The last 10 years have seen Canadian historical figures come under attack throughout the country. Sir John A. Macdonald, our first prime minister, Henry Dundas, a prominent abolitionist, and Egerton Ryerson, founder of Ontario’s public schools, among others, have all seen their statues toppled or names removed from buildings, roads and other public spaces.
And now the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is getting in on the action with its plan to rename Dundas Junior Public School, Ryerson Community School and Sir John A Macdonald Collegiate Institute.
According to the TDSB, its mission is to “enable all students to reach high levels of achievement and well-being and to acquire the knowledge, skills and values they need to become responsible, contributing members of a democratic and sustainable society.” Most would agree that perhaps the most important of these skills is the ability to apply critical thinking to a set of facts and arrive at a well-reasoned judgment.
If it was unsure how to proceed, the TDSB might have turned to the guidelines prepared by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education for organizations confronted with similar controversies. Yet the TDSB’s decision to rename the schools appears to be largely based on a literature search conducted to see what other schools, universities and public bodies with similar names did.
This certainly doesn’t provide a good example of independent, fact-based critical thinking to the students it is tasked with educating.
The only rationale given for the change is “the potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-Indigenous racism and their connection to systems of oppression.”
The TDSB apparently had no time to conduct a careful review of the actual historical records and a critical examination of the claims being made against these prominent Canadians.
Definitely no thought was given to whether the review could be a “teachable moment” for TDSB students, staff and Canadians in general, on how we should approach such issues.
Perhaps it didn’t even notice that school boards in London, Ont., and Calgary refused to follow the crowd and declined to remove Macdonald’s name from their schools.
The TDSB seems to have been remarkably incurious. How could these figures have been so widely studied and discussed over the last 150 years without anyone noticing their glaring faults?
In the case of Macdonald and Ryerson, it is their connection with residential schools that, along with any changes to our health-care system, are seen as the third rails of Canadian politics.
Dundas is criticized for his tactical decision to amend a motion in the British Parliament in the 1790s to end slavery, so that it occurred on a delayed timetable rather than immediately. Dundas was widely recognized as no friend of slavery, but his judgment was that the motion would not pass without the amendment.
What might the TDSB have discovered if had had done a little research, collected a few facts and applied some critical reasoning to the results?
Well, for one thing, it would have discovered that there is a reason why, for most of Canada’s history, Macdonald was rightly honoured as the most important of the Fathers of Confederation. It also would have found that the recent attacks on Macdonald are largely based on claims that are unsupported by the historical record.
Take, for example, claims that residential schools amounted to a cultural genocide — or worse — and that most Indigenous children were required to attend residential schools for many years.
In fact, the majority of Indigenous children attended day schools and went home to their parents each night. And in both residential and day schools, more than half the students dropped out after Grade 1 and few students made it to Grade 5.
Further, the Macdonald government instituted a number of policies that are inconsistent with the notion that he had any interest in genocide.
A national smallpox vaccination program to vaccinate Indigenous-Canadians, a famine relief program that supported tens of thousands of First Nations people when the Buffalo population collapsed and a treaty-making process that prevented Indian wars in Canada were arguably responsible for saving tens of thousands of Indigenous lives.
The attacks on Henry Dundas are similarly ahistorical in nature. The TDSB was of course simply following the City of Toronto’s lead, after it decided to remove Dundas’ name from Yonge-Dundas Square. Former mayor John Tory said that because Dundas had “virtually no connection to Toronto,” and because of the city’s “strong commitment to equity, inclusion and reconciliation,” removing the name was a “unique and symbolically important change.”
However, although Henry Dundas is little known today, he was a major figure in both Canadian and British history.
He was a Scottish politician and one of British Prime Minister William Pitt’s most trusted and powerful ministers during the momentous events of the French Revolution and the wars between Britain and Napoleonic France. Dundas was also a staunch abolitionist, committed to ending slavery as an institution in the British Empire and elsewhere in the world.
Dundas exercised an outsized influence on the colonies that would become Canada. He was a close friend of John Graves Simcoe (another staunch abolitionist), and he appointed Simcoe as the first lieutenant governor of the Upper Canada in 1791. It was Simcoe who, two years later, would introduce the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada, the very first legislation in the entire British Empire to restrict the slave trade.
The legislation meant that Canada was now a safe haven for slaves fleeing the United States. As a result, upwards of 40,000 Black men and women were able to escape slavery and find freedom in Upper Canada through what is now known as the Underground Railroad.
Last but not least is Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister, educator and the prime mover behind the creation of what become Ontario’s public school system.
In 2022, Ryerson University was renamed Toronto Metropolitan University. Rather than remember Ryerson as the founder of Ontario’s system of public schools and libraries, Ryerson was cancelled for merely suggesting a possible curriculum for residential schools in 1847.
There is little to excite attention in what he wrote. He recommended a mix of academic, religious and trade skills in the curriculum, and he was writing nearly 50 years before Indigenous education became widely available. If not for the fact that the residential schools have become the third rail of Canadian politics, his letter would be of little import today.
It was perhaps too much to expect, but the TDSB missed a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate its mission statement in action, not just for the benefit of Toronto students, but for all Canadians.
National Post
Greg Piasetzki is a Toronto-based intellectual property lawyer with an interest in Canadian history.