Changing names won’t erase the past
Re Teachers union wants schools stripped of first PM’s name, Aug. 25 Many schools in Ontario and across the country are named after colonialists and imperialists who believed that their society was better than everyone else’s. To change the names of all those schools, universities and institutions would be a huge financial burden and all that really would be done is to assuage the collective guilt of the white descendants of those men and women.
There is a much better way to acknowledge past transgressions and actually make a positive difference in the lives of our Indigenous peoples. Instead of symbolic gestures, do something real:
Have full school assemblies in which you tell the whole story of the school’s namesake and how he was a human being who acted in positive and negative ways to accomplish whatever he is known for. Have Indigenous speakers to those assemblies.
Twin your school with an Indigenous school that has fewer resources.
Raise the equivalent funds that it would take to rename the school (or more) through appropriate thought-provoking fundraising efforts and send that money to your twinned school.
Have all the students in your school write letters to the federal government asking them to fulfil its promises to our Indigenous peoples.
If you do these things, you will make a real difference. Just changing a name solves nothing. June Mewhort, Woodville, Ont. Erasing Macdonald visually does not erase the emotional anguish of the past. Macdonald was an elected politician, who represented the values of a majority at that time.
And while history may not be comfortable, it leads a nation to where it stands today and provides a springboard for dialogue and, hopefully, change.
I have lived in Nice, France, for nearly 20 years. While the occupation of this city ended decades ago, there are unavoidable reminders every day, from plaques to parks to graves
When you get married in France, your marriage act lists every person each spouse has ever wed. You cannot escape the past, but you can own it, understand it and try not to make the same mistakes again in real time. Shame is counterproductive. Accountability is not.
Let Indigenous students share their stories, they are the ones we can learn from, no matter what a school is named. Nancy Heslin, Nice, France