RECKONING FOR JAMES MCGILL?
Petition seeks removal of his statue
Decades back, while studying sociology at Mcgill University, I had a coterie of inspiring American professors who never shied away from pointing out injustice and racism — particularly as it existed in the U.S. In the eyes of many, academics and others, then and now, Canada was and is often perceived as the refuge, the country of slave rescuers.
But Canadian slave owners? Among them, James Mcgill, for whom the university is named and by whom it was funded? Many were and probably still are woefully unaware.
After all, if one were to go to the Mcgill University website, one would not read anything about James Mcgill as a slave owner. Instead, one would get a rather rosy picture about “a pioneer, philanthropist, visionary with an ecumenical and generous spirit” largely responsible for the creation of Mcgill University in 1821, eight years after his death.
But just as there was a reckoning involved with Mcgill dropping its Redmen name for some of its sports teams, so there could be in the university having to rid itself of the statue of James Mcgill from its campus.
A petition, launched last week, already has been signed by more than 2,000. And in an email to students, the university has pledged to research slavery and colonialism relating to Mcgill’s history as part of its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan.
This is hardly an isolated situation. In light of the horrific murders of George Floyd and others in the U.S., there are demands and petitions around the planet to remove statues of historical figures associated with systemic racism. Including demands to remove the Place du Canada statue of John A. Macdonald for his racist remarks toward Indigenous Peoples and his involvement with the creation of the residential school system.
The pasts of James Mcgill and Macdonald are not a mystery to Mcgill art historian and professor Charmaine Nelson, who teaches the Visual Culture of Slavery.
“Most of that subject is abhorrent because a lot of it is pro-slavery in ideology, produced by slave owners to try to justify the enslavement of African people,” Nelson says.
“But if that was all destroyed, I’d have nothing to study or teach. We would lose a very powerful archive which helps us understand colonialism and trans-atlantic slavery and how not to repeat those genocidal practices. So I feel these sculptures should come down, but not be destroyed. I would like to see them put into museums, if museums had the capacity to give them a proper anti-racist context.”
Nelson notes it’s no accident all these statues exist, since they were erected by those in power who were white.
“That’s how we’ve erased a 200-year history of slavery here and replaced it with a 30-year history of the Underground Railroad, because that’s what makes us look and feel good. Too many people think of racism and colonialism only as a product of the U.S. But we’re sitting on a 200year history, going from Ontario eastward. That’s not small.”
Nelson, who has three degrees in art history, had to do a lot of digging on her own to learn about Canada’s past.
“As a Black woman studying our history, they were always showing me Western images of people who looked like me, but the professors couldn’t talk about why the Black person was in the painting or the sculpture. They literally talked around the Black person. They couldn’t answer questions I had, but instead encouraged me to write a paper on this.”
In Nelson’s research, she discovered an entire field called Race and Representation and came to the realization that she couldn’t communicate what this art was about if she didn’t understand trans-atlantic slavery.
“I stumbled on literature by (deceased) Laval professor Marcel Trudel, went into the Mcgill archives on James Mcgill and taught myself about Canadian slavery. James Mcgill was not only enslaving Indigenous and Black people in Montreal, but was also exploiting and harming enslaved people in the Caribbean, because they were the ones producing his rum.
“And few Canadians even know slavery transpired here,” Nelson adds. “And if Canadians don’t know about it, the rest of the world doesn’t, either. When I do lectures around the world, people are really astounded. They go: ‘Canada?’ ”
Too many people think of racism and colonialism only as a product of the U.S.
But we’re sitting on a 200-year history.