Stanley Park in Vancouver may soon disappear. No, not because developers want to replace its towering Douglas firs with condo towers – though I’m sure the notion has them salivating like Pavlov’s dogs – but because the park’s name may be changed.
Not that Lord Stanley himself did anything wrong, other than donating a silver cup to the National Hockey League. He’s simply a representative of his time that saw the original inhabitants of North America as “sauvages,” savages with no rights.
So the Vancouver Parks Board has started a “colonial audit” to identity the ways in which earlier generations of later arrivals wronged the Indigenous peoples who once occupied the shores of Burrard Inlet.
All this is part of a movement to rewrite history the way it should have been. And in case there’s any doubt, I’m against it.
That probably puts me into a group that the Prince George Citizen’seditor Neil Godbout derided as “historically-illiterate, culturally-entitled white people.” So be it.
What we have is what we have. To deny it is to deny what makes us, us.
Easy answers
What’s needed is a change of attitude, not a change of names. Renaming a Conservative party “Liberal” doesn’t change its policies.
In January of this year, the statue of Lord Cornwallis was quietly taken down in Halifax. In 1749, he signed a so-called scalping bounty, declaring “a reward of ten Guineas be granted for every Indian Micmac taken or killed.”
Earlier this year, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario urged school boards across Ontario to remove Sir. John A. Macdonald's name from public schools.
Hector-Louis Langevin already had his name stripped off the Ottawa building that houses the prime minister's office. Both Macdonald and Langevin are accused of fostering the residential school system that attempted to “take the Indian out of the child.”
Fort Amherst in Prince Edward Island could become Fort No-Name, thus honouring Loblaws’ marketing genius instead of a military hero who made the mistake of endorsing a scheme to distribute smallpox-tainted blankets among the Mi’kmaqs as a “method … to Extirpate this Execrable Race."
The whole thing begins to sound like a Harry Potter story, filled with references to “He-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Spoken.”
As the National Posteditorialized sardonically, Amherst fought the Mi’kmags, and the Mi’kmaqs won.
Products of their times
Granted, Cornwallis, Amherst, Macdonald, and Langevin were racists. But I challenge you to find any prominent politician of that time who wasn’t.
They were products of their time and culture. Would Canada have elected a prime minister in 1867 who promoted, let’s say, women’s equality, gay rights, and a carbon tax?
Not bleeping likely.
If you expunge Macdonald, who would you substitute as a “founder of Canada”? Who else would you credit as the driving force behind our first transcontinental railway? Donald Smith? Cornelius Van Horne? I’d wager that any serious study of their lives would unearth equally unsavory details about them.
Who’s next for de-throning? Terry Fox? St. Francis?
Why not God?
After all, tradition claims he impregnated a teenage virgin. She may have consented, but the imbalance of power far surpassed any allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Also, according to the Bible, God committed the greatest genocide ever, far exceeding Hitler’s Holocaust, when he drowned every human on earth except one family.
So should we strike God from the national anthem? Delete “the supremacy of God” from the preamble to Canada’s Constitution? Remove the initials “D.G.” -- Dei Gratia, by the grace of God -- from our coins?
Undoing ourselves
It’s all right; I’m not being serious. I’m merely making a case that if you’re going to rewrite history, you need to know how far you’re willing to go.
Because all of these were products of their time. They will inevitably reflect the views that were common in their time. Which is not ours.
Revising history used to be a trademark of the Communist regime in Russia. To abolish all association with the former Russian tsars, the Kremlin renamed St. Petersburg as Leningrad, Tsaritsyn as Stalingrad, and Novonikolayevsk(named for Tsar Nicholas II)as Novisibirsk.
Changing names to suit a later social ethic is like the paradox of time travel. You go back in time to right a wrong, and then discover that by altering the past you’ve eliminated yourself from the present.
Right or wrong, we need our past.
Or like Stanley Park, you may find you don’t exist any longer.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Cliff Boldt took issue with my description of the Danforth Avenue shooter as “deranged,” in last week’s column. “That is an unfortunate word to use,” Cliff wrote, “because it deals with symptoms only and doesn’t get at the root of the problem. 1000s of children in Canadian schools are vulnerable
- physical development
- social growth and development
- emotional development
- language
- communication
In many school districts of B.C., almost 40% of students entering Kindergarten have one or more of these vulnerabilities.
“Society doesn’t provide adequate resources to the community to provide both preventative and treatment strategies. It costs money.”
But, Cliff went on, “How much does it cost to have 15 people shot on a street in a major city in Canada? Here in B.C. steps are being taken with strong support for early learning through affordable child care from birth to Kindergarten. We’ll see how that works.
“There is no magic bullet, but there are ways to make it unnecessary. Right now, there is no political or public will to get into prevention.”
Tom Watson also took aim at underfunded mental health services: “Why? I'm not sure of all the reasons but I think part of it boils down to this: If you have a broken leg we can see it and feel somewhat duty bound to fix it; if you have a broken mind we can't see it.
“In spite of the need for more resources for mental health, the new Conservative government in Ontario is cutting $335 million from previously planned mental health funding this year.”
Bob Rollwagen also took a shot (I seem to working on a metaphor here) at the new government in Ontario: “I agree that society is the problem. I agree that people are the solution. BUT, they need to be educated, trained or experience individuals to be able to impact an event.
“Conservative governments reduce social services and community supports so the rich can get richer and the rest have to work harder. If you are a social worker, you deserve a weekend after a long week. Hussein’s parents were not capable, his brother was worse, and medical professionals have been calling out the underfunding of services for the mental diseases -- and these are all people the last Conservative government put on the street so we could all spent our own money as we pleased. Obviously we have spent it on ourselves and not on preparing society to deal with social issues which are a product of our time and result from underfunded public education and social support for those in need. I can’t wait to see how far we fall with the current government in Ontario.
“Leadership is the solution. A higher level of common sense by the voting public would help.”
David Gilchrist made a similar point: The alarming number of tragedies will not be stopped by some magic bullet, as you suggest. However, you miss one very important point: we have closed so many (most?) Mental Hospitals! Irresponsible governments are responsible for this. The expectation that other hospitals should take up the slack, create ‘secure wards,’ or whatever, is asking the impossible of an already overloaded health system.
“Till we return to those secure institutions staffed with appropriately trained professionals and provided with the necessary medications, etc., this situation will not be changed - except for the worse.”
Steve Roney had a lot to say. Indeed, he’s writing a book on this subject: “I agree that gun control is no magic bullet to stop mass shootings. In this case, the gun the shooter used was already illegal.
“Stiffer penalties, as you say, would do nothing. We are speaking of suicide attacks. For all we know, a stiffer penalty would be a bigger incentive. Martyrdom, or suicide by cop, may be much of the attraction.
“You yourself offer a proposed magic bullet. You say, ‘someone failed to provide the mental health services Hussain needed.’ Hussain, his family reports, was indeed receiving mental health care. Moreover, all other recent mass shooters seem to have been receiving mental health care. The actual problem is surely the nature of the mental health care, not that they did not receive it.
“Study after study has reliably shown that the mentally ill are no more likely to be violent than the general population. [And] study after study also shows that violent shooters are almost always mentally ill. How do you reconcile those two facts?
“What has to be happening is a general diagnostic error. Not everyone should be given psychiatric medications. There must be two very different groups being diagnosed as mentally ill. One of these groups is significantly less likely to be violent than the general population; the other is significantly more likely, at least while on the medicines. The same medicines that are useful for one group, that allow them to function normally, flip the other group into violent psychopathy.
“It is a diagnostic problem. We are bundling melancholics with narcissists, and they are opposite conditions.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think too many links constitute spam.)
Ralph Milton’s latest project is a kind of Festival of Faith, a retelling of key biblical stories by skilled storytellers like Linnea Good and Donald Schmidt, designed to get people talking about their own faith experience. It’s a series of videos available on Youtube. I suggest you start with his introductory section: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u6qRclYAa8
Ralph’s “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal – is still available. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet