s fall from grace believing this to be a mistake. There are several new books out, some of which I will cite later, and some newspaper articles expressing this. One recent headline by Raymond J. de Souza is an example – “As Trudeau departs, Sir John A Macdonald makes a comeback – The facts of Canadian history - lights and shadows – are stubbornly reasserting themselves”. How is this happening, and why?

Let me begin with some brief facts. When Europeans first arrived in what is now Canada some 500 years ago, there were approximately 200,000 Indigenous people scattered across the expanse, most of them in tribes, and nomadic. The idea that they were a populated country coherently organized is a fairy tale. The facts were that they were beset by many problems and issues including many of the various tribes warring with each other. Some tribes were nearly or completely wiped out, including the Hurons by the Iroquois. Today, most areas and countries in the world are ruled by peoples who are not original indigenous. The UN’s Human Development Index ranking shows more than 5,000 different Indigenous Peoples worldwide as 6.0% of the population spread across 90 countries speaking 4,000 languages. What happened in Canada with the Indigenous fits within these norms. Also, within the World Rankings, Canada is shown as one of the best countries to live in. This includes human rights, quality of life, safety, happiness, prosperity, sustainability, freedom, democracy, better life, peace and so on. Canada is at or near the top in all areas. John A. did do things that, for our time, might be regarded as wrong. He was staunchly “assimilation” in belief (The U.S. was oriented towards destroying the indigenous, which they undertook with some energy). John A. used measures not acceptable today, but these paled to those used in the USA, Australia, and elsewhere. Of note, George Washington continues to be held up as a founder and first president of the USA even though he favoured how the Indigenous were dealt with (eg. massacres) and was himself a slave holder. Macdonald also advocated for voting rights for Indigenous people presenting a bill to this effect. A close personal friend was Peter Jones, a Mississauga Ojibwa chief who was also a valued organizer for Macdonald. The Liberals ridiculed Macdonald’s bill – It would allow “Indians to go from scalping parties to the polls” and ultimately voted it down. Macdonald’s response – “We must remember that they are the original owners of the soil of which they have been dispossessed by the covetousness or ambition of our ancestors.” “At all events, the Indians have been great sufferers by the discovery of America and the transfer of it to the large white population.” John A. Macdonald biographer, Richard Gwyn, when reminded of some of the policies of the government in the West wrote that Macdonald was overwhelmed by the famine “inflicted on him.” “While clearly he could have done better, Macdonald was unquestionably the best man for the task (building a railway, bringing in settlers, resolving issues related to the Indigenous such as famine, meeting with London about the formation of a new country) that, at its core, was near to impossible.” Gwyn went on to observe that “At worst, he was negligent, not in a legal sense, but in the sense of being overwhelmed. He had no idea what the west even looked like. He had no time to find out about Western indigenous issues and no way to even know. As an aside, at the same time, the USA forcibly took the land over by force - wars and massacres. Abe Lincoln sanctioned a mass hanging of Sioux warriors, the largest ever (his picture is still on the U.S. Penny). In India, more than a million people starved because of British “inaction”. There are similar examples from other countries.

A biography of John A. Macdonald (1891) described John A’s policy as “keeping the Indian alive during times of scarcity and gradually weaning him from his wild ways.” Tristan Hopper, in the National Post wrote, “It’s reasonable to assume that almost anybody else in the prime minister’s chair at the time would have similarly pursued an assimilationist policy against Canada’s First Nation.” It is worth looking at what Sir Wilfred Laurier did after Macdonald. Larry
Ostola, past Vice-President of Heritage Conservation and Commemoration at Parks Canada, observed the following about Laurier:

- Everything Macdonald did, Laurier did worse -Laurier oversaw a vast expansion of residential schools
- Some of his other policies led to objectively worse outcomes for Canada’s Indigenous people.
- His government ignored reports detailing the deadly effect of tuberculosis in the schools.
- Laurier also instituted measures to limit black, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian migration to Canada.
Coupled with Laurier overruling indigenous voting, his legacy is significantly worse than John A. Macdonald’s by today’s standards. Macdonald, in fact, would have been much ahead of his time by the standards of the day. Yet, as Ostola concludes, that despite all Laurier did, his reputation remains untouched. His name is not on a review list, his name is still on display, there are no signs alerting tourists of Laurier’s views. And of course, Laurier remains on the $5.00 bill, Macdonald has been removed from the $10.00 bill!

Let me conclude by reminiscing a bit about my past again. I had the most wonderful parents and my teachers were the best. I was disciplined at home by spankings with a belt and wooden spoon. I took the spoon one day and buried it in a hedge. My mother never figured out where it went until I told her years later. At school, while I escaped a strap across the hand or buttocks, many did not. The worst I got was a wood backed chalkboard eraser thrown at, and hitting my head. Today, children could be removed from home for what my parents did, and teachers fired. At the time, this was never even a thought. We all would like to be personally judged on why we did what we did based on the time we lived in. We should give the same respect to others we choose to judge. We should give this respect, acknowledgement and thanks to a founder of our wonderful country, rated as one of the best in the world. We should continue to honour our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald by restoring his reputation, which is now in tatters based on revisionist history, and by putting his statue back up in Victoria Park. The Conservative leader recently stated this on Macdonald’s recent birthday – “A nation-builder, he brought Canada together through Confederation and the Canadian Pacific Railway, laying the foundation for a strong and prosperous country. Without his vision, Canada would not exist today.” Let’s stop the embarrassment and the apologizing we have slipped into and stand up in pride and thankfulness for the country we live in and those instrumental in its founding.

Written by Wayne Bernakevitch

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of RCAAN.

Canadian Children With No Legal Protection

Regina Civic