OPINION: Hysteria is not history

BY JIM HORNBY

GUEST OPINION

I'm disappointed to see a recent letter ("Hollow gesture on reconciliation," March 12) from Mike Redmond, whose community work I respect. He condemns the federal government’s recent act of unity and recognition in adding a Mi'kmaq name to Skmaqn-Port-la-Joie-Fort Amherst National Historic Site, and then hysterically alleges that Gen. Jeffery Amherst committed "a genocidal act" to "eliminate an entire Indigenous population."

After demonstrating his lack of understanding of the complexities of the relevant history, Mr. Redmond brashly declares that removing the Amherst name from this important site is a chance "to speak truth to our history."

But hysteria is not history, and that allegation is false. Gen. Amherst's own lack of understanding, of various indigenous groups, led to serious errors in his role as commander-in-chief in British North America during the French and Indian War, and no one applauds his suggestion to introduce smallpox-infected blankets to a group of "disaffected Indians."

But the voices against him show no appreciation of the violent world in which he lived, which included reports of "Indian" atrocities committed against British settlers. A more credible report of actual smallpox transmission to indigenous people may be to those "warriors" who were infected with smallpox while murdering, scalping and plundering some infected British settlers during the massacre following the negotiated British surrender of Fort William Henry.

History is resistant to being reduced to slogan-size bites. If Gen. Amherst's order on the blankets, sent to a colonel fighting near where Sidney Crosby now plays home games, is extremely offensive, how do you feel about the leadership of Sir Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin, in Canada's germ-warfare research program between the world wars?

And what do we make of the bloody career of war-chief Pontiac, like Gen. Amherst a successful but imperfect leader of his time, who in a 1763 peace proposal suggested that his allies and the British "forget the bad things that have happened this past while." There were plenty of them to forget.

If Gen. Amherst's name has to be removed, what's the standard, and where does it lead? Should protestors shut down McGill University in Montreal until the name of its slaveholding founder James McGill is changed? Ought Sir John A. Macdonald be taken from his bench on Queen Street in Charlottetown because his father-in-law owned nearly 100 slaves in Jamaica?

Is the name of every human being with a more-checkered past than Mother Teresa now subject to being purged from any public use if a pop-up interest group can excite enough clicks to me-too it to death? Is viral ignorance the way to go in setting public policy?

Meanwhile, the complicated, largely untold, history of the aboriginal people of Prince Edward Island is not discussed, while energy is wasted on strident over-simplifications of the career of Gen. Amherst, which do no honour to understanding of history or to the Mi'kmaq people. Let's talk about history and issues on Abegweit, not Fort Pitt.

- Jim Hornby, Charlottetown, is a historian, editor and lawyer; holds a Masters of Arts degree in Canadian and Modern Literature; and has written books and articles on P.E.I.'s history, folklore and traditional music