Viewpoint: Beware the slippery slope of removing historic names – The Star Phoenix
August 30, 2017
For what they are worth, I offer words of caution to the group of Ontario teachers and perhaps others who apparently wish to remove Sir John A. Macdonald’s name from schools.
John A. Macdonald used the word ‘savages’ to describe Aboriginal peoples. What is so unacceptable as to be obscene today was tragically the stuff of daily parlance then. It is a terrible but undeniable feature of our history that dims any light that shines on the memory of our first prime minister. One could say the same about some of his policies, and those of his successors, especially as it concerns Canada’s First Nations.
Yet, he was also the prime minister who established the North West Mounted Police (today the RCMP) that led to its first Fort in southwest Saskatchewan, in partial response to the Cypress Hills Massacre of Aboriginal peoples by whiskey traders. He built the Canadian Pacific Railway, against all odds and some propriety, binding the country together and warding off the American expansionist desires of manifest destiny. He is a father of confederation.
