Fort Amherst an ‘insult' to Mi'kmaq
John Joe Sark received the Order of Prince Edward Island at a ceremony last autumn at Government House — the lieutenant-governor’s neoclassical mansion on the Charlottetown waterfront, just across the harbour from Fort Amherst. Being so close to Fort Amherst irked him.
Sark, a Keptin of the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, was receiving the province’s highest honour, and yet a campaign he had led for almost a decade sat across the water unfinished.
Since 2008, he has been pushing to scrub the name of Jeffery Amherst from the site near Rocky Point. The national historic site has good views of the Charlottetown harbour and visible ruins of an 18thcentury British military fort. For Sark, it is a monument to a tyrant.
Amherst was an 18th-century British army officer who conspired to infect indigenous people with smallpoxlaced blankets and “extirpate the execrable race.”
Parks Canada continues to resist Sark’s demands to change the name. Throughout his battle with Parks Canada, the P.E.I. government hasn’t gotten involved — saying the name of the site is a federal government issue. In protest of “their silence,” Sarks gave back his Order of P.E.I. last week — “the medal, the lapel pin, all that junk.”
“I feel lighter. I wouldn’t want that (medal) hanging around my neck,” he said. “I don’t need any more trinkets from the white man.”
Parks Canada’s historic sites and monuments board considered the request for a second time in September, and decided that it couldn’t change the name because Fort Amherst was the “historic place name,” chosen by the British soldiers who built it.
The board, however, did suggest adding the historic Mi’kmaq name for the site to the title.
Sark isn’t satisfied with the compromise. “We look at it as an insult and a disgrace,” he said, “to have a Mi’kmaq name alongside the name of Gen. Amherst.”
Sark added if the board doesn’t change the name, “the Canadian government is complicit in perpetuating the racist attitudes of Amherst and his ilk.”