In my hometown of Hamilton, Ont., a statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister was violated a few years ago by an Indigenous malcontent. Appalled by Sir John A.’s references to Canada’s Indians as “savages,” our city council has removed the statue from its downtown site. The fact that MacDonald’s assessment of Indigenous culture seemed perfectly rational 150 years ago is apparently irrelevant to the contemporary Left, for whom the highly debatable dictates of Post-Modern Relativism are unequivocally True. It is on this intellectually null basis that any celebration of Canada’s past is now deemed an affront to its Indigenous population.
As exposed by a Juno News post of Aug. 18, the Province of British Columbia is particularly intent on placating its Indigenous citizens by re-naming various locations within its borders. In 2018 a Provincial Park named after a Canadian environmentalist devoted to preserving the park’s teeming salmon population, was renamed Tsutswecw Park in honour of the Secwepemc people who lived in the area upon the White Man’s arrival. More recently, Vancouver’s Trutch Street was given an utterly unpronounceable Musqueam name which I cannot reproduce here because it contains symbols alien to the English alphabet. Ironically, as the Juno article indicated, only a hundred or so of the province’s Indian population are even familiar with the languages of the tribes being honoured in these guilt-ridden attempts at “reconciliation.”
Am I suggesting there were not acts of gross cruelty and injustice committed by Western Europeans as they invaded North America 500 years ago? Of course not! But the narrative of the contemporary Left is absurdly simplistic. America’s Indigenous were at war with each other almost constantly, frequently submitting their neighbours to atrocities far more heinous than those attributed to their Western European conquerors. The ultimate domination of the latter was a result not of their “colonialist” cruelty, but rather of the absolute superiority of their Culture. That this today is considered a loathsome expression of White Supremacy is utterly ridiculous. It is an inarguable Fact! But Facts don’t matter to those ruled by Sentiment. And so today’s B.C. “progressives” are perfectly comfortable in apologizing to the Indigenous for having gifted them with a Culture which has inestimably improved their lives in a manner they might never have reached on their own. Such is the Absurdity of the contemporary, political Left!