Trying to Erase John A. Macdonald from History
 

Congrats SHWs you just turned me against most of your causes. To the hapless Ontario Elementary Teachers Federation, you just reinforced every negative perception of teachers as airheaded bandwagoneers. To Idle No More etc you're in severe danger of fuelling the rise of Trumplike figures in Canada.

This is a perception?:uhh:

Everyone has baggage, even God.

Yeah, this can't end well. When you're a marginalized group, you can't fight all your battles in one day. When I point this out to SJW types, they say I'm saying this from some position of "privilege" and to butt out, but I'm really trying to be helpful in what I think is a pragmatic approach.

When you're a minority and you're at the very bottom, stick to the battles where the division between "right" (i.e. you) and "wrong" (i.e. the rest of us) is crystal clear. Choose fights where the ~1/3 of the people in the more powerful majority who are sympathetic to your cause can explain to their less sympathetic friends and family in a sound bite, or less, without having to explain your painful history in a convoluted way and resort to complexity. That way your support snowballs and it becomes easier to fight the next, slightly more complicated, fight.

It's not fair and it takes a lot of time, but that's how social change actually happens.

True, these folks are wasting quite a bit of good will that has been built up over the years. Like the U of Calgary prof on the National said last night, "We all need a time out over this issue."

They're discussing the statue of Gaspar Corte-Real outside Confederation Building here (a gift from the people of Portugal in celebrating centuries of friendship between our two people). I've been most impressed with Conne River's indigenous leadership who said if it should come down, or have a plaque with more information added, or whatever else - so be it. But these things are a distraction from real issues facing indigenous people, from housing to clean water. Taking down a statue is an easy win for government, without actually having to do anything to address real issues.

I think I agree with that outlook.

I'm not buying into the "destroying history" argument. It's a statue, who really gives a fuck either way? It's not like it's a historic building or cultural ceremony.

As for John A. MacDonald, the only thing I know of here with that name is the main drag through Little Canada neighbourhood in the East End, a demonstration one built after Confederation. That's easy enough to change if we decide to erase him.

All the schools and things in that area are named "MacDonald Drive Elementary", "MacDonald Drive Junior High", etc - referencing the street, not the man. So one step removed lol.

I agree they are going about this the wrong way. The end result is that much of the soft middle ends up sympathizing with the "nasties" more than with you, because they view you as unreasonable and even extremist (ironically).

Of course, the current frame of mind in the progressive left (home of SJWs) is that if the soft middle is so "easily" tempted by the nasties, then they aren't worth the trouble and were never going to be any use to begin with. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Fuck 'em.

The problem with this approach is what happens when there is massive shift from the soft middle to the (alt-)right. They may be deplorables or undesirables or subhuman, and your attitude may be "fuck 'em". But there is still a whole bunch of them. You still gotta deal with them.

Sometimes they even take control of the ship. What happens then? Can you still afford to be so flippantly indifferent?

As a member of the above-mentioned progressive left, I've come to the realization that ours is a lost cause. At least for the foreseeable future.

Things will rebuild and bounce back eventually, but it's gonna take a while. I see a fairly long drought ahead.

This may open up a whole nother can of a while nother different species of worms...

Here are Canada’s other politically incorrect place names

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/...ct-place-names

Wow. And what about our precious Lord Durham ? Or Amherst ? He was about the worst of them all, especially towards the First Nations.
Or our beloved national hero, James Wolfe, who still has some counties and many streets named after him, and who simply ordered to burn every village and every farm between Québec and Rimouski, executed women and children, starved the population to death during two entire years by burning all the crops and fields and forced the remaining ones to live in the woods ? I suggest the authors of the article to read Wolfe's journal, as well as Goreham's and Monkton's (the mercenaires who executed the dirty work).

Speaking of Moncton... This is probably the most incorrect place name that exists in Canada. For the name it commemorates AND its location.

P.S. As for Wolfe, I do prefer that his name stays so we remember.

Does anyone remember Lord Durham in relation to the First Nations? It doesn't really seem to be his place in Canadian history.

You really think so? Being a Progressive conservative, I belong to the mushy middle and it seems to me that the nutbars on the CTRL-left have completely hijacked the agenda, and that the SJW are pressing their current advantage (fed by anti-Trump hysteria) to the lunatic fringe.

Sir John A is the father of our country for cripes sake. He should be viewed with appropriate respect. We should acknowledge his warts (alcoholism etc), but appreciate him for what he was - a flawed man who accomplished great things. Against great odds he built Canada and bound it together with a massive railway project completed less than 20 years after confederation. Not many prime ministers have accomplished what he has done. By any measure he is one of our three greatest PM's.

As for the residential schools, he was just a man of his times. The thinking back then was that the best way to build the country was to assimilate the native people. Obviously this was not the best approach, but hindsight is always 20/20. People motives always have to be viewed in historical context and people thought differently 20 years ago, let alone 150 years ago.

The SJW's can go fuck themselves. I am fed up to here with them. They have gone way too far. The radical CTRL-Left is accomplishing nothing more than driving people like me (people who can see both sides of an issue) in the opposite direction. Is this really what they want? The SJW's should be building bridges to the people in the mushy middle, not lobbing hand grenades at us from the moral high ground. Of course, I forget that the SJW's have already decided that I'm an enemy because I don't agree with them a good portion of the time. Instead of trying to convincing me with reasoned arguments, it's far simpler to just label me as a misogynist and a racist and then discredit me. This is an excellent way to create enemies.

I despise Trump, but the SJW's are no better...........

What about Canada's Father of Healthcare Tommy Douglas? Let these fascist idiots find out a little about his background and they'll want to tear down his statue too.

Boy do things change fast sometimes.

It was only in 2012 that the federal government changed the name of the Ottawa River Parkway (that runs from just west of Parliament to the west end of the capital) to the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway.

They also changed the name of the river parkway that runs to the east end of the city from the Rockcliffe Parkway to the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway. (Not sure about any hidden skeletons in his case. I am sure there are some...)

You're right! The comment was destined to Jeffrey Amherst ;)

I don't understand the rapport between your first question (you really think so?) and the rest of your post, which is along the same lines as the points I made.

It's all starting to remind me a bit of Mao-era China... instead of Red Guards we have university sociology departments whipping up hysteria, and now we have people wanting to banish Sir John A. MacDonald the same way that the Maoists turned on Lin Biao and the Gang of Four and ended up purging them.

It's our own kinder, gentler Canadian-style cultural revolution!

Yes, Durham is actually reviled by francophones for saying they should be assimilated into good little anglophone British subjects. I am happy that his plan did not succeed, but looking back he was probably right that that would have been the best thing for the remaining British colonies of North America.

Durham still has lots of stuff named for him. As does Amherst.

Good analogy!

You should watch Ben Shapiro videos, he tells people how to fight this. He says when accused of being a racist, people (who are innocent) go into defensive mode thinking you can reason with these people. You can't.

He says you immediately call them an ahole and say only an ahole would accuse somebody they don't know of something so horrible as racism, without evidence. You have to go for mutually assured destruction because they are unable to have a rational discourse on these issues.

Maybe there was some irony in your post that I missed. If so, I apologize.