We cannot whitewash our historical fathers’ warts

I disagree with John Ivison. I think the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario hasn’t gone far enough in suggesting expunging Sir John A. Macdonald’s name from Ontario schools.

I suggest changing the names of any school in Ontario named after Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant (Indigenous name Thayendanegea), including the Joseph Brant Public School in Scarborough and the Joseph Brant Learning Centre in Brantford (and maybe changing Brantford’s name as well).

Joseph Brant was a slave owner. In fact, he owned a lot of slaves — perhaps as many as 30. The most famous was a black girl named Sophia Poole, who told her story to antislavery crusader Benjamin Drew in 1855. Pooley was kidnapped with her sister in her early teens along the Hudson River in New York and sold to Brant near Niagara, N.Y. An exhibit mounted by the Archives of Ontario for Black History Month in 2009 introduced this side of Brant to the Canadian public. In Joseph Brant, 1743-1807, Man of Two Worlds, Brant’s biographer Isabel Kelsay insists that “he tolerated no nonsense of his slaves. They were fed and clothed but they worked.”

So what if Brant was a Loyalist and, later, a statesman, who put his considerable linguistic skills to use for the British as an interpreter? So what if he so impressed the British with his gifts as a warrior following the outbreak of the American Revolution that they commissioned him a captain? So what if he united the Iroquois and other western tribes in an attempt to deter American expansion westward? Does that mean we should honour a slave owner? It does.

Every important historical personage — white, AfricanCanadian, Indigenous, or other — has warts. We honour Macdonald for forging a nation and Brant for helping maintain the independence of the territory that would become the nation Macdonald forged. Yet each, in his own way, was a racist. Who wasn’t in the 18th and 19th centuries?

We should not cover up the truth, but to expunge our forefathers’ names from schools is to deny our students a rounded picture of Canada’s history. More reasons why schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald should be re-labelled:

The man was knighted, thus acknowledging his belonging to the British class system. Tsk-tsk.

His middle name. Alexander the Great, was a pre-biblical imperialist. Bad optics.

He lived in Kingston, the Limestone City; and everyone knows limestone is a sedimentary rock. Boring. He drank too much; thus was a substance abuser. Bad. He was born in Scotland. Need I say more? He claimed to be a British subject, thus a colonial. Uncool. He lived in the 19th century and thus, with historical 20/20 insight, was not squeaky clean. (Victorians bathed once a month, whether they needed it or not.)

He had a terrible hairdo and was later cast in bronze. Like being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

He once claimed the electorate preferred him drunk to any opponent sober. Hmmm. I propose that In order to avoid any possibility of negative learning outcomes associated with reference to Canada’s first prime minister, that all Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario members named John or Macdonald (MacDonald, McDonald, etc.) immediately change their legal names and that the Federation pay their expenses.