If Langevin, then what about Lester Pearson?
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was removing the name of Hector-Louis Langevin from the prominent Ottawa building that houses the Prime Minister’s Office. Many Canadians are unhappy about Langevin’s involvement, as a minister in Sir John A. Macdonald’s cabinet, with racially based assimilation policies. But the move raises disturbing questions about the potential double standard around naming government buildings and historic, racially based wrongs.
If we condemn Langevin, we must also condemn Lester B. Pearson for his racial policies. And we should therefore review the prominence of his name on Canadian buildings.
Canada-U.S. defence planning drew closer during the Cold War years and the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, led by Gen. Curtis LeMay, requested that air bases in Canada be enhanced to take bomber aircraft in the event of war.
The U.S Air Force was a new institution, born in 1947, right before the Truman administration ordered the American armed services to desegregate. The USAF embraced desegregation and by 1949 was well on its way to integration between black and whites.
Not all of Strategic Air Command’s construction units had been integrated during this transitional era, and the Canadian government informed the USAF it was concerned about the use of “coloured troops” in Canada, an activity it said required “ministerial approval.” The USAF was told the following in a document then classified “secret.”
“There is a reluctance here to see coloured troops used in Canada. (Secretary of State for External Affairs) Pearson is particularly reluctant to give his approval to their despatch to Chimo because it might be misconstrued in Quebec and further afield for that matter. Presumably the US Authorities can readily appreciate the importance of a matter of this kind . . . (Pearson) feels that if the Chimo work is important, the US Forces must surely have 140 white troops of some kind for it.”
The USAF gave in because of the vital nature of the construction work to the SAC emergency war plan.
At the same time, Strategic Air Command’s point man in the United Kingdom informed LeMay and his deputy, Gen. Thomas Power, that the U.K. Air Ministry also objected to the deployment of an integrated USAF unit. Again, because of the exigencies of the Cold War, SAC’s leadership reluctantly backed off.
A frustrated Power wrote back to his man in the U.K. : “Considerable progress has been made relative to the integration of colored personnel . . . since announcement of the USAF policy . . . eventually there are bound to be more colored combat crew members and technicians regularly assigned to units. Ultimately, it will be an irregular procedure to leave these people at home.”
Was Pearson racist for his intervention here? If so, should we consider renaming the airport outside of Toronto or countless schools across the country? Perhaps we should also rename the Global Affairs Canada building.
We might also consider returning Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The juxtaposition of having the men who incinerated Tokyo and planned nuclear war showing more progressive views on race than the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pearson may cause some people discomfort, but the hunt for more targets will continue until our past is so completely compromised that it is unteachable.
Rather than punitively renaming buildings, we as a people might want to consider granting our historical figures amnesty and accept that we have a complex history.