Hate disappears when facts known

I read with interest the opinion by Garth E. Staples, a former educator and politician, “No room for hate or bias in historical research,” and decided a response was in order because I truly believe that hate disappears when people know the real facts of history as it transpired.

Staples an educator? I decided that someone should inform him that Gov. Edward Cornwallis was not a Lord but a British Army officer. Also, further inform him that his ancestors were in the process of stealing the land of the Mi’kmaq. The Mi’kmaq had every right to fight to keep what was theirs.

The Hon. Joseph Howe stated it nicely in an 1867 speech:

“...The Indians who scalped your forefathers were open enemies, and had good reason for what they did. They were fighting for their country, which they loved, as we have loved it in these latter years. It was a wilderness. There was perhaps not a square mile of cultivation, or a road or a bridge anywhere. But it was their home, and what God in His bounty had given them they defended like brave and true men. They fought the old pioneers of our civilization for a hundred and thirty years, and during all that time they were true to each other and to their country, wilderness though it was .... ”

I recommend that Mr. Staples educate himself before writing by reading “Cornwallis, the Violent Birth of Halifax” and “We Were Not the Savages.”

Daniel N. Paul, C.M., O.N.S., LLD, DLIT, Mi’kmaw Saqmawiey (Eldering)