The Packet
Possessing historical knowledge. Bear vs. groundhog: Round two. Navigating Canada by batteau.
Thank you for the excellent essays regarding the removal of John A. Macdonald’s name and image from Canadian public places ( Canada’s History, “The Trials of John A.,” February-March 2019).
In the summer of 2015 my wife and I drove to Winnipeg from Vancouver on a route that took us through all the sites of the resistance of 1885. The site of the Frog Lake Massacre, our first stop, is a model for how to turn old colonial-spirited memorials into teaching moments. The plaque on the 1924 cairn reads, “Here on 2nd April, 1885, rebel Indians under Big Bear massacred …,” followed by the names of the nine people killed and two captured by members of Big Bear’s Plains Cree band. In contrast, the 2012 interpretive panels explain why the massacre happened and relieve Big Bear of the wrongful charge assigned to him in the 1924 plaque. The old plaque remains important in letting visitors know that at the time of its installation the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada was satisfied with such an abbreviated, uneven telling of events.
History is never improved by erasure. Here is a paraphrased warning to us all from the great Squamish leader and activist Andrew Paull: Those who possess knowledge of their history and culture are aristocrats; those who are indifferent are rascals.
I’d add to Paull’s observations that we Canadians — Indigenous and others — are stuck with the history we have, and we will only reconcile our parts by possessing it all.
Doug Halverson Coquitlam, B.C.