The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) proved one thing with its recent decision to rename several schools: it needs to learn how to read.
They could start with learning how to read some historical works on the figures it wants to throw under the bus — Egerton Ryerson, John A. Macdonald and Henry Dundas. It also means reading the latest research on the downsides of the so-called “equity” approach it’s using to justify its actions.
But most of all, the TDSB should read the room.
Canada is facing an existential threat to its economic and political survival in North America. Donald Trump is defecating in our Corn Flakes almost daily — with his 51st state taunts and his threatened tariffs. Connor McDavid finally gave us something to be at least somewhat optimistic about and united on with his overtime goal — and this is how the TDSB responds?
Is now the time to be throwing our national historical symbols away? Is now the right moment to be continuing the war on Canadian history?
We’ve been here before, and it always looks like what the TDSB is trying to pull off: trumped-up charges against long-dead figures based on a biased reading of history and a hair-trigger sense of what constitutes “harm.” In this case, the TDSB doesn’t seem to have even bothered to consult historians.
Perhaps they could learn from the case of Toronto’s treatment of Henry Dundas.
Back in 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd murder outrage, a TMU PhD candidate and artist, Andrew Lochhead, decided that the best way to channel that outrage would be to change the name of a Toronto street. He obtained 13,955 signatures that he offered up to city council.
In what can best be described as a captured process, the city leapt at the opportunity to show it cared about racism. They set city officials to work on studying the problem. They came back a year later recommending full name change — full tilt.
Who had city council consulted on the issue? Not the full city. Not all residents. No, they thought it would be better to choose a racially-selected group of Black and Indigenous community advisory members to decide on the issue and choose a new name.
Initially, many in the city went along with it. No one really knew who Henry Dundas was — and if some people thought the name was offensive, then the generally nice Canadian thing to do is just to say, “well, okay, I guess.”
But then more details came out.
Mostly, they had to do with costs. It turned out that changing the name of an incredibly long street, and all the other city assets named after Dundas (a city square, subway stations, library), cost a lot of money. Changing the name of Dundas Street alone would have cost $8.6 million. This downsized the city’s ambition to just changing the name of Dundas Square.
There was, though, also the little problem of history being complicated.
The city’s committee chose a name from the Akan culture in what is now modern-day Ghana-Sankofa. It seemed like a good idea — named after a concept, not a person, recognizing West African culture in Toronto. But there was a problem.
Even though the city’s selection committee was co-chaired by a historian, Melanie Newton, the committee never discovered that the region where the new name came from had its own diabolical history of slave-owning and slave-trading. The Asante Empire owned and traded slaves including long after the British abolished slavery — certainly long after Dundas’ alleged “delay” — the fifteen years activists alleged that Dundas had delayed the abolition of the British Atlantic slave trade. The city was swapping out one name that activists claimed was marred by slave trade links for another.
But this time, the activists didn’t want you to notice it. In fact, when city council held hearings on the new Sankofa name, one city councillor for Parkdale-High Park, Gord Perks, used points of privilege, backed by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, to try to silence any critical discussion of Ghana as it may go against the city’s “commitment to confronting anti-black racism.”
Apparently, discussing African slavery carried out by Africans was “racist.” Handy that. Mentioning the dark side of European history was necessary and virtuous. Mentioning the dark side of African history was racist.
By this point, the tide of public opinion had changed. While polls initially showed general support for the renaming, city residents now, overwhelming, did not want this. A new petition garnered 30,000 signatures, twice the number as the original — this time, against the name change.
But it didn’t matter. City council went ahead and changed Dundas Square to Sankofa Square, anyway.
Will the TDSB do the same thing with these schools and ignore the popular will?
Each of the historical figures they are targeting — John A. Macdonald, Henry Dundas and Egerton Ryerson — has been the subject of intense public scrutiny over the last half decade. They are the central Canadian trifecta of activist anger.
The problem is that, with each figure, the historical case against them is based on half-truths, mistruths, and lies.
Some organizations have been pulling back from the activist-fuelled moral panic. The Canadian Encyclopedia which had gone full-woke recently backtracked slightly, updating its entry on Egerton Ryerson to be much more balanced. A recent book on John A. Macdonald has taken aim at many activist accusations against Macdonald and either showed them to be mistaken, or, offered a much more thoughtful and historical explanation. With Dundas, a slew of recent research has shown that the accusations against him are anything but clear-cut.
So will the TDSB realize that it’s not 2020 anymore, and we don’t need to act like we’re in the midst of a moral panic? There are other ways of doing reconciliation and being anti-racist which don’t involve tearing down Canada’s past. Will they realize that no one is harmed by a school name? Will they learn from the mistakes of Toronto’s City Council?
Will they — essentially — read the room?
National Post