Lynn McDonald: A new museum to reclaim our history from those who want to topple it

2023/06/08 Leave a comment

The appropriate counter reaction?

Winnipeg is justly proud of its Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which opened in 2014, but we need a new museum in Canada to flag current concerns: a Canadian Museum of Misinformation, or possibly the Canadian Propaganda Museum. Whatever the title, Toronto deserves to have it.

The statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in front of the provincial legislature, Queen’s Park, is currently boarded up. Of the nine other Macdonald statues in the country, only the one on Parliament Hill is still in view. The others were put into storage, often after being defaced or, as with statue in Montreal, beheaded.

Toronto can also boast about beheading the statue of Egerton Ryerson, who brought us free public  schools and free public libraries. The misinformation on him amounts to reversing his pro-Indigenous work — he was named a “brother” by an Ojibway chief and given an Ojibway name for his support. Yet at what was then known as Ryerson University, he was condemned as being responsible for the Indian residential school system.

Toronto’s other great trump card in the misinformation game is Dundas Street, which was named after Henry Dundas, whose work as a lawyer led to the abolition of slavery in Scotland in 1778. Yet his Toronto detractors — thousands signed a petition against him — make him responsible for delaying the abolition of the slave trade in 1792.

His supposed offence was to get an amendment adopted in the British House of Commons to make abolition gradual. A motion tabled in the previous year, 1791, for immediate abolition failed miserably, 163-88. And, as a statement of opinion, rather than a law, it would have had no effect.

Detractors, however, like to have a culprit to blame, as opposed to the many economic and political circumstances at play, in this case the French Revolutionary Wars, which meant that the Royal Navy had to be on guard against invasion from two pro-slavery countries — France and Spain.

Dundas understood, as other well-meaning advocates for abolition did not, that the slave trade could not be ended by passing a law in one country. Slave owners in the West Indies could simply buy new enslaved people from ships carrying false papers and a false flag — Spain, Portugal and France all continued their slave-trading businesses.

Yet in 2021, Toronto city council adopted a motion to rename Dundas Street, without even holding the public inquiry promised by both council and the mayor.

What to put in the museum? A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald is a must, and the one taken down in Victoria would be ideal. The mayor of Victoria at the time had it removed to prevent it from being vandalized.

A particularly fine statue, it was commissioned by the Sir John A. Macdonald Historical Society and given to the city. The society is now looking for a home for it in Glasgow, Scotland, where Macdonald was born. Toronto should speak up before it’s too late.

The new museum should also display the Ryerson statue, either in its parts (oh the shame) or put together again. For educational purposes, the plaque placed next to it at the university should be displayed at the museum.

It makes the accusation that Ryerson was “instrumental in the design and implementation of the residential school system,” when he had nothing to do with either — rather, he supported the voluntary, bilingual day schools that Indigenous parents and leaders wanted.

The task force that recommended dropping the Ryerson name from the university and permanently removing his statue did so on the basis that he was “associated” with the residential schools. It provided no evidence for such a charge, nor is any available. His lack of responsibility for residential schools was confirmed at a meeting of the university’s senate on Oct. 5, 2021, after the board of governors announced the name change.

It would be important for the museum to set out the sequence of accusations, who made them and any evidence for or against them. It would be highly desirable, as well, for the museum to reveal the university’s concerted efforts to prevent any information getting out about what communications it received for and against the name change.

Otherwise, we have to take it on faith, just as on Chinese interference in Canadian elections, and without even a former governor general to assure us that we can believe what we are told

Lynn McDonald is a former member of Parliament and a fellow with the Royal Historical Society.

Source: Lynn McDonald: A new museum to reclaim our history from those who want to topple it

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Lynn McDonald: Get the facts right before condemning the past

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

The City of Toronto’s decision to rename Dundas Street probably helped the then Ryerson University administration to decide on its renaming — it was well along the way. The renaming forces at Ryerson, in turn, likely inspired a University of Toronto student to call for the renaming of Woodsworth College, founded in 1974 in honour of James Shaver Woodsworth on the centenary of his birth.

This proposed renaming, which appeared to go nowhere, appeared in a student newspaper, The Innis Herald. The 2020 opinion piece by Marloes Streppel denounced Woodsworth for his (supposed) support of residential schools and the “forced relocation of approximately 150,000 Indigenous children,” with their “severe neglect, sexual and physical abuse, and starvation.” Streppel’s op-ed, “James S. Woodsworth: A man to remember, never to glorify,” even had Woodsworth consider “cultural genocide” to be “satisfactory,” “from the white man’s standpoint.”

The trouble is that she based some of her remarks on an article by a different Woodsworth — Joseph Francis (J.F.) Woodsworth, principal of the Edmonton Residential School from 1925 to 1946. His article, “Problems of Indian Education in Canada,” appeared in a book, The North American Indian Today, 1939, which includes not a reference to J.S. Woodsworth, or Egerton Ryerson for that matter, in its 361 pages. Moreover, J.F. Woodsworth himself questioned the residential school system in his article:

“I have often been possessed of a sense of guilt in going into the Indian home or tepee and taking little children from that home, sometimes at bedtime hour, when the mother should be putting her child to rest for the night, and in rushing with my load of children into the night miles away, to put them into my school. It is true that they trusted me and were in a way willing for the children to go — but it was not essentially right. Yet the bulk of our Indian youth is at present in residential schools. These schools may be efficient, but we must not sacrifice the spirit and souls of these people, to say nothing of the joy of home and children, upon the altar of efficiency.”

Both Woodsworths were Methodist ministers, but had nothing else in common. J.S. Woodsworth was a leading advocate for welfare reform, the right of workers to unionize, and the first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later called the New Democratic Party. In the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, he went to jail briefly for seditious libel, notably for quoting the Book of Isaiah: “They will build houses and inhabit them.” What a subversive housing policy!

Streppel went on to describe J.S. Woodsworth as “racist” for his book “Strangers Within Our Gates: or, coming Canadians,” 1909, for classifying people according to their “race and country of origin.” Given that the book is about immigrants, that would seem to be the point. It gives a sympathetic account of the difficulties non-British immigrants experience in Canada.

It is troubling to see a university student so inept at reference checking, but the president of Victoria University (University of Toronto), Dr. William Robins, was just as inaccurate in 2021 in calling for the renaming of Victoria University’s Ryerson residence and Ryerson scholarships. Robins had Ryerson proposing “residential schools,” a term he never used, “to “train students to become agricultural labourers.” Yet Ryerson’s proposal was for “industrial schools” to teach Indigenous youth who wanted to learn farming. He looked to their becoming “overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada,” or “industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account.” He also set out an academic program far beyond what “agricultural labourers” would require: English, arithmetic, elementary geometry, geography, general history, natural history, agricultural chemistry, writing, drawing, vocal music, religion, morals and book-keeping (for farm accounts). The summer program would have more reading and vocal music, with the natural history of the plants, vegetables, trees, birds and animals of the country, with its geography and history.

The year 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Woodsworth College. Might we hope for a real celebration there, and the continued running of Dundas streetcars? The one Dundas name I would like to see removed — and it would not be costly — is Dundas Square. It should be renamed “Ryerson Square,” which could not happen until people realize how they were hoodwinked into blaming Ryerson for what others did in the residential school system. He supported rather the voluntary, bilingual schools Indigenous leaders and parents wanted. He was honoured by an Ojibway chief, who called him “brother” and gave him an Ojibway name. Dundas Square is close to where Canada’s first teacher training college stood, established by Ryerson, the founder also of free public education in Canada, when it was a revolutionary idea.

Source: Lynn McDonald: Get the facts right before condemning the past

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