Heritage in the Hat: Erasing history
By Medicine Hat News on September 2, 2017.
Calls for statues of historical figures to be removed have been increasing, including Confederate generals, Lord Cornwallis and most recently Sir John A. Macdonald. We should be cautious, for this amounts to erasing history, albeit not on the scale of the Taliban removing cliff size images of Buddha or ISIS demolishing historic Roman structures. In some cases, the location of the statues might be inappropriate, but statues were erected in their day by citizens who admired the individuals. We should first filter through contemporary eyes what was admired and consider that their misdeeds might not have been construed as such at the time. I seldom agree with President Trump’s point of view, but he makes the case that if we remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee because he was associated with a regime that condoned slavery, what do we do with a statue of George Washington, who owned slaves? Lord Cornwallis, an English general commemorated as the founder of Halifax, previously executed the “pacification” of western Scotland following the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, pursuing a policy of murder, rape and pillage against innocent Highlanders. The Nova Scotia descendants of displaced Scottish emigrants may be “nae sae fond o’ the man.” His policies in colonial Nova Scotia included putting bounties on Mi’kmaq men, women and children. Sir John A. Macdonald, a father of Confederation and our first prime minister, had a vision for Canada from sea to sea. Unfortunately, a subset of that vision was to assimilate Indigenous peoples and led to the residential schools tragedy. At the same time, his own clansmen back in Scotland were being evicted from their traditional lands and their language erased through “education.” In both cases, it was considered to be “for the best” at the time. In our own city, we have a statue of an anonymous First World War soldier. Despite great personal bravery, he was a victim of his own government that thought nothing of launching millions of men toward their deaths for the sake of an imperialist world view and agenda that included carving up Africa. Sorry, that war was not about preserving freedom. So rather than erase history by removing statues, maybe we should use these artifacts as the occasion to educate, to explain the good and the bad consequences of the individual’s life and to provide insight into the context of those times and how it differs from today. Consider how “quaint” our descendants may view current beliefs! Malcolm Sissons is the chair of the Heritage Resources Committee. 9-8
