We can celebrate future without ignoring past
In the lead-up to Canada Day this weekend, some Indigenous Canadians have been saying that if we celebrate Canada 150, we’re celebrating colonialism. But then according to that line of thought, no country in the world could celebrate its special day because there isn’t a single nation whose history is unblemished.
Britain? Talk about colonialism! Russia? Forget it. Gulags. Millions dead under Stalin’s reign. China? Millions dead in the Great Leap Forward. Germany? The Holocaust. France? Colonialism. The United States? Not only is U.S. history rife with atrocities against American Indians and African-Americans, but our neighbour has a nasty habit of barging into places like Iraq and Vietnam to wage war against those countries’ citizens on their own soil.
Yes, the Fathers of Confederation had a colonial mindset. Yes, Hector-Louis Langevin — for whom the building containing the Prime Minister’s Office was named until recently when Justin Trudeau un-named it — remarked during an 1883 budget debate on the need to civilize aboriginal children and isolate them in schools.
Langevin is thought to be the instigator of the residential school system, but Matthew Hayday, a professor of Canadian history at the University of Guelph, says he may not have been. He wasn’t even Indian Affairs minister. That title belonged to Sir John A. Macdonald. Before whitewashing history, Trudeau should have checked with historians.
As Hayday wrote recently on activehistory.ca, “… in the absence of more compelling evidence, what (Langevin) appears to be is a dutiful minister carrying out the will of the minister actually responsible for the dossier, insofar as it touched his ministry. He was complicit in implementing the policy, absolutely.
But I don’t think that necessarily means he was a driver of the policy, any more than one of Stephen Harper’s or Justin Trudeau’s MPs or cabinet ministers who repeat standard party talking points are necessarily the brains behind a given operation.”
But while Langevin and his contemporaries were products of their time, so are we products of our time. We don’t think “colonialism.” Not one of us was alive then and we should not bear the blame for the actions of people now long dead. We can’t change the past, but we can recognize that there are reasons to celebrate Canada Day.
Canada is one of the most stable democracies in the world and the dream destination of millions of people. We’ve been blessed by that other vision of the Fathers of Confederation — the one of peace and freedom. We can thank Macdonald for insisting on a parliamentary government and a transcontinental railway, to keep Canada from becoming part of the U.S.
The fact that we can acknowledge past wrongs is something to celebrate. Acknowledgement and recognition lead to insight, understanding and wisdom. Nine years ago, Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons and offered a profound apology to residential school survivors. That apology is worth celebrating on Canada Day.
In his book, The Drowned and The Saved, Holocaust survivor Primo Levi writes: “… the need to divide this field into ‘we’ and ‘they’ is so strong that this pattern, this bipartition — friend/ enemy — prevails over others. Popular history … is prone to reduce the river of human occurrences to conflicts, and the conflicts to duels — we and they.”
“We” and “they” are the counterproductive mindset that the Canada Day protesters are perpetuating. The past cannot be undone. Canada at 150 is still a work in progress. Let’s celebrate this country and its future possibilities, not as we and they, but together as Canadians. Naomi Lakritz is a Calgary journalist.