An atonement process
Inventing British seat of government doesn’t justify Amherst name as representation of history
Parks Canada does not have the script down pat, except for federal nation-building. And likewise is it with the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC).
In spite of their recommendation for a need to remove controversial historical markers as part of an atonement process, both Parks Canada and the HSMBC justify their keeping the controversial Amherst name because Fort Amherst across from Charlottetown harbour would have been an Island seat of government for the British from 1758 to 1768.
Contrary to what they assert, the Island after 1758 was administered from Nova Scotia, not from the Island of SaintJohn as Prince Edward Island was called then. However, in 1769, following representations made by the proprietors, a separate Island administration was set up with Walter Patterson, as its first Governor, who dismantled Fort Amherst and presided over sessions of a makeshift assembly in private homes and taverns. There’s finally a first glimpse in 1769 of an Island British colonial seat of government but with no Fort Amherst in sight.
In 1758, the British had immediately replaced the rudimentary French fortifications near Port-la-Joye with a new stockade fort to the east, toward the water, under the supervision of Lieutenant William Spry.
Except for the presence of 18 cannons and 190 soldiers from the 28th Regiment of Foot, the only activity for the British army soldiers was their rotation through the fort each spring with fresh replacements from Louisbourg.
The federal government is still persisting to keep the Amherst name on site. A press release from Parks Canada on May 16 in The Guardian clears up our minds that in addition to the purported seat of government, the HSMBC justifies keeping the Amherst name because ‘the British period is intimately associated with the Deportation of the Acadians.’
It’s indeed flirting intimately with history when around 3,000 unarmed, inoffensive Acadians, who posed no military threat whatsoever, are deported from their Island homeland in spite of the surrender of the fortress of Louisbourg. Quite a sordid avowal from HSMBC for its justification to keep the Amherst name.
Was inventing an Island British seat of government to justify the Amherst name the sort of ploy that the Royal Commonwealth Society meant as a just and exact representation of British history in Canada? Why does Parks Canada keep defending the Amherst name knowing that this British general dishonourably targeted the ethnic cleansing and genocide of both Acadians and First Nations?
Parks Canada Agency has suggested further consultation with the Mi’kmaq. How hypocritical can one be? Mi’kmaq Grand Council Leader John Joe Sark has been in correspondence with them for about 10 years on this very issue and has already suggested the name Medubunageak which, according to Mi’kmaq experts, literally means ‘Steep Red Bank,’ now Anglicized to Rocky Point. For the Acadians, the reason for retaining the actual name of Port-la-Joye, is threefold. Firstly, it was the site of the arrival in 1720 of the first French settlers to the Island; secondly, it was the place where the first Acadian and his family established themelves; and thirdly, it was the place where Acadians were forced to embark in the fall of 1758 to their ethnic cleansing. Therefore, would it not be proper and just that the representation for this Island Canadian National Historic Site be honourably renamed the Medubunageak-Port-la-Joye National Historic Site of Canada. This means shelving permanently the infamous British General Jeffrey Amherst, relegating him to history books, and ceasing to honour him publicly. The Royal Commonwealth Society, for whatever its philanthropic purpose over here, must see to it that its script mindset of British history in Canada be radically altered so that it does not splinter further the Mi’kmaq and Acadian landscape in echo chambers of hurt and oblivion. Otherwise, it will be the beginning of the end of British fair play and a free society where facts are not just alternatives.