A conversation about possibly changing the name of Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Upper Tantallon may happen this fall.
As protests spread across Canada this spring and summer with the Black Lives Matter movement that saw demonstrations calling for the defunding of police and fair treatment for minorities, the role of the nation's first prime minister in the establishment of the Residential Schools system gained further notice, culminating in protesters knocking down a statue of Macdonald in Montreal on Aug. 29.
Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq elder and human rights activist Dan Paul, author of We Were Not the Savages, says it's time.
“I'd like to see the school name changed, there's no question about that,” Paul, an Order of Canada recipient, said in a recent interview.
“He was an out-and-out white supremacist and he made no bones about it.”
Paul said Macdonald's idea for the Residential Schools was to “get the Indian out of the Indian, and assimilate our people out of existence.
“That was the goal and when you're looking at Residential Schools – and not only Residential Schools, Indian day schools, also – the prime reason behind their creation was simply to end the people as they existed, not being able to speak languages and so forth, and so on.”
Paul said he didn't have to endure the physical and sexual abuse so many other First Nations children did in the schools, but he knows of the horrors others went through.
He said he has a lot of information on Macdonald on his website, including on statements Macdonald made in the House of Commons about “the white man teaching the red man that the white man rules.”
Paul suggested if people want to have statues of historic figures, they should laud heroes like Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine.
School principal Darlene Fitzgerald said in an email that she planned to discuss the topic with the school advisory committee once the school and students have settled into their term in this unusual autumn under COVID-19 restrictions.
“Our first meeting would not take place until maybe the first week of October, pending school conditions,” Fitzgerald wrote. “So, we plan to engage our school advisory councils for input on renaming schools. Until then, I really don’t have much to share.”
Doug Hadley, spokesman for the Halifax Regional Centre for Education, provided a link to the governing body's policy on naming and renaming schools, adding that the process for doing so for Sir John A. Macdonald is not underway.
It would be up to the principal of the school to start that process by creating a committee of four to six people made up of community and SAC representatives as well as the School Steering Team, the policy states. After public consultations, and with student involvement, the committee would bring recommendations to the HRCE.
“In the fall, we plan to engage our school advisory councils for input on renaming schools,” Hadley said in an email. “Among the items for consideration is what criteria would allow school communities to reflect on and respond thoughtfully to whether the name of the school appropriately represents the identity of the community in present day.”
Paul said he hopes Canada is moving toward a more civilized outlook on life, one that would not make heroes of people that have pasts that are “less than … exceptional.”
“It's time for it to change to a, how would you say it, a more culturally sensitive name.”
