Some day, our memorials may also be offensive
That wonderful rite of footballing passage — the Labour Day Classic – will soon be upon us when our Eskimos make their annual, if usually futile, pilgrimage to McMahon Stadium.
“Our Eskimos?” I hear you ask. Oh yes, that famous team moniker has its roots in Calgary, which is something to merrily — though carefully — remind any green-and-gold fan sober enough to understand a bit of history while drowning sorrows late in the fourth quarter.
In 1892, the first rugby match between Alberta’s two major cities took place. Back then local newspapers would hurl insults at their rivals (some things don’t change) and after the Edmonton bunch termed Calgary a cow camp the favour was returned — their team being deemed Esquimeaux, an old, French-based word for Eskimos, inspired by that city’s northern location.
The nickname stuck — another example of Calgary’s superior imagination — and 15 years later sports promoter William White used “Eskimos” to mark the baseball, football and hockey teams he founded in Edmonton.
So Calgarians have more than a passing interest in the current debate whether that name insults today’s Inuit and should be dropped.
Thankfully — at least for now — it’s still OK for Calgarians to throw jibes at Edmontonians (a city I fell in love with 36 years ago when first emigrating to this wonderful province and country). But the row about the suitability of a word that some, but far from all, Inuit consider demeaning is part of the revisionist movement that, if you follow the sad trail long enough, leads to the recent confrontation in Charlottesville now tearing the United States apart.
That awful spectacle involving idiots carrying Nazi flags arose from a decision to remove a statue of the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, from a park that previously bore his name. Sadly such statues and what they now symbolize acquire a power never previously owned — most people wander by these monuments to the past clueless about who’s carved atop some hearty horse. Moving on is a remarkable human ability.
Yet we see the same movement in Canada, with demands the Halifax statue of Edward Cornwallis be removed because of his dreadful dealings with the native population back in 1749. Suddenly some old, barely acknowledged lump of stone becomes a racial, social and political battleground. Is there a cut-off date for outrage? Should the Viking statues across Britain come down — they were ruthless killers and rapists after all. Or, closer to home, should we rip up CP Rail tracks because of the death toll among Chinese labourers?
Yet, while quick to brand our forefathers as killers, racists, misogynists and bigots, we rarely wonder if the statues and place names we’re currently handing out will bear the brunt of future generations’ scrutiny.
Take, for example, one of the most respected Albertans in our recent history, the late Peter Lougheed. Who could raise objection, given what the former premier did for this province, about place names such as Peter Lougheed Provincial Park or Peter Lougheed Hospital?
But imagine, in 60 years, those who fostered Alberta’s energy industry aren’t looked upon as visionaries but instead, because of deadly, rising ocean waters blamed on carbon emissions, are decried as environmental criminals, causing misery and death. Their names should be erased from any public edifice.
That fanciful but not entirely ludicrous possibility should give us pause. We honoured Peter Lougheed alongside other Albertans because of what they did in the times in which they lived. They were judged by their peers to be good women and men, who worked hard for the province they loved and accomplished things benefiting that society.
So is it fair if generations, not yet born, try to destroy those memorials because times and attitudes change and those accomplishments are then demonized and derided?
It’s not a simple call, despite the rush to judgment that some folk enjoy.
So, in the meantime, let’s run rampant at the expense of those footballers still called Eskimos.
While we still can.