Status of Women list: Modern, minority Canadians unjustly left off

While the criticism of the list is valid as well as noted the mixed record of many of the names, Stephen Hume forgets, in his suggestions, that usually naming of buildings is reserved for the dead:

Our federal government has compiled a list of 29 women it thinks deserve buildings named in their honour but, as a Canadian Press report points out, very little has been done with it.

Read through the list compiled by Status of Women Canada for then-Conservative public works minister Rona Ambrose and one can see why.

The list is overwhelmingly white, privileged and a roster of the establishment.

Emily Murphy may have been the first woman in the British Empire appointed magistrate and one of the “Famous Five” who successfully battled to have women recognized as “persons” rather than the chattels of fathers or husbands.

But in the 21st century should we name a public building for a woman who surreptitiously wrote fear-mongering racist tracts about Asians, blacks, Jews and Ukrainians?

 …Then there’s Nellie McClung, widely celebrated as a witty, eloquent suffragette, adept with the rejoinder in her debates with the Colonel Blimps determined that women should stay out of politics and in the nursery.

When one yelled that the prime minister would quit if ever a woman were elected, McClung retorted, “what a purifying effect women would have on politics.”

On the other hand, McClung advocated removing people with disabilities from the gene pool. The pristine bloodlines of Canada’s sturdy, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant stock, our natural overclass, was not to be muddied by the genes of feeble-minded degenerates.

McClung was for routine sterilization for “young simple-minded girls.” Her arguments helped fashion the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act. It gave provincial bureaucrats power to order sexual sterilization of undesirable individuals.

….There are folks who will argue that our reactions should be tempered by the times that shaped and defined people. That argument doesn’t cut ice with the Canadian Jewish Congress. It has objected to honours for long-time Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton — another on the federal list — as an unapologetic anti-Semite who helped deliberately block the entry into Canada of Jewish orphans fleeing the Nazi Holocaust. Fair point. Would we tolerate naming buildings after a Nazi like Albert Speer because his anti-Semitism happened to be a product of his times but he remained a refined, cultured and artistic man who did public service?

Source: Status of Women list: Modern, minority Canadians unjustly left off | Vancouver Sun