You cannot get more American than George Washington, the President who adorns the One Dollar bill emblazoned with “In God We Trust.” Yet in 1992 he came under attack when the parents and staff at a New Orleans school succeeded in replacing his name with that of Dr. Charles Drew, a noted black physician. The decision stemmed from a controversial Board policy calling for the renaming of all schools named after former slave owners or others who did not respect “equal opportunity for all.” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/july-dec97/schools_11-25.html
The renaming schools controversy spread quickly to other cities and towns. Across the United States there were then 450 schools named for George Washington, including George Washington University in D.C. Hundreds of other schools were identified because they were named after American presidents who owned slaves, such as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Mason.
Renaming schools to defrock former historical notables opens up a ‘Pandora’s Box’ and has sparked controversies in many school districts. Social justice advocates and special interest groups are usually the instigators and the “sanitizers” all claim to be “correcting past wrongs.” Charges of racism, genocide, and inhuman cruelty are heaped upon the dead and are too often simply accepted without much scrutiny. Few citizens dare to object, fearing vilification at the hands of the liberal media or retaliation from what remains of the politically correct (PC) vigilantes.
The infamous American school renaming controversy came to a head in a memorable PBS Newshour Special, November 25, 1997, focusing on “Re-assessing Civic Symbols.” It all died down when leading American historians entered the fray and cooler heads finally prevailed.
On PBS Newshour, Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke out strongly against the move to eradicate Washington’s name because it threatened to arouse once buried “tribalism” and failed to recognize that “history is a combination of forces.” Author Haynes Johnson declared that “to equate George Washington to Adolf Hitler is absurd…it’s political correctness run wild.” Even Cornel West, author of Restoring Hope, was uncomfortable with actions than might “demonize Washington” and warned against engaging in “a fetish of symbols.”
Since the late 1990s, school renaming controversies have erupted periodically in the United States more than in Canada. The meteoric rise of Barak Obama in 2008-09 prompted a spate of U.S. schools to appropriate his name. Student Noah Horowitz created a furor in Houston, Texas, in August and September 2009, when he when he lead a spirited campaign to remove the names of six Confederate leaders from HISD schools. http://wn.com/Noah_Horwitz A valiant attempt in January 2011 to rename Rochester High School after U.S. Army 1st Lt. Adam Malson, an Iraq War hero, was blocked because it violated school district policy.
The old controversy is back in the education news. Removing the name of Halifax’s founder, Edward Cornwallis, from the masthead of a South End junior high school is perhaps the most recent and blatant example. http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1249921.html The case against Cornwallis hangs on the fact that he issued a 1749 proclamation putting a bounty on the scalps of Mi’kmaq men, women, and children.
On that basis, the appointed Mi’kmaq Trustee, Kirk Arsenault, succeeded in convincing the elected Halifax School Board to remove Cornwallis’ name. No one spoke against the move and a jubilant Arsenault now claims that “anything that’s named after Edward Cornwallis needs to be changed.”
The HRSB’s unanimous decision has not only opened the door to renaming other public monuments and streets, but implicitly endorsed Mi’kmaq author Daniel N. Paul’s 25-year crusade to vilify Cornwallis and the so-called “European ruling classes” for “their efforts to destroy the Amerindians.” http://www.danielnpaul.com/WeWereNotTheSavages-Mi%27kmaqHistory.html
Renaming the school is not a trifling matter. Cornwallis was the British military officer credited with founding Halifax in 1749 with some 2,576 white settlers. He commanded the British forces in the midst of a period of frontier warfare where the British, French and Mi’kmaq repeatedly killed combatants, including women, children and babies. A downtown street, local park, and famous statue also bear his name.
Cornwallis did proclaim a bounty on the scalps of Mi’kmaq men, women, and children. What is problematic, however, is whether such an action, undertaken in a state of brutal frontier warfare, was that unusual and, indeed, whether 18th century military commanders should be judged by modern standards.
Much of the Mi’kmaq claim is presented in Paul’s 1993 book We Were Not the Savages. Paul’s book contends that the British and specifically Cornwallis were guilty of waging “genocide” and then compares Cornwallis’s actions with Adolf Hitler’s “ extermination of most of Europe’s Jews.”
Such charges certainly arouse the passions and draw much-needed attention to the larger historical context. Settling and defending Halifax was part of a European 18th century “conquest” of the Americas, but Cornwallis’s actions were not appreciably different those of other governors who offered “scalp bounties” and committed atrocities in times of colonial frontier warfare.
Paul’s analysis of Cornwallis is incredibly one-sided and enjoys little support among North American historians. Halifax’s founder has been lauded for his choice of the Citadel Hill site, organizing the first government, and setting up a courts system modelled after Virginia. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=35941 Such achievements mean little to Arsenault, Paul and the sanitizers.
The Mi’kmaq claim is not supported in John E. Grenier’s 2008 book The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. In it, Cornwallis is depicted as a British colonial official who used “brutal but effective measures” to “ wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who were no less ruthless.”
Basing public policy on re-writing history can only lead to further social injustices. The distinguished Canadian historian J. L. Granatstein put it best: “You can’t apply today’s standards to people in the past. That just gets silly.” http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n7231269
What motivates the sanitizers in their campaigns to change school names? Why are parents and the public so inclined to accept the “demonization” of historical figures at face value? If we continue to judge past military or civic figures by present-day standards, where will it end?
Why not consider Washington a revolutionary hero who fought imperialism, colonialism, and overthrew an insane king who hoped to continue a reactionary feudal remnant and stiffle the emergence of democracy?
No matter its shortcomings, America is the first modern democracy and was a light to the world especially at its beginning and in its time.
Slave owners? Yes they were but the important thing to learn about history is that people and countries are complex.
What motivates the sanitizers? To redress wrongs committed in the historical past. Or is it? I sometimes wonder in today’s society, if it is a reaction where cultures over time have been systematically removed from the history books, and in other places, to be downgraded or eliminated as only playing minor or insignificant roles in the making of Canada. I too get peeved reading a school history book, turning the first settlers into a bunch of pansies, who was all eager to follow the dictates of the British crown, because their survival depended on it. Or portraying the first settlers as good citizens who followed the dictates of the British crown, without much complaint. I would beg to argue differently, that if it was not for the first settlers, the British soldiers would not have survived, but that is a different story for another time. And yes, I can think of a few historical figures, that should have their bios redone, along with a few memorials and scholarships to put the history right.
Daniel Paul stated here, “Paul argues that the legacy of the army officer and colonial administrator is stained by a bounty he placed on native people in 1749 as a way to punish them for not paying homage to the King. Cornwallis, who spearheaded colonization of the area for the British in the mid-1700s, decreed that each scalp would fetch 10 pounds.”
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n7231269
Information that is not general known to the wider public, since much of it did not make it into the schools’ history textbooks. But in a court case, the Marshall case, the court had to wade through the history to rendered a decision. http://www.indigenousbar.ca/cases/marshall1.html
” Thus, judicial proceedings have become the forum for presentation of some of the best new research into First Nations-European relations in the Atlantic region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Bell 1998, 23; Wicken 2002, 1-13, 19-21).” http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/1112136-1.html
From Chapter 11 from Paul’s book, “But after 1713 the pressure on the Mi’kmaq population began to escalate as the English single-mindedly pursued their long-term goal of subjugation and extinction. They used every means available from military might to poisoned food and germ warfare.”
http://www.danielnpaul.com/chptr11.html
Rather one-sided, but it was to point out the historically wrongs committed against the native people. But the British, including the Americans were known to commit the same offenses to the French, as well as other peoples the crown or the government of the day did not like.
Would it not be better to addressed the wrongs to correct the literature in whatever context it is, and insert the omissions back into the history of Canada, to promote understanding of all peoples? Changing a school’s name, will not change the historical facts, nor will it change people’s attitudes when we have been conditioned through the public education history, social studies to pay attention to those facts addressed in the books. Daniel Paul, does his peoples an injustice when he sees himself through the lens of a victim of the British Crown. The British and the French crowns are guilty of committing wrongs against all people, and not just the natives, and would it not be a lost to our history, the men and women who carried out the edicts of the Crown, if we removed their names from our buildings and monuments and parks? Yes, in the same way it is a great lost when our historical literature omits the contributions of other peoples, and presents the peoples in unflattering lights, that speaks more of bias, but more importantly the dumbing down of our history, and all its warts.
Isn’t there room for all?
You are fast off the mark, again, Doug. It’s comforting top know that you support my contention that eradicating George Washington’s name from schools was the height of folly. Since you make no comment about the recent assault on Edward Cornwallis’ legacy, I’m left wondering if you are as willing to forgive the 18th century British rulers here in British North America.
Today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald has a full spread on the Renaming Schools Debate, including my latest commentary:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1250887.html
Removing Edward Cornwallis’s name from a school in the city he founded surely classifies as being worthy of an intense debate.
Defenders of the decision are coming our of the woodwork. Tim Bosquet, Editor of The Coast, surfaced with a predictable diatribe repeating much of Daniel N. Paul’s indictment:
http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archives/2011/2011/06/26/cornwallis…
Now a Grade 10 teacher of Mi’kmaq Studies, Ben Sichel, has attempted to outline the case. He’s a Daniel Paul disciple, so he sticks to the HRSB’s talking points:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/1250924.html
Only 60% of Grade 10s in Nova Scotia study pan-Canadian History, the rest are offered Mi’kmaq Studies and the like, essentially social studies courses dealing with social justice issues. There’s a bigger issue here…
It may be too late to rescind the ill-advised Halifax board decision to “kill” the Cornwallis name. Perhaps the school council will come to the rescue by suggesting a new face-saving alternative. “Founder’s Junior High School” sounds right to me.
The Halifax Chronicle Herald spread on the Renaming Schools Controversy has generated quite a response.
Adrian Potter, President of the Clements Historical Society in Bear River, NS, expresses a different perspective:
“We in the Annapolis Valley have also been fighting against this type
of political correctness for some years now. It seems that many
historians, especially those at University History Departments and
their students, are unable to enter objectively into the historical
periods which they are researching. They have been particularly
attacking the Loyalists in recent years and now the New England
Planters whose 250th anniversary of arrival we celebrated last year.
At a recent meeting of the Annapolis Royal Hist. Soc. Professor Henry
Roper (retired) of King’s College chastised historians for this grave
shortcoming.
Our Clements Historical Society last autumn published a 2011 school
antique photograph calendar and are planning another for 2012. The
members of our society which covers the Township of Clements are for
the most part descendants of the Planters and Loyalists and are thus
preserving their own history.
Well, I do not envy you living in Halifax which has become a major
centre of interest groups and political correctness.”
“What motivates the sanitizers in their campaigns to change a school name?”
Easy answer Paul – political correctness. We wouldn’t want to scar children or bruise their character by historical truth when revisionist history might protect them.
“Why are parents and the public so inclined to accept the demonization of historical figures at face value?”
– because they may not know the truth from fiction themselves OR they’ve bought in to the political correctness.
“If we continue to judge past military and civic figures by present day standards, where will it end?”
With generations with a future dumbing down of history as it occurred NOT as some would wish it to be.
Erasing history isn’t just an issue in Nova Scotia schools. It’s happened in Ontario also.
I see that the many papers of educators in their ivory towers must be rejoicing their indoctrination is reaching the public in all its glory. As noted by this one, This is simply wrong. It’s wrong to subject Mi’kmaq children to this—honouring the murderer of their forebears is necessarily an emotional and, yes, oppressive act; it undermines their self-worth and expectations that they can fairly and fully lead successful lives in a society dominated by Europeans. But it’s also unfair to subject children of European extraction to attending/visiting a school named in honour of a mass murderer; white kids implicitly learning to celebrate the genocide of natives will not likely be agents of fairness and democratic values—and their own lives are lesser for it. ”
http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archives/2011/06/26/cornwallis-renaming-is-the-right-thing-to-do
These days, self-worth, self-esteem, all bundle into lessons of what is an ideal democratic society, compliments of those who are in charge of the public education system. It is ironic that it is the public education system, leading the charge in addressing historical wrongs, when the education system has so much blood on their own hands. As late as the 1960s, children who did not fit in the norm, were called mental defects and shipped off somewhere else, to be out of sight and out of mind. Today, we have inclusive classrooms but children are still denied the tools to reached their full potential, in the same way as the natives were denied full participation in the beginnings of Canada. And both groups are still denied in today’s society to fully participate because of the many inequities caused by the lack of knowledge, biases and self-serving interests of those who are in charge. Instead, we get more indoctrination sanitizing the history of public education, and the historical players, the educators whose sins and good works are still being played out in today’s society.
Would not time be better spent on correcting the many laws, rules and regulations that prevents people from fully participating in today’s society, instead of changing names on buildings? I can think of quite a few within the public education system, as well as other parts of society……..but than again the very same people leading the charge are only willing to change names on buildings, because anything else would not serve their own best interests.
As noted by Paul in the last post, ” We in the Annapolis Valley have also been fighting against this type of political correctness for some years now. It seems that many historians, especially those at University History Departments and their students, are unable to enter objectively into the historical periods which they are researching. They have been particularly attacking the Loyalists in recent years and now the New England Planters whose 250th anniversary of arrival we celebrated last year.” This happens when history is treated, sanitized and presented to the public.The inequities abound, where groups of peoples are now seen through the lens of indoctrination and political correctness.
Best selling author Stephen Kimber was one of the first to question the Halifax School Board’s public vilification of Edward Cornwallis. In Metro News Halifax, he compared the HRSB’s action with that of recent efforts to besmirch Cesar Chavez and his legacy. http://www.stephenkimber.com
Here’s an excerpt worth noting:
“Cesar Chavez—like Edward Cornwallis—isn’t “unblemished.”
That appears to have become the Halifax school board’s new litmus test for having a school named after you.
But no hero—no human hero—can pass that test. Not Chavez. Not Cornwallis. But also not Martin Luther King, John A. MacDonald, Nelly McClung, even “Canada’s Greatest Hero,” Tommy Douglas…
Edward Cornwallis helped establish Halifax, a noteworthy accomplishment to those of us who now call it home. But during the English-French-Mi’kmaq struggle to control the territory, Cornwallis offered a bounty for any captured or killed Mi’kmaq, “or his scalp as is the custom of America.”
The notion rightly shocks our contemporary sensibilities, but Cornwallis wasn’t alone. Nor were the English. It was a nasty time.
We should be able to honour Cornwallis for his accomplishments while acknowledging not everything he did was honour-worthy.
Which is true of most of us.”
(Excerpted from http://www.stephenkimber.com )
Kimber’s got it right IMO. Good, bad, or indifferent historical fact can’t be changed or adjusted to suit the tender egos of the politically correct perspective.
Another angle to all of this of course is that it was once considered a great achievement to have a school named after a historical figure – maybe not any more.
Things could be worse – I am sure that some would complain about this person having a street named after them.
“Saskatoon street could be named after Shannon Tweed ”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2011/06/28/sk-tweed-street-1106.html
The renaming of schools in the TDSB happens quite a bit. If you search
“renaming of TDSB schools” Paul you’ll get an idea of the changes. Here’s the TDSB policy on renaming schools.
Doug’s post offers more insight in his “dead old white men” comment that should raise eyebrows as to the trust and direction of name changes if you buy it that is:-)
Click to access namingpolicy.pdf
As noted in the Stephen Kimber article, “During the sixties, Chavez—an iconic, Ghandi-following, Mexican-American union leader—organized 50,000 grape pickers and lettuce harvesters to challenge California’s all-powerful farm owners.
“Si, se puede”—Yes it’s possible—became his rallying cry. Inspired by Chavez, white liberals—me too—boycotted grapes for five long years until the farm workers finally won a contract. I can still recall the sweetly satisfying taste of my first post-boycott grape.
Chavez, who died in 1993, is rightly revered. His birthday is a holiday in California and seven other states. Colleges, schools, parks, streets, even a bowling alley are named in his honour.”
Not much have change for the lot of the migrant worker, regarding the laws and regulations. One of the many papers and articles……Temporary worker programs: North America’s second class citizens
Click to access Goldring.pdf
We can honour people of the past, by working towards improvements for the future, to right the wrongs and/or carry on the works of many.
There has been an undercurrent in Toronto that too many older schools are named after old dead white males with dubious past histories based on modern views of imperialism and colonialism but the naming of new schools as Dr Norman Bethune Steven Lewis etc takes the edge off the past.
This “grumbling” has never become a serious movement. Probably the worst remaming was the changing of Argentina PS to Garden Ave PS during the Falklands-Malvinas war. A bit sad because it was based on an international exchange and patnership.
Renaming Cornwallis Junior High School has lit up the Letters to the Editor section of The Halifax Chronicle Herald ( July 2, 2011)
So far, the published letters are running 5 to 1 against removing Cornwallis’ name and re-writing history. Only one letter ( from a Nova Scotian outside of Halifax) backs the Halifax School Board’s decision and that letter offered nothing new whatsover in terms of evidence.
Here are the published letters. You be the judge:
Where will it end?
It was great amusement that I read your editorial (“Burying the past,” June 25) concerning Edward Cornwallis and June 29 commentaries of Ben Sichel (“This is about facing, not defacing history”) and Paul Bennett (“How solid is the case against Cornwallis?”).
Your references to Amherst and Lawrence were pointed. Perhaps the issue isn’t who Cornwallis is, or what he did, but the constituency offended and their choice to vocalize their objections. (I wonder why it took more than 260 years for this to arise.)
I hear no dissenting words concerning Richard John Uniacke, who was a war profiteer. And Glooscap (to use the common spelling), who was prone to considerable violence himself. Where will it end?
Gordon A. Boyce, Dartmouth
Comparison no help
In his piece, “How solid is the case against Cornwallis?,” Paul Bennett blithely compares Edward Cornwallis to U.S. President Andrew Jackson in that they both offered “scalp bounties and committed atrocities in time of colonial frontier warfare.”
Andrew Jackson did a lot more that that. He was the driving force behind the exile and often death of almost all the native peoples of the southeastern United States. The five so-called civilized tribes (because of their advanced civilization), the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole were systematically cheated, lied to, persecuted and often killed so that their valuable land could be taken by greedy white settlers.
Much of the expropriated land was used by slave-owning white plantation owners. During the Seminole wars, runaway slaves often fought alongside the Seminole against the whites, but, of course, to no avail.
So if Cornwallis is in that same general category, as Bennett seems to imply he is, then I have no problem in saying good riddance to Edward Cornwallis and all that he stands for.
Mike Boyle, Halifax
Learn from history
I understand and sympathize with the motives behind the decision to rename Cornwallis Junior High School, and I am certainly not defending Edward Cornwallis’s actions, but where does this end?
How many other historical figures have committed what might today be considered racist crimes, with or without government authorisation? Quite apart from other mementoes of Cornwallis scattered about HRM and the province, who else is in line to be expunged from our geography?
We have, for example, communities in Nova Scotia named for Governor Charles Lawrence, who ordered the deportation the Acadians in the name of expediency, with the general approval of much of the English-speaking population.
And how many unspeakable acts of racism occurred in British colonies in the name of Queen Victoria? She and her representatives are commemorated worldwide in names of streets, cities, bridges, train stations, hospitals, colleges and institutions of all kinds.
The evil that men do certainly lives after them, and we can’t change their legacy by eliminating their names.
Rather than committing historical figures to oblivion, we can teach our children to think objectively about them, to judge their actions, and to make sure that the darker episodes of our past are never repeated.
Joan Dawson, Halifax
Not rewriting history
I strongly support and commend the Halifax regional school board’s decision to rename Cornwallis School.
Renaming the school is not an attempt to rewrite history. On the contrary, it focuses on a new (and I think more responsible) reporting of history. History is what it is. Cornwallis is a real part of Canadian history. That won’t change.
Naming or renaming a school is not a significant historical event and should not be interpreted as an attempt to rewrite the past. A 21st century public school should be an inclusive institution welcoming to all people. The name symbolizes the school and, particularly in the minds of its students, is “the school.”
The fact that their school was once named Cornwallis but now has a new name becomes a meaningful issue that students in the school should discuss and understand in the context of their history.
David Rasmussen,
Bay St. Lawrence
Slippery slope
Political correctness is not a slippery slope, but a leap off a ski hill. Where shall we land if we forget that normality then is enormity now?
“Butcher” Cumberland and his Campbell troops massacred my highland ancestors in 1746 and succeeding years. Jeffrey Amherst burned out the Cherokee in 1761. Any prominent American in the first hundred years of the Republic would have owned slaves. Sailors were flogged to death in Nelson’s navy, and yes, I had family at sea in 1805. Dreadful things happened under the aegis of Queen Victoria: the Irish Famine, the Highland Clearances, empire building in India and Africa.
Righto, then: let’s go through the maps and expunge all the villains, from Amherst and Cornwallis, via Franklin and Nelson, to Victoria and Washington. What a lot of Blank Streets and Nowhere Cities we shall have!
Jean Cameron, Halifax
History under attack
I am writing to you with great concern for our future, via our past. The recent decision by the Halifax Regional School Board to rename Cornwallis Junior High does not sit well with me. We certainly cannot condone the bounty placed on First Nations people by the governor with a modern mindset. That, however, is the problem.
Too many people approach the issue with a 21st century mindset, when in reality we should be looking at this with an 18th century mindset.
Certainly, I can skip the “history lesson,” as we are all aware (or are we?). I would, however, ask that you look at this issue, and reasons for such a bounty. In September, 1749, our city was attacked by Mi’kmaq warriors (more than likely encouraged by French allies).
The bounty was in response to this attack. When one considers the options available to the governor, during a period of conflict and war, it was a (then) reasonable response and would have most certainly been requested of him by the citizens and his superiors.
I feel our history is under attack, by those who wish to either sanitize, rewrite or completely erase it. The renaming of the school is only the beginning. Next, Cornwallis Street and Park will be targets. Then, as a self-aggrandizing, coup de grace, the statue will come down.
I would hope that citizens will not allow this to happen by turning our backs on our city’s founding father.
J.A. (Jim) Murray, Dartmouth
Leave history alone
Changing the name of a school cannot change history. It’s a fact that Edward Cornwallis imposed a bounty on the Mi’kmaq. It’s also true, but not spoken of it seems, that the Mi’kmaq were a very hostile tribe, in the pay of the French, and they, too, were paid bounty for English scalps.
In 1749 and for several years afterwards, the settlers of Halifax had to live within the stockade that was built around the community to keep out the Mi’kmaq, and any citizen venturing beyond that stockade wall ran a very serious risk of being caught and put to death by the Mi’kmaq, who were paid by the French for their scalps. Is it any wonder then that Edward Cornwallis gave orders for bounties on the Mi’kmaq? He had to defend against them, and at that time, this was his way.
Neither Cornwallis nor the Mi’kmaq should have done these things, but they did. It’s also a fact that Cornwallis founded Halifax, and I see no reason to expunge either his name, or that of the Mi’kmaq, from the pages of our history.
What’s next? Dismantling the statue of Joseph Howe because he opposed Confederation, or changing the name of Tallahassee school, because of support for the U.S. Confederacy? Leave history alone, I say.
Ivan Morrison, Dartmouth
Ridiculous vendetta
With due respect to Kirk Arsenault, Daniel Paul and the present day Mi’kmaq Nation, I find the slandering of Col. Edward Cornwallis, Governor of Nova Scotia from 1749 to 1752, to be both unfortunate and unfair.
It seems to me that to judge an historical figure of 1749 (262 years ago) by today’s moral and legal standards is small-minded and touching on the obsessive; he’s been dead for 235 years.
I also find it disingenuous that only half of the story has been told. The infamous Bounty Proclamation of Oct 2, 1749 resulted from an incident on Sept. 30, 1749. The incident was a raid conducted by approximately 40 Mi’kmaq warriors on a six-man tree cutting party in Dartmouth. Four men were killed, one captured and one escaped.
The bounty amount was set at the same rate that the Mi’kmaq received from the French for British scalps. This was frontier fighting at its worst and there’s enough blame to go around on both sides.
The second raid on Dartmouth was in September, 1750, the third a month later, the fourth in March, 1751 and the last, the Dartmouth Massacre, in May that year, when 20 settlers, men, women, children and babies, were butchered and mutilated. In total, 49 settlers were murdered during the raids — and yet, this information, vital to the story, was missing from the article.
Now why was that, I wonder? Col. Cornwallis was a man of his time and culture, as were the Mi’kmaq warriors men of their time and culture and this vendetta (23 years running) against a man long dead is as distasteful as it is ridiculous.
And shame on the HRSB for its gutless response.
Roger Gumbrill, Dartmouth”
I couldn’t help noticing Paul that the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge while in PEI this afternoon watching water rescue demonstrations that they were aboard a Canadian ship named after Cornwallis.
I’m sure the folks looking to keep history in tact may be able to use that piece of trivia to help their case – after all if Canada saw fit to name a frigate after Cornwallis than the name of the school should stand as is.
Retroactively changing historical names causes a great deal of turmoil. Where I am from in Grey Co. even changing the name “N Word Creek” had opposition. Better to just be more inclusive in the future.
Toronto has a major exhibit sculpture of the Chinese Railway Workers for example.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/07/05/school-drops-halifax-founder%E2%80%99s-name-over-mi%E2%80%99kmaq-complaints/
Looks like political correctness wins out over Canadian history.
And we wonder why Canadians don’t respect our history…….this is a clear indication of why.
Yes, Catherine, The National Post has weighed in and might well have been sneaking a quick peak at Educhatter’s Blog. We are, as readers know, usually out front on most education matters!
Today’s Joe O’Connor story (The National Post, July 5, 2011) deserves to be reprinted in full:
“Lieutenant-General Edward Cornwallis did not want the job.
He dreamed of doing greater things for Glory and Empire than sailing off to Nova Scotia, a colonial backwater, to establish Halifax and wage war against the French and the Mi’kmaq.
But Cornwallis was, above all, a soldier and in 1749 he dutifully planted a British flag on Maritime soil and added his name to the history books as Halifax’s founding father.
Today, the Cornwallis name is ubiquitous in the Nova Scotia capital. There is a Cornwallis statue, Cornwallis House, Cornwallis Place, Cornwallis Street and, yes, Cornwallis Financial. And, until a decision by the Halifax Regional School Board a little more than a week ago, there was Cornwallis Junior High.
Board members voted on June 23 to strip the school of the name after Kirk Arsenault — a Mi’kmaq appointee — tabled a motion championed by natives and concerned citizens alike, who have long argued that the dutiful soldier was bent on a genocidal campaign to eradicate the indigenous peoples of Nova Scotia.
“This has been a sore spot in the Mi’kmaq community for many years — the name Cornwallis being on anything — period,” Mr. Arsenault says.
But critics paint the decision as something else: Political correctness run amok, a dangerous precedent and an attempt to paper over history by applying 21st-century standards to the past while playing fast and loose with historical truth.
“It is complicated,” says professor John Grenier, whose book, The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760, details the Cornwallis period.
“But the PC crowd, if you will, prefers to remain ignorant of the historical record,” Mr. Grenier said.
What the record says, partly, and what rankles the Mi’kmaq most, is Cornwallis’ so-called Scalp Proclamation. Issued on Oct. 1, 1749, the decree put a 10-guinea bounty on the head of every Mi’kmaq man, woman and child in the province.
“His Majesty’s Council do hereby authorize and command all Officers Civil and Military, and all His Majesty’s Subjects or others to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found,” the proclamation read. “[And] promise a reward of ten Guineas for every Indian Micmac taken or killed, to be paid upon producing such Savage taken or his scalp.”
For Mr. Arsenault, the decision to expel Cornwallis from Cornwallis Junior High seems obvious.
“This man was trying to wipe out a race of people,” he says.
Technically, he is right. Contextually, he is telling half the story. There were three major players in 18th-century Nova Scotia: the French, the Mi’kmaq and the British.
Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, a Jesuit missionary, was the de-facto French leader. To motivate the Mi’kmaq warriors to fight the hated British, he placed a bounty on English scalps. It was standard practice among the French on the frontier and the priest’s call for blood pre-dated Cornwallis’ sweeping proclamation.
The Mi’kmaq, meanwhile, were far from trembling innocents. They were proud warriors ensnared in a larger geo-political game of empire building, where treaties were signed and broken, scalps were taken and bounties offered on both sides.
In the weeks leading up to the British scalp decree, the Mi’kmaq seized 20 English hostages and killed five settlers just outside Dartmouth.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Prof. Grenier says. “But it is important to look at the context in which Cornwallis and the other Anglo-Americans made the decision to issue the scalp proclamation.
“The Mi’kmaqs certainly were not innocent, passive victims in that train of events.”
Almost 300 years later, the battle lines are drawn and the first volley has been fired in a simmering public war over what the past should mean in our present.
Darren Fisher is a Halifax city councillor. He acknowledges that Cornwallis committed some unsavory acts in His Majesty’s name.
“I don’t want to open up my own can of worms here,” the politician says. “But history is laced with people, famous people, that have done things that go against everything that we stand for as acceptable today.
“With the exception of Abe Lincoln, I don’t think there is a historical figure out there who wouldn’t have skeletons in the proverbial closet.
“The last thing you want to see is half of North America start being renamed.”
Or else: it is exactly what you want to see.
Mr. Fisher fears that Cornwallis Junior High is just the tip of a revisionist iceberg sailing into Halifax harbour three centuries after the city’s founder did.
“As far as we are concerned, anything with the Cornwallis name on it has to go,” Mr. Arsenault asserts.
Cornwallis Junior High, in name, is no more. Come September, the south-end school will have a new label affixed to its concrete façade, one chosen by its principal, students and parents in consultation with the community.” (Joe O’Connor, The National Post)
Comment:
Amen.
http://cornwallis-jh.ednet.ns.ca/sac.php
A really bad website for this school. If they’ve rec’d money to use to keep the school community informed I’d be asking for an accounting.
Last posted newsletter Feb. 2007. Same year for last info. on School Council.
Seriously folks – re-writing history is sad but if this website is what this school has to share I’m thinking that the parents and school community have more to do than mess with history and change it to their liking.
Des Morton on CBC this morning made the point that almost all important historical figure have a less attractive side, first female lawyer in Toronto anti-semite, Tommy Douglas and Nellie McClung flirted with eugenics. People are complex, ordinary people and historical figures.
Atlantic Frank Magazine’s Eddie Cornwallis has returned (July 5-19, 2011) with a fine piece of satire. ( Print Editiion, http://www.frankmagazine.ca)
The HRSB’s unelected Mi’kmaq Trustee, Daniel Paul, and Puffy’s Ghost are lampooned for their “demonizing” rants against Halifax’s founder.
Dead British guys aren’t as easy to kick-around anymore.
Heard about the latest face saving move? Mi’kmaq elder Daniel Paul continues in his crusade to rid Halifax of the name of the city’s founder and now suggests renaming it after a recently departed woman peace activist.
Eradicating Edward Cornwallis’s name from the South End school has now been exposed as political correctness gone wild. Naming a school after peace activist Muriel Duckworth is a good idea, but “killing” Cornwallis’s legacy in the process sets a bad precedent.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1252531.html
The Halifax School Board is full of surprises and renaming Cornwallis JHS raises bigger questions. Daniel Paul has been beating the drum for 25 years. Yet 2 out of 3 letters to The Herald oppose the Halifax School Board’s unanimous decision.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1252560.html
How much warning did the public have of the impending change? Was the School Advisory Council or the community even consulted? The school website is silent on such matters. After raising the issue with two Halifax trustees, I’m no wiser. Their silence speaks volumes about the Board’s modus operendi and tendency to stumble from one self-inflicted crisis into another.
I am sure if Muriel Duckworth was alive, she would have something to say that would have ruffled the feathers of Daniel Paul and his supporters. Along the lines of changing the here and now, and the future, rather than worrying about the past which no one can change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Duckworth
http://www.oxfam.ca/what-you-can-do/make-a-donation/jack-and-murial-duckworth-fund-for-active-global-citizenship
A name change, just does not cut it.
Thank you.
The Cornwallis Controversy made the CBC-TV National News on July 16, 2011 in a short segment narrated by Tom Murphy and entitled “History Lesson”.
The CBC-TV National News made a real effort to strike a balance and produced a capsule summary for a general audience. It’s a complicated issue and the 2-minute clip only scratches the surface.
It can be found on the CBC National broadcast (in the last 5 minutes) at:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2058308047
Readers of Educhatter will likely find the coverage to be a little facile, but —keep in mind — it’s a piece for the uninitiated!
Stay tuned for a full airing of the Cornwallis Controversy, beginning July 18, 2011, on http://www.activehistory.ca. It will feature an opening piece by me, followed by a reply from York University’s Tom Peace of Active History. That exchange does break some new ground.
Active History.ca posted my latest commentary ( July 18, 2011) entitled “Renaming Schools: What Does Sanitizing History Teach Students?” For a look at the column with links to the historical sources, see:
http://activehistory.ca/2011/07/renaming-schools-what-does-sanitizing-history-teach-students/
Tomorrow, Tom Peace will weigh in with a different perspective. You will want to read both pieces to get a fuller sense of the broader debate among historians.
Today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald, Dartmouth Community Edition, contains another article defending Edward Cornwallis and his legacy.
Writer Brenda MacDonald speaks out in a column entitled ” Why second-guess city fathers of old who honoured Cornwallis?”
“WAY BACK in 1987, I completed my military basic training at Canadian Forces Base Cornwallis.
At the time, I never gave the name of the place a second thought. I was much too preoccupied, too busy ironing and shining things, running, hurting and trying to stay awake to give a hoot. I left Cornwallis all those years ago without ever taking the time to learn anything about the base’s namesake.
Well, I certainly know who Cornwallis is now.
In the last few weeks, ever since the Halifax regional school board made the controversial decision to strip Cornwallis Junior High School of its name, I’ve heard quite a bit about the bloke.
I’ve heard that he was a British military officer who became governor of Nova Scotia, that he founded Halifax in 1749 and commanded British forces through an intense period of frontier warfare.
Most of what I’ve been hearing, however, has to do with the brutal way that he managed to accomplish some of the things he did, about how barbaric he was and how he placed a bounty on the heads of the then enemy, the local Mi’kmaq.
Barbaric? Brutal?
It was both, and completely unacceptable by today’s standards.
Way back then?
Still barbaric and brutal, no doubt, but also accepted and even, I would guess, from a military officer with an objective to obtain, somewhat expected. It was, way back then, the way things were done in war and battle.
It was life.
And now it is history.
It is not a nice bit of history or a history to be proud of but it is history.
I find it quite ironic that this issue, this whole “hide the ugliness of history” issue, arose just as Halifax Regional Municipality personnel are beginning to work towards shaping and establishing a new social heritage policy.
Earlier this month, the city held a number of public workshops in order to collect information and generate ideas on how residents would like to commemorate and protect our collective social heritage. There is an ongoing online survey (bit.ly/iwtq2v) on the issue, as well.
The city’s website states that social heritage “refers to the history and cultural identities of people in a particular region.”
On the survey, one of the questions suggests that, among other things, heritage places — buildings, landscapes and spaces — could be used to represent or symbolize that history and those identities. It implies that the use of statues and monuments is an acceptable way to ensure that certain persons and events will always be remembered.
Nowhere on the website, that I can find anyway, does it say that only good heritage and socially acceptable legacies should be represented, symbolized and remembered.
Consider me daft if you must but I don’t get it.
More than a quarter of a millennium ago, a man founded a city, our city. Since then, and this in itself is part of our social heritage and history, past residents of our city chose to erect statues of the man and chose to name parks, streets, schools and churches after him.
Who are we to second guess them?
Who are we, all comfortable and free, to play judge and jury to a man who lived 260 years ago?
And finally, who are we to tear down, disrespect and erase the legacies left by the people who came after him, the people who came before us who felt that, for whatever reason, be it good or bad, Cornwallis was worth remembering?”
— Brenda MacDonald, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.
(Reprinted from The Herald, Dartmouth Community Section, 18 July 2011)
On September 30th 1749, 40 Mi’kmaq (called Micmac at that time) warriors attacked six workers at a sawmill in Dartmouth Cove. One worker managed to escape, one was taken prisoner and the other four were murdered. Of those four, two were scalped and two were beheaded. Two days later, in response to this attack and others somewhat like it, Edward Cornwallis put a 10 pound bounty on the scalps of Mi’kmaq Indians. If Daniel Paul would face those simple facts he may have a better Idea of who actually were the savages.