Should we re-think Pearson’s legacy, too?
If we start stripping the names of historical figures from our buildings, it might be difficult to stop, says Sean M. Maloney.
On June 21, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was removing the name of Hector-Louis Langevin from the 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.
If we condemn Langevin, we must also condemn Lester B. Pearson for his racial policies. To understand why, let’s go back to the period just after the Second World War.
Canada-U.S. defence planning, established during that conflict, drew closer during the Cold War years. And so the U.S. air force Strategic Air Command, led by Gen. Curtis LeMay, requested that airbases in Canada be enhanced to take bomber aircraft in the event of war.
The U.S. air force was 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 blacks and whites. This was not always an easy process: over at Strategic Air Command, LeMay had to shame one of his more reluctant subordinates into ensuring that racial integration goals were met.
Not all air command construction units had been integrated during this transitional era, and the Canadian government informed the U.S. air force that it was concerned about the use of “coloured troops” in Canada, an activity it said required ministerial approval. It was OK to deploy blacks to remote Frobisher Bay,
If we condemn Hector-Louis Langevin, we must also condemn Lester B. Pearson for his racial policies.
but not to Fort Chimo (as Kuujjuaq was then called), where they might come into contact with the general population.
The U.S. air force was told the following in a document then classified as 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 dispatch to Chimo because it might be misconstrued in Quebec and further afield for that matter.
“Presumably the U.S. authorities can readily appreciate the importance of a matter of this kind ... (Pearson) feels that if the Chimo work is important, the U.S. forces must surely have 140 white troops of some kind for it.”
Pearson used RCAF Air Marshal Wilfred Curtis to convey this message to the USAF, which gave in because of the vital nature of the construction work to the emergency war plan.
At the same time, Strategic Air Command’s point man in Britain informed LeMay and his deputy, Gen. Thomas Power, that the U.K. Air Ministry also objected to the deployment of an integrated U.S. air force unit, and explained that the “coloured” personnel were not welcome. Again, because of the exigencies of the Cold War and need for bases in Britain, Strategic Air Command leadership reluctantly backed off.
A frustrated Power wrote back to his man in Britain: “Considerable progress has been made relative to the integration of coloured personnel ... since announcement of the USAF policy ... eventually there are bound to be more coloured combat crew members and technicians regularly assigned to units. Ultimately, it will be an irregular procedure to leave these people at home.”
Should we consider renaming the airport in Toronto or countless schools across the country in response to Pearson’s intervention? Perhaps we should also rename the Global Affairs Canada building, or consider returning Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The hunt for more targets will continue until our past is so completely compromised that it is unteachable.
Rather than punitively renaming buildings, we might want to consider granting our historical figures amnesty and accepting that we have a complex history.