Can’t sanitize Canada’s history

Dear Editor: Following the aftermath of the tragic events in Charlottesville, Va., many local and state governments intend removing statues and other Old South imagery from public lands. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper commented, “Our Civil War history is important, but it belongs in textbooks and museums,” while Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings made reference to certain statues as “dangerous totems.” Are we not now on our way down the slippery slope of removing from the historical record, any elements which certain groups now consider offensive, according to their own definition of tolerance?

I am reminded of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where its main character worked in The Ministry of Truth, and whose job was to rectify the past by re-writing it according to the wishes of the ruling Party. Through the process of continuous alteration, history was changed to fit the new ideological and political present; in this manner it was not rectified but obliterated.

Considering the fact that structures including the U.S. Capitol Building, the White House, most of Wall Street and all four major rail networks were built by enslaved black people, perhaps these should be dismantled and so removed from our present consciousness.

In other civilizations including Egypt, Greece and Rome, it is noteworthy than many buildings, bridges, monuments and roads were built on the backs of slave labour. Maybe it is time that the Colosseum, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and even the pyramids should be given a second thought as to their future existence in the modern world.

Unfortunately, we cannot sanitize the past by attempting to remove from the collective memory, those parts of it which have now become distasteful. Should we take this route, we risk becoming the society of which Orwell wrote: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” Claude Wyspianski Thunder Bay, Ont.