Columnists
The whole truth
History may not always be written by the victors, but since recording it began, it’s the leaders who are featured in its telling. The heroes of any history book tend to be those who have achieved something great for a society or a nation.
In the telling and retelling of their lives and achievements, certain things are inevitably embellished. But details that are difficult to stomach are often left out, or left as footnotes.
This fall, the Black Justice League at Princeton University protested, staged a sit-in and negotiated with the school’s dean over the wide use of former university and US president Woodrow Wilson’s name and face on the campus.
At issue was Wilson’s racism. Wilson was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. He not only reinstated racial segregation, he tried promoting the concept to a group of black intellectuals he had invited to the White House—the first and last time such an invitation was extended during his tenure. Under Wilson, the US sent troops into half a dozen Latin American countries.
Although the dean agreed, among other things, to consider removing Wilson’s name, there are those who feel that move would erase tradition and history. They argue Wilson was a product of his time, when racism was common and acceptable.
This is difficult territory. Those groups of people who were once oppressed—and continue to be oppressed—are right to speak out. They are right to be angry about the erasure of their own history to cater to the weak stomachs of the masses. But by erasing a name, they are not stopping the erasure of their history.
When a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald was erected in Picton last year, and even before its creation, the rumblings of a protest began in the County. MacDonald was a colourful character, and one of those undeniably important factors in Canada’s beginnings as a nation. But he, too, has been remembered for shockingly racist actions and policies.
MacDonald had expressed a vision of Canada as an Aryan nation. He also pushed forward a nationbuilding railroad by starving the First Nations on the prairies and making slave labourers of Chinese immigrants—who, upon completion of the project were ghettoized, their immediate families denied immigration. Reserves, a concept copied by Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, were his idea.
Arguably, John A was also a product of his time. But that, too, is a part of our history.
Last year, a commemorative plaque for poet Duncan Campbell Scott in an Ottawa cemetery was updated to include the part he played in the creation of Canada’s residential schools.
This seems like the right kind of compromise. In a world that is more connected, with more information shared than ever before, it’s about time history was written by (and about) the people. That means recognizing those figures in history we’ve deemed important, not just for the good things they’ve done, but also for the bad.
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