It seems to be the rage these days to want to tear down icons of the past. Why are we wasting so much time, rhetoric and effort in this pursuit? What can it gain us if we do not look to our future?
There is a framed front page of the Toronto Globe from 1893 hanging over my computer as I write. It features a story about a distant relative, Sir Oliver Mowat, then Premier of Ontario. My old friend Bob Nixon, when he was Leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, once referred to old Ollie in a speech as “that myopic little man.” In his day, Sir Oliver worked very hard for Ontario. Why criticize him just because times have changed?
Similarly, I have a picture of Sir. John A. Macdonald prominent on another wall. Sure, Sir John was a drunk and a racist, he was also a damn effective politician in his day and Canada is here to prove it.
But the current contretemps about historic figures Egerton Ryerson in Toronto and Edward Cornwallis in Halifax are ridiculous. As something of a student of Canadian history, I will cheerfully admit that neither of the gentlemen live up to our standards in the 21st century.
When Cornwallis was sent by the British to establish a colony at what is now Halifax, Nova Scotia in the mid-18th century, a standard means of dealing with the local aboriginals was a bounty for scalps. Despite his efforts to make peace with the local bands, he was not knowledgeable enough to deal with the right ones. It was not until he found for himself that the trade in scalps was counterproductive that he again sued for peace with the local Mi’kmaq. Cornwallis was only in Halifax for three years and he can hardly be blamed for everything that went wrong.
And then you have fusty old Egerton Ryerson in Toronto. Yes, he did his best to tell the federal government in the late 1800s what to teach the youngsters in the residential schools but he was neither responsible for the people doing the teaching nor the overall management of the schools.
Ryerson might have been a hide-bound Methodist but he made a major contribution in launching one of the finest public education systems in the world here in Ontario. We should worry more about its future than its past.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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