‘Cancelling’ Sir John A.: ‘This madness has to end’
Re: Sir John A. Macdonald meets cancel culture, Bruce Pardy, Oct. 14
Although I’ve done a little reading on the man, I don’t know enough about John A. Macdonald to declare him “saint” or “sinner.” Am I allowed to wonder whether Macdonald was no more racist and/or no less racist than any other Victorian?
And may I suggest that, insofar as the Queen’s University Law Faculty, in its wisdom, has decided John A. is not up to 2020 moral snuff, that, in all fairness, Queen’s should put under the microscope the dozens of names of all those other (mostly dead, I respectfully assume) achievers and notables or the deep-pocketed after whom campus buildings are named — starting with, say, Queen Victoria.
Only those who, after thorough vetting, remain squeaky clean by 2020 standards du jour should be permitted to remain recognized for whatever. But Queen’s vetting committees better move quickly, as these “standards du jour” are changing as we speak.
Fraser Petrick, Kingston, Ont.
Bruce Pardy has provided your readers with very cogent reasons to decry cancel culture and to fear the legacy that many universities are creating for themselves. Some time after Donald Trump’s election, Barack Obama said that human progress does not proceed in a straight line but rather, it zigs and zags. In other words, in the overall scheme of things, the Visigoths may be just as important contributors to human progress as Julius Caesar or Winston Churchill.
Most notably, Mr. Pardy made no mention of what name the faculty board has proposed in place of Sir John A. Macdonald Hall. I shall presume this is because the faculty board deliberately evaded this important matter. I therefore respectfully recommend that the board of trustees of Queen’s University rename its law building The Former Sir John A. Macdonald Hall and await, perhaps indefinitely, suggestions of other names that might enjoy broader support.
Patrick Cowan, Toronto
The “cancel culture” infiltration at Queen’s University and elsewhere is today’s iteration of Communist China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’ 70s and the more recent Taliban destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan … the ignorant ideology of historical revisionism.
Morton Doran, Fairmont, B. C.
In the interest of academic rigour, one assumes Queen’s University is calling for the elimination of slave owner Chief Joseph Brant’s name from public reference. Or is this respected institution of higher learning revealing a rather parochial bias? And in Kingston yet! Ah, the irony.
Douglas L, Martin, Hamilton, Ont.
Prof. Bruce Pardy’s column in defence of John A. is a testament of historical wisdom. Of course, the professor is right in defending the reputation of the great man who, almost single-handedly, created this country in the first instance and expanded it from coast to coast. John A. was very enlightened by the standards of his time. And for Prof. Pardy to defend John A. in the face of the onslaught from the critical theorists who dominate universities today took Churchillian courage. Pardy will no doubt be viciously harassed for speaking the truth, a commodity apparently in short supply at Queen’s.
Barry Kirkham, West Vancouver
History has witnessed many occasions where the barbarians swept down from the north or came out of the eastern steppes to raid, loot and pillage places of learning. Now, it appears as if the barbarians are within the university itself, and, with the assistance of the nihilistic, no- nothing cancel culture mob, are tearing down one of the glories of Western civilization, our universities. Many universities seem to have entirely forgotten their raison for being. While removing a name from a building may seem a small matter now, it would signify the trustees’ acquiescence to a form of mob rule. In sum, Sir John A. Macdonald is just collateral damage in a great intellectual struggle for the soul of Western civilization. It is so ironic that Queen’s, supposedly a bastion of the intellect and the search for truth, should seemingly join forces with a bunch of no- nothings. Should the board of trustees assent to this change, then they should bow their heads in shame. Let us hope that Prof. Pardy is wrong, and that it is not too late to halt the barbarians.
Allan E. Jones, Ottawa
Please join me in demanding that Queen’s University Principal, Patrick Deane, resign immediately ( de- platformed/cancelled) for wasting taxpayers’ money, resources and time on recommendations that Sir John A’s name be removed from Queen’s School of Law.
Professors, teachers and parents should be teaching our history, not cancelling it.
Wilf Johnston, Kingston, Ont.
Bruce Pardy is a hero. He is a maverick. Let all of us raised in the 1970s and 1980s rise to support him. The igen cohort of “safetyism” and fragility has been bred since 2010 by the emergence of psyche- destructive social media and paranoid parenting. This madness needs to end. Say what you will about Sir John A. Macdonald, he is still the founding father of Canada and our first prime minister. Nobody in our nation’s past is beyond reproach, but to hold them to a modern- day standard of “wokeness” is ridiculous. What happened on Queen’s campus just reinforces why I’m so happy and proud I went to Western during the late 1980s.
Jen Mazzarolo, Ancaster, Ont.