Cancel Canada Day?

If we want to be proud of the good parts, we need to first acknowledge the bad. If we want to be proud of our values, we need to live up to them.

Joseph Valentin Dubois

Hi there. I’m Joseph, a Ricochet intern working with The Rover this summer. Chris is feeling tired this week (too many late-night snacks of cheese) so I’m filling in. I’m that dashing young long-haired fellow from the newsletter two weeks back.

Last Friday, Canada celebrated its national holiday — or rather, it didn’t. In the last several weeks, the country has been braced by the “discovery” of mass graves near former residential schools. This had caused many to call for the cancellation of this year’s July 1 celebrations, hence the trend of #CancelCanadaDay. 

On Thursday, many people wore orange rather than white and red. The orange shirt is associated with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (or Orange Shirt Day), which takes place on September 30, and comes from the story of a residential school survivor, Phyllis Jack Webstad, whose new orange shirt — a gift from her grandmother — was taken from her at a residential school.

I must admit, when the news came out about the discovered bodies, I was surprised at the public reaction. I never expected that so many people didn’t know about the deaths in residential schools. I thought that in the years since residential schools had been more publicly talked about, taught about in schools, and so on, that it had become common knowledge. 

It’s not as though the information about these deaths was not out there.

Claims about the Kamloops burial grounds surfaced in a local newspaper, Kamloops This Week, back in 2008. Indigenous communities had talked about the burials going back much further. 

In 1922, Canada’s chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs, Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, self-published a pamphlet titled The Story of a National Crime: Being an Appeal to Justice to the Indians of Canada. (This is not to be confused with A National Crime, a book by John S. Milloy, which discusses the same subject matter.) Bryce investigated the health conditions of residential schools for the government. 

Already back then, less than two decades since the  inception of the residential school system, Bryce reported that 24 per cent of students who had been in schools were “known to be dead.” In one school, on File Hills Reserve, it was 75 per cent. Seventy-five per cent. Dr. Bryce blamed the government for the neglect of these children and outlined specific actions that could be taken to improve conditions.

But the government didn’t do anything. Instead, his funding was cut, Bryce’s full report was never published, and he was pushed out of government.

Cindy Blackstock, an advocate for Indigenous children, has been trying to bring to light what Bryce did for years.

It seems there’s been some misinformation with regards to residential schools.

Students aren’t taught about the story of Dr. Bryce in school. I think they should be. It says a lot about what Canada was at the time. It means a lot to what Canada is today.

There is a lot of history we haven’t been taught about this country. We’ve heard of the stories of history teachers skipping over the “Indian” chapter because it “wasn’t interesting.” (Not to mention what was in those textbooks.) 

A lot has improved since then. In grade 8, I read Indian Horse, a novel written by the late Richard Wagamese, about a residential school survivor’s experience. Last year I met a student 

 from St. Paul’s Academy, a private Catholic boys’ school in Manitoba. It became very clear to me that he had learned more about residential schools in his school than anyone I have ever known.

But still, a lot needs to be improved. In secondary IV (or grade 10, for the non-Quebec folk), when I was briefly in the English Quebec school system, my history textbook had a single paragraph on residential schools. A single one. It was not a small book.

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On Friday, I went to the Cancel Canada Day march in Montreal. It started at Parc Jeanne-Mance, at the foot of the mountain. People gathered at the statue of George-Étienne Cartier, where there were speeches, songs and drumming. Then the march made its way down to Place du Canada, where the statue of John A. Macdonald was torn down last year.

When the march was long gone, I talked to Jordan, a Mi’kmaw, who says his mother left Gesgapegiag when he was young. He grew up in Montreal. Because of his lack of exposure to his culture, he’s been trying to embrace it as much as he can now. Jordan said he wasn’t actually trying to “cancel Canada Day,” and that it needed to be about something else. “It’s important to honour the children.” 

With Jordan was his friend Jules, a French-Canadian raised Catholic. Jules remarked how he found it contradictory how the church behaved in a way that went against its teachings. “Tu aimeras ton prochain comme toi-meme” (You will love your neighbour like yourself).

He talked also about the standards we hold historical figures accountable to, and how many claim those standards are unfair. But Jules argued that what happened back then was always wrong according to the values of the religion, and should never have happened. He also said that if the church had acted according to its own values, it would have condemned John A. Macdonald’s policies, rather than helped execute them. 

I also talked to Maria, who immigrated decades ago from Poland. She said she doesn’t believe we should “cancel Canada Day” either, but that instead, it should be an opportunity to reflect on the wrongs committed by this country. In her words, in order to make Canada a better country — one that lives up to  the values it claims to have — we need to shine a light on this history. 

“It’s important that we teach this in schools, who was responsible — the Catholic Church, the politicians — and that we change the way we portray these people.” She also believes we need to recognize the problems that still exist, and face them.

Maria was eager to learn about Indigenous people when she arrived in Canada. But people had a very poor and limited understanding back then, she said. “Oh there’s a few reserves, but there’s not much else to see otherwise,” she recalled being told. “You might see a few of them being drunk downtown.” She’s been able to learn a lot more in recent times, but there’s still a lot she knows she doesn’t know.

There’s been some resistance to the #CancelCanadaDay sentiment. Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party, said those who wanted to “cancel Canada Day” were only a few fringe people, and that we shouldn’t “tear Canada down.”

I’ve always had conflicted feelings about this country. Canada Day was always about recognition of things I can’t be proud of this country for. But I celebrated the things I did like about this country. It’s a bit hard to think about those good parts right now.

I’d like to think there are things I can be proud of. I’d like to think this country can be a welcoming home to people from all over the world, but just a few weeks ago, a family was killed for being Muslim. I’d like to think I can be grateful for our healthcare system, but last week, while working with Chris, I got a glimpse into sides of it that aren’t so nice. I’d like to think we are a pacifist nation that doesn’t get involved in petty conflicts, but it seems like the only wars we didn’t get involved in were Vietnam and Iraq. I’d like to be proud of the fact that we don’t have a mass-shooting problem, but then, what kind of standard is that?

It seems as though people want to be proud of this country, or at least the good parts. If anything, people want to be proud of the values this country represents. But if we want to be proud of the good parts, we need to first acknowledge the bad. If we want to be proud of our values, we need to live up to them. That’s why taking a year to understand the shameful parts of this country's past is important. That’s why it’s important to recognize there’s still more that needs to be done.

I want to say this specifically. Part of a reconciliation process is recognizing the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples. I feel a certain resistance from the Canadian government when it comes to respecting this autonomy. I don’t think the general Canadian population recognizes just how important sovereignty is in the relations between Indigenous Peoples and Canada.

At the Cartier statue gathering, an Inuit woman said: “Quebecers and Canadians need to face themselves in the mirror. It’s your responsibility. I don’t say this to divide us. I say it so we can really come together.”

I’ll leave you with the last thing Maria told me before we parted: "C’est un beau pays. Il faut devenir encore plus beau."

It’s a beautiful country. It needs to become even more so.

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In other news, the country has been rocked by heat waves unlike anything it’s ever seen. At least 719 people died in the span of a week in B.C. as a result. That’s over three times more than what would have usually been expected in the same period, according to the coroner’s office. 

I’m working on a story on what climate activists have been up to during the pandemic. It should come out in not too long. When I was working with Chris last week — at his girlfriend’s office, where I abused my body with free candy — he was working on three stories at once, so look forward to those.

You'll get  to have Chris back for the newsletter next week. :)

Sorry this one came so late. I must admit, for someone who aspires to be a writer one day, I struggle with writing efficiency. 

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No new stories from Chris this week, with him on a mini-vacation. But Ricochet did publish an important piece by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel that we wanted to share with you. 

She argues that at this point, with all that we know, there’s no excuse to be shocked by the discovery of more dead children at former residential schools. What we need isn’t shock, writes Gabriel, but reparations and Land Back. It’s a powerful piece that’s already been read by many thousands of people and reprinted by a U.S. magazine. Give it a read. 

→ We don’t need your shock, we need reparations and Land Back