Residential schools only part of Langevin’s legacy

We’re not sure if Sir Hector-louis Langevin had much of a sense of humour or irony, but chances are the context for his current infamy would have at least puzzled him.

Back in June, responding to a request from three indigenous MPS, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered Langevin’s name stripped from the elegant sandstone building across from Parliament Hill in Ottawa that houses the prime minister’s office and the Privy Council office.

The MPS were aggrieved by the fact each time they pass the Wellington Street block they are compelled to confront the painful reality of residential schools.

There is a debate over the extent of Langevin’s role in the creation of the schools, but he is forever tagged with this statement in May 1881, made during a budget speech, as minister of public works: “The fact is, that if you wish to educate those (indigenous) children you must separate them from their parents during the time they are being educated. If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they still remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes — it is to be hoped only the good tastes — of civilized people.”

Langevin, his defenders say, is taking a disproportionate amount of the rap for residential schools. His fellow Father of Confederation, and first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, was actually responsible for native affairs at the time, and is on record as uttering considerably more offensive comments than Langevin regarding the necessity of establishing the schools.

Of the sins attributed to Langevin, though, his presumably peripheral role in the establishment of residential schools, might be said to pale against the shenanigans he got up to otherwise in his turbulent political career.

Langevin, educated at a precursor of St. Patrick’s School in Quebec City, a lawyer and newspaper editor, early advocate of Confederation, had a dizzying run in politics. He was a councillor and mayor of Quebec City, member of federal Parliament for several different ridings, from Charlevoix to Trois Riviéres. He served simultaneously, as was allowed back then, as a member of the Quebec Assembly for the Quebec Centre district. In 1873, he went down with Macdonald in the Pacific Scandal, having been accused of accepting thousands of dollars in railway slush funds. Like Macdonald, he bounced back from the scandal, although his election in 1879 in Charlevoix was challenged and overturned on the grounds of undue religious influence.

As public works minister Langevin was tasked with building much of the infrastructure of the fledgling nation. In 1883, he presented a report on his department’s activities since 1867 that, according to his entry in the Canadian Dictionary of Biography, “to read it is to watch the creation of a nation, and become aware of the true accomplishments of Langevin, a man with the abilities of a good engineer, if not of a clever politician.”

Langevin’s lack of cleverness surely refers to the affair in 1890 that ultimately led to his downfall, involving another prominent figure of the time, Thomas Mcgreevy, an influential Quebec City politician and building contractor. It began as a financial dispute between Mcgreevy and his brother Robert, but fueled by political grudges, the affair exploded into a spectacular scandal. The Langevin-mcgreevy affair, involving kickbacks for government construction contracts, led to an official inquiry that resulted in Mcgreevy’s imprisonment (though he was subsequently re-elected in the Quebec West riding), and Langevin’s disgrace, though he escaped charges.

In an analysis of the scandal, the late historian Laurier Lapierre speculated: “Had it not been for this rather sordid affair … Sir Hector Langevin would undoubtedly have become Prime Minister in 1891 upon the death of Sir John A. Macdonald.”

Had that been the case, he ventures, Canada’s destiny likely would have gone in a different direction, particularly with regards to such determinant issues as the Manitoba schools question.

Although his name has been expunged from an Ottawa building erected on his watch, there is still a rue Langevin in the Beauport district of Quebec City — named for a one-time powerful national politician who left an uncertain legacy.