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The forces of “decolonization” took one more historical victim last week in Oshawa, Ont. That’s where the city council moved to change the name of Bagot Street, which it believes — but isn’t even entirely sure — was named in honor of Charles Bagotthe governor general of the united Province of Canada from 1841 to 1843.

The city says Bagot has to go because of his links to the establishment of residential schools for Indigenous peoples. The case echoes that of Egerton Ryerson — defenestered from positions of honor for highly dubious claims about his alleged links to the schools. The Bagot case is about as weak. The evidence in Bagot’s case is that during his tenure in British North America, Bagot established a commission to investigate the “Affairs of the Indians of Canada” and that, among its recommendations, his appointed commissioners called for residential schooling.

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That this report did not directly lead to any specific government funding of residential schools in Canada does not seem to particularly matter to the critics. Nor do the historical purity seekers seem especially interested in the fact that many Indigenous peoples themselves were demanding schooling in this era. Indeed, the actual details of the 1845 report and its historical context are, as usual, beside the point.

Poor Charles Bagot.

Bagot was a career diplomat with a distinguished record. As ambassador to the United States he put his name to a treaty that helped to demilitarize the Great Lakes. He was chosen for Canada in the wake of the rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838. The governor needed to be someone who could show both backbone and sympathy — and a respect for cultural duality (something Bagot had already shown in his role helping to separate Belgium from Holland).

Bagot inherited a bit of a mess after the infamous Lord Durham had taken off in a huff in 1838. Durham’s replacement, Charles Thomson (later Lord Sydenham) forced through the union of the two Canadas, ran a ludicrously corrupt election, and then convinced everyone that he had established a stable government when in fact he had not. When Thomson fell off a horse and died, Bagot came into the mess and put things back together. He did a decent job, risking his career by bringing into the government a large group of French reformers including Louis Lafontaine, even though his British overseers were anything but keen about allowing former rebel sympathizers into government. It did Bagot little good. All through his time in Canada his health had been deteriorating and he died at the governor general’s residence in what was then the capital at Kingston.

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And this is now how we remember him — and our history — by ripping his name from one of the very few public places where he is still honored.

The Oshawa process has followed a now all-too-familiar trajectory. The initial demand for change came in the summer of 2021 in the wake of the still as-yet-to-be substantiated claims of “mass graves” and unmarked graves at former residential schools.

Then followed what is now becoming a routine three-stage process. First, assume that people genuinely are “harmed” by street names — even streets named after long-forgotten historical figures — even streets that we aren’t sure are named after those figures.

Once you’ve set yourself up with this hyper-sensitive Geiger counter of emotional harm, then do public consultation. But don’t consult everyone. Instead, select a racially specific group of people you are certain will most likely agree with the decision you’ve already made. In this case the city’s public consultation seems to have been to ask the very few property owners along the little street and then engage in wide-ranging consultations with almost every conceivable Indigenous group within 100 miles.

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Did the city ask residents who have lived in Oshawa for their entire lives? It seems not. Did they ask anyone still associated with Bagot or his family? How about historians who know something about British North American history from the 1840s? Again, it doesn’t appear to have been the case. Instead, Oshawa, like other cities, seems to think that all you have to do in these circumstances is go through a race-based consultation process in which the voices of some groups count more than others.

Once you’ve engaged in this process of empathetic racism — defended by the need to decolonize of course — you can go ahead and suggest a new name change. No amount of irony seems too much.

Oshawa is going an Orwellian route. The new name is “Debwewin Miikan” — year Anishinaabemowin term meaning “Truth Road.” Yes, that’s right: truth.

This is to demonstrate the city’s support for Truth and Reconciliation. But there is, as usual, very little interest in the actual complications of historical truth and the fact that Bagot had little if any connection to residential schooling.

In multicultural countries like Canada it’s not surprising when historical figures are celebrated among some groups and vilified in others. There ought not to be a shock — or indeed a problem. Of all regions, Oshawa ought to know this. It is located in the Durham Region, and Durham is the classic Canadian example.

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Lord Durham is seen in Quebec as a villain — someone who wanted to assimilate French Canadians — who recommended, as some would put it today, a policy of cultural genocide. Yet Durham was also a liberal reformer who promoted for British North Americans the advent of what we would come to call responsible government. He is, rightly, celebrated as playing a pivotal role in the origins of Canadian democracy. Both things can be true at the same time.

Now imagine deciding a name change to the Durham Region where you set up a consultation process that privileges the voices of Quebec nationalists, and set your offense-meter to “hyper sensitive” based on what that group sees as “problematic.”

That is effectively what Oshawa did here.

What Oshawa could do is to choose Indigenous names for new streets or new schools (something it seems to have already done) and leave in place those figures already honored from our colonial past. This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game — pitting one group against another.

What do you call it when people pick out the most negative aspects of one cultural group? How about when you make decisions about that group’s culture but don’t consult them and instead use a race-based consultation that specifically excludes them? I was sure that we used to have a word for this kind of insensitivity towards one particular group.

National Post

Christopher Dummitt is a historian of Canadian culture and politics at Trent University and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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