The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Halifax’s controversial monuments, streets
As the global uprising against racism persists, activists and historians are drawing attention to monuments and street names honouring controversial figures that remain dispersed in cities all around the world.
Should they be removed? Should other historical figures be honoured in their place? Or should they be accompanied with plaques to contextualize their racist and colonial histories? These are just a few suggestions that have been offered up in recent weeks, months and years.
Taking a stroll around Halifax, it may not be immediately apparent the number of monuments and streets with racist and colonial undertones that are planted in the city’s core.
A recent guided tour in downtown Halifax, led by activist, poet and educator El Jones and Dalhousie University historian Isaac Saney, along with other community members, brought this to light.
The Chronicle Herald spoke to Jones and Saney about the historical context of a handful of these monuments and street names and what the future could — or should — hold for them.
HALIFAX PROVISIONAL BATTALION TRIBUTE AT HALIFAX PUBLIC GARDENS
The Halifax Public Gardens has many monuments, commemorating things like the RCMP and historic military expeditions, since the Victorian era public gardens were formally established in 1867, Jones points out.
A plaque just outside the gardens and the gardens’ wrought iron entrance gates pay tribute to the Halifax Provisional Battalion, a military unit from Nova Scotia that was sent in to fight in the North-west Rebellion in 1885 to “basically repress the Metis rebellion, so (Louis) Riel, (Gabriel) Dumont,” an uprising against the government of Canada, Jones said.
Former prime minister Robert Borden stated that the “Riel Rebellion did more to unite Nova Scotia with the rest of Canada than any event that had occurred since Confederation.”
To those who are unaware of the historical context, the plaque appears to honour “brave soldiers” who “went out of Nova Scotia and became Canadian” for engaging in the fight, Jones explains.
But what the plaque fails to acknowledge, she said, is “this idea that we became Canadians by participating in the repression of the Metis rebellion.”
LT. CLONARD KEATING PLAQUE INSIDE HALIFAX PUBLIC GARDENS
Planted by the children of Morris Street School, a plaque bearing the name of Lt. Henry Edward Clonard Keating of Nova Scotia in the Halifax Public Gardens, fails to acknowledge “monstrous” acts Keating committed in Nigeria, according to Saney.
As Saney explains, Keating, a Nova Scotian, abducted several Nigerian villagers to operate canoes he’d stolen from them for his crew’s passage.
The villagers refused Keatings’ request, so Keating captured and killed the king of the village, expropriated the canoes he needed and abducted the men required to work them.
The villagers, Saney said, responded in self defence after they were abducted and kidnapped, eventually killing Keating. In retaliation, British troops killed hundreds of the villagers and burned their homes.
“So here’s a Nova Scotian who participates in atrocities in Nigeria and when the people resist, he is lionized or this is memorialized in the gardens,” said Saney.
WINSTON CHURCHILL STATUE
The Winston Churchill statue is one of the “most controversial” pieces in the city, according to Jones.
While Churchill was known to many as a hero for leading his allies to victory in the Second World War against Hitler’s Germany, Jones said his history is “much more complicated” and that he, in fact, “has an extremely racist history.”
As Jones highlights, Churchill was once quoted as saying, "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
But, Jones said, his controversial history is not showcased solely by “random” quotes.
“He also engaged in policy of famine, of genocide, his police supported the concentration camps in the Boer War. When the Indian famine was going on and people were dying, he said it’s ‘their own fault for breeding like rabbits.’ And it goes on and on and on,” she added.
STREET NAMES
The naming of streets in Halifax after controversial figures is also important to note, Saney suggests.
For example, Stairs Street and Stairs Place, are both named after William Grant Stairs, who was from Halifax and participated in two expeditions “that expanded King Leopold II’S profitable Congolese venture” in the late 1800s.
Saney noted Stairs kept an “extensive diary” in which he repeatedly admitted to “ransacking the place,” while on expeditions in the Congo.
In one diary entry from 1887, Stairs wrote, “Out again at the natives, burned more houses and cut down more bananas; this time we went further up the valley and devastated the country there.”
“He went into the (Emin Pasha Relief) expedition, he was one of the leaders of the expedition, he (carried out) atrocities and he was a mass murderer,” said Saney.
“And there’s a street named after him.”
BOER WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN INSIDE HALIFAX PUBLIC GARDENS
The Boer War Memorial Fountain was erected in 1903 to commemorate the service of Canadian soldiers, who fought with British soldiers, in the South African war, also known as the Boer War. It is yet another monument located inside the Halifax Public Gardens.
The war is a significant event in the military history of Canada, as it was the first time in its history that the government dispatched troops to an overseas war.
As Saney notes, the story of the war fought from 1899 to 1902 is “complicated,” but stemmed from conflict between the two Boer or Afrikaner republics and Britain “over sovereignty, over control, over gold” in South Africa.
Over the course of the war, it became “pretty violent” and the British began to deploy concentration camps, Saney explains. This, he said, set the stage for “crimes to be committed.”
“The Boer War is really a war of conquest over the Boer land and it further entrenches the marginalization, oppression and dispossession of people of African descent,” he added.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
Before people begin to debate whether a monument or street name should stay, go, or be modified in some shape or form, they must first have “information and knowledge,” Jones said, stressing the importance of public education.
Only then, she said, can they wholly engage in critical public discussions.
“I want people to pay attention to these histories and I want people to think about what it means that we have a landscape that’s absolutely marked by streets, monuments, statues that celebrate one history and that history is a history that deliberately has been violent,” she said.
Who we choose to memorialize, Saney said, “really says a lot about what histories we value, but what kind of society we want to build.”
He added it sends a message “which histories are important” and “whose lives are important.”
“So if you’re a Mi’kmaq young person and you’re walking and you see Cornwallis Street, it’s saying, ‘It didn’t matter (what Edward Cornwallis did) and in fact it was justified what happened to your people,’” he said.
If we want to build a just and equitable society “that expands the envelope of human dignity” Saney said a “very important start” is deciding which monuments we create, which statues we erect and who we name streets after.
He said these are “necessary,” but not “sufficient” changes, because erecting new monuments or removing others can be seen as “performativity if not accompanied by substantive change.”