Main image: A statue of Robert Dundas, son of slave-owner and anti-abolitionist Henry Dundas, in Edinburgh, Scotland, was recently defaced with graffiti. There have been calls in Toronto to rename Dundas St. given its namesake. (Photo: thenational.scot)
I do not think that history is sacred.
To proclaim that it is is to assume that our record is accurate, contextual, and complete.
In high school, I first heard the phrase, “History is written by the winners.” At the time, this axiom was used to explain why certain stories held more weight than others, why some people had a taller platform from which to declare their truth. We were meant to place ourselves squarely on the side of those victors, because how else would we have arrived here in the present?
Over time, one begins to wonder what happened to the so-called losers. Whose stories are missing from the annals of history? Who decides what winning and losing actually means? What happens when those who have stories of victory of their own were never permitted to learn to read or write, when their storytelling was banned? When there’s an agenda, who gets to put it into motion and who gets in the way?
It became obvious that the history I learned about in school consisted of some really sore winners who would do anything to keep others underneath them.
I began to lose trust in the concept of ‘history’. If historians all look the same, speak the same, went to the same schools taught by the same people, read all the same books, and were awarded for staunchly sticking to the status quo, how could it be considered even a fraction of truth, let alone the full story?
If women were not people and black men were 3/5 human, where did that leave the truth of black women? How long have they bitten their tongues on their stories, knowing they couldn’t be considered winners and, knowing their words would not be written down for posterity, not taught in schools, not even heard? That they contained a truth punishable by death.
Everything on Indigenous land that got renamed by white settlers is a lie, yet those names are part of history.
Canada’s active role in genocide, internment, slavery, and oppression has been white-washed by the winners, by those who benefited from it, perpetuated it, thrived because of it. Because there can be no winning without losing. All privilege comes at someone else’s expense.
So white settlers won the ability to mold and forge their versions of events, of history. The truth is too ugly, and doesn’t serve them to tell it, so they spin it. When the losers have no voice and no power, who’s going to argue?
This story, called history, has been told and retold. It’s been challenged, but never usurped.
Until now.
Now, suddenly, being a name in the history books isn’t enough to ride on. Legacies are being called into question. We are starting to accept that, like an abusive husband cannot be a good father because a good father would never harm his children’s mother, someone who promoted oppressive ideals cannot be a good politician, a good explorer, a good judge, a good town founder.
Monuments are toppling.
In Toronto, there is a ten-thousand signature petition to change the name of Dundas Street. Henry Dundas opposed the abolition of slavery, and his power, as a ‘winner’ delayed the liberation of 630,000 enslaved people. The monument of Dundas, as well as that of his son, Robert, in Edinburgh, Scotland, have been defaced.
Good. Tear it down. Change the names. Change them back to the indigenous words they were, or change them to something new and celebratory of people who fought for the freedom and empowerment of people. Make it right, all of it.
I’m not talking about erasure. We should learn about Dundas in history books, as a Scottish politician who worked against abolition. Tell his story alongside the abolitionists of the time, and not just the non-violent, feel-good, ‘winner’-approved defenders of the innocent. The rebels, the insurrectionists, the radicals. I want those stories told in school books because I want young people, who have a hell of a job ahead of them, to have role models and heroes, revolutionaries to aspire to, people who changed the world for the better—the way they are going to have to.
Students don’t need to memorize places and dates of famous battles, who our enemies were and which ‘heroes’ led soldiers into slaughter. They need to learn how to prevent war, how to stop war, how to survive war, how to recover from war. War should only be taught as a what-not-to-do manual.
There will be growing pains from the world-building we are all participating in right now. We will mess this up. We will have to learn, and grow, and make amends. The goal is not perfection at this point—let’s just commit to not making things any worse.
Change is happening at an unprecedented pace. The global village is sick of being invaded. A better way is inevitable, even if it may get more difficult before it gets better. Conversations that should have happened long ago, ages ago, are happening now, and it’s confronting and scary and beautiful.
When faced with such a monumental challenge, we choose how to react. Do you stand, impassively, arrogantly dictating the ‘truth’, as a statue does? Or do you accept, flow, gather, and act as one, like water in a river, changing the face of the planet forever?
You don’t have to be the one with the chain around the monument, tearing it down. But maybe don’t be in the way.
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Kathleen May (Photo: Kai Rannik)
Kathleen May is a writer, speaker, and activist. Her column, She Speaks, has appeared in the Huntsville Doppler since 2018. Her work in our community includes co-founding the long-running Huntsville Women’s Group, volunteering with Muskoka Parry Sound Sexual Assault Services, and her role as a front-line counsellor at the women’s shelter. Kathleen is a 2018 Woman of Distinction for Social Activism and Community Development. She was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize, short-listed for the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and received the Best Author award for her 2018 submission at the Muskoka Novel Marathon, a fundraiser for literacy services. When she isn’t writing, she’s designing a tiny house which she intends to be the impetus for a sustainable women’s land co-operative in Muskoka.
I agree with you Diane Adams. Statues went up because those individuals made an impression and did something good. Those were the times. Now we have our times. Leave the statues alone and work on poverty and homelessness
The mistake that a lot of commenters are making here is conflating history with public memorialization.
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History, the historic record, deals drily in facts. This happened, this person did this, this person did that. This person was a leader in the business community of his era and helped sustain slavery. This person opened her house to escaping slaves as a station on the Underground Railway. And so on.
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Public memorialization is a statement made in bronze and stone, of who we should consider important and deserving of admiration and remembrance. It is made to evoke emotion. It says, for example, “You should look up (quite literally) to this man who fought and killed to maintain slavery. If you are white you should be grateful; if you are black you should remain intimidated. Our tradition of systemic advantages to whites over blacks is deserving of celebration and continuance.”
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Something Canadians should understand about most Confederate statues in the USA: they were not raised right after the Civil War. They were raised in the Jim Crow era of racist lawmaking, which really started in the 1880s (the Civil War ended in 1865) and was perhaps most intense in the 1920s. They were raised to make a point about who still ruled who despite slavery having been abolished. This is why the American Black community and people of other races who respect their feelings want to get rid of them. If you asked any protesters who were pulling down a statue, “Should we get rid of all mentions of this person’s name in the history books?” they would say absolutely not: let him be remembered for everything he did including the wrong. That’s *history* — factual.
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Altogether an excellent column as usual, Kathleen, but I have one quibble. Yes, we should learn the dates of battles because they are factual and because they caused restructuring of the political world that might still affect our lives — or if they didn’t, i.e. accomplished nothing at great cost (e.g. much of WWI), that’s a good lesson too. What is needed with the history of war is not to bring wartime emotional attitudes (“we were the heroes and they were evil”) into it, but just state the facts and let students make up their own minds. Also super-important and left out far too much is the context, specifically the agency, of war: who decided to start it, what were their real (rather than declared) reasons, who was making deals to profit in the back rooms? Give all the facts of military history as fairly as possible, and it’ll teach its lessons very well.
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Notice, everyone, that Kathleen nowhere suggested tearing down cenotaphs. The lists of names on them are factual.
Some excellent points of view spoken here rather than the original negative viewpoint of just “tear it down” which is ludicrous in my view and far too often seen in this column. Enhance the plaques on these statues to reflect BOTH the good and bad historical events of each individual immortalized in bronze. A much more complete view of that individual’s accomplishments, both positive and negative, would serve to produce a much more informed public, which we definitely need these days. Offset the vague information on monuments with more detailed history, and let individuals make their own minds up rather than being ruled by this continual violent, incomplete pictures being drawn. Eliminate the actions of the “hysterical” and replace it with more visual “historical” information.
History has a purpose.
If you don’t remember your history, you will never learn from the past and you are doomed to repeat your mistakes.
“History is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from it. And if it offends you, even better. Because then you are less likely to repeat it. It’s not yours to erase. It belongs to all of us.”
Good on you, Kathleen! If the measure of an article resides in the number and disparity of the responses to it; then this was one of your most successful.
I just want to concur with a great many Canadians that our first Prime Minister has a lot to answer for. His introduction of the residential school system destroyed aboriginal history, elders, parents, and especially children. I won’t bore you with the details: If you know them, great; and if you don’t, you wouldn’t be interested.
Let it suffice that both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into the Murders of Indigenous Women and Girls were necessitated by Canada’s appalling treatment and systemic racism against our founding people.
Very few of the excellent recommendations of the TRC have been implemented, and the Inquiry has been singularly unsuccessful.
In any case, the oral history is slowly deteriorating with the passing of elders and the paucity of people who know the ancient languages. Cultural genocide of a proud and peaceful race is part of our Canadian heritage.
If we were to tear down every monument or statue that with hindsight is proven to be inaccurate or lauds the injustices of the time, then there would be a neverending cycle of construction and destruction.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brenda Scott that we must use these opportunities to teach. To me, the greater impact would be to erect plaques of explanation that indicates the injustices of the past.
To tear down obliterates the past and thereby we miss an opportunity to rewrite history which would then, in my opinion, validate the wronged.
For most of us, visual learning has the most impact. Perhaps the better way would be to erect an adjacent statue or monument that sets the record straight. To me, the prejudices of both the present and the past on many issues stand a better chance of airing ( Or erring!) with both sides displayed.
HMMM! .. You do realize the pyramids were built by slaves ..should they be torn down? .. Can’t have it both ways and ‘cheery pick’ history that you are OK with and ignore the reality of history? IMHO .. move on and leave history as HISTORY. ie .. History is the study of the past. Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. “History” is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events!
The word history has at least two meanings. It refers to what actually happened, and the memory of it. One is the truth, the other is supposed to reflect it.
If the one that is supposed to reflect reality is incorrect, the essay, the speech, the statue etc. is incorrect, it should be corrected.
You can’t change the truth, only try to correct the memory of it. We should definitely ‘change history’ if it is the memory kind.
If people have put up a memorial to a tyrant, a bigot, a rascist etc who also did something fantastic there is a case for leaving it. Perhaps the memorial itself has artistic signifigance, and should be preserved.
If it turns out their legacy is evil, the record should be corrected, it should be removed.
Removing memorials of evil is done all the time. We watched with glee as statues of Saddam Hussein were torn down. It is only the choice of which one that is controversial.
I see no reason to preserve a memorial to Dundas. Leaving it continues racism in our society, the systemic kind.
It isn’t tearing down statues we find horrible. We are fine if the memory was bad enough.
For descendants of slaves, seeing Dundas memorialized must be degrading and demeaning. We should support them, not whatever feelings the rest of the country have. That would actually be doing something about systemic racism.
I like this article. And I think the writer knows about things like “History is written by the victors” because of historians. It would seem Henry Dundas was also a thief and was impeached in Britain for being so. I don’t care what the street’s name is but like some others here I think there is some value in having some terrible statues remain with historical plaques that explain the damage they did rather than removing it from history. I grew up at Ski Jump Inn just south of town and last summer my sister and I went for a drive to see our old neighbours and our first home and in a window at our home there was a confederate flag. We were stunned and heart broken given the sacrifice that my father and uncles and so many others gave to defeat the main leader of the white supremacist movement, let’s face it. I know many young white supremacists and even more older ones. It is the dyeing gasp of a movement in my opinion and I am not frightened by them. But like Peter Kear I see over and over again that historians do get it right, the victors do not own the truth and we should be strong enough to face without hiding it. As for the street, let’s call it May Street.
Thank you Kathleen for your column and bringing an enlightened view to Muskoka.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
When is the last time that you saw anyone celebrating the losing team? The reality is that since the dawn of human civilization there have always been “winners” and “losers”; “haves” and “have nots”, and blood has been spilled every step of the way as if it were the line distinguishing the two. Every great civilization was built on slavery in one form or another. Native North Americans were at war with each other and practiced slavery for centuries before Europeans set foot here. Same thing with South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Indonesia and Australia. Everyone has blood on their hands. No one is without sin. The losers will always remind the winners that they have blood on their hands and the sons and daughters of the losers will always remind the sons and daughters of the winners that they ought to be paying for the sins of their forefathers. Try as we all still should and may, nothing has really changed and probably never will.
Seems a bit crazy then to now be complacent with letting the losing side attempt to re-write history with their narrative, especially without any solid assurances that they will be sure to also tell folks about all the good things that those toppled statues represent. “Yes”, oppression and tyranny stink and civilized people should never condone any atrocity, but whitewashing the darkness of what has allowed the fittest to survive in accordance with the laws of the jungle doesn’t do anyone any good unless you are trying to erase how absolutely rotten we truly and historically have been towards one another. “Sure”, Dundas was no saint but he did some pretty good and historically significant things that justify why people ought to be vehemently preventing the losers from arbitrarily and violently toppling our historical monuments like the vitriolic and authoritarian thugs that their actions prove them to be. The busts of exactly which saints do you think people like this would rather see erected in place if they were left to their own devices? Justin Trudeau??
While I acknowledge and respect Kathleen’s past lived experience as a frustrated high school history student – hence her perception of the “dictating ‘truth’ ” monuments – I believe her ‘tear it down’ attitude can actually be counter-productive at this time when there is a real need for a continuing thoughtful and productive conversation.
What is missing in her informative article in my opinion is the fact that over the last few years there has been a revolution in Canadian history classrooms across Ontario as to ‘what’ (content) and ‘how’ (pedagogy) the Canadian story is taught/learned – so many forgotten, suppressed, and marginalized ‘voices’ are now included in ‘diverse perspectives’ inquiry-based learning activities for students; in addition, there is a focus on critical thinking and the concepts of historical thinking.
These are all reflected as mandated in the revised 2018 Ontario curriculum documents pertaining to the Social Studies, History, and Geography courses. The American writer, William Faulkner got it right when he said, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’!
Another brilliant article by Kathleen May. I do, however, agree with Brenda Scott’s suggestion to leave the statues but change the plaques and describe the real truth about the persons portrayed by the statues.
Lots of interesting comments on a well written article.
Statues, books, photos and such are records of the past. For good or bad it’s our history. With perseverance we build a future using what we learned from that history. It is a waste of time to judge the past using the standards of today.
If we don’t learn from past mistakes, and everybody makes some, we are likely doomed to repeat them. Destroying the record does nothing to remove the problem but it does increase the odds that we repeat the mistake because we don’t know, ‘nor have we a reminder, that we got it wrong before.
yes there were problems in our history , but it all depends who doesn’t like the history .. he was still a leading individual in the founding of the upper Canada … different times .. tearing down a nations history is simply wrong..
This is a well-thought-out and well-expressed perspective Kathleen. Moreover, your article flies straight to the heart of à major weakness of history. Expect lots of pushback by those on the “winning side”!
Thanks for the article.
I think that the tearing down of statues could be put to better use by putting plaques on them with the actual truth on them. They are our history, our past. Most of us would have been part of this had we been living in the time. I feel that lots more would support the person we are now running down/tearing down a statue of than standing up against them. We need to keep these statues to prove we know what was done and we need to vow to not have us go backwards to the old ways.
Monuments of historical figures getting torn down?? What a ridiculous waste of time and energy. We should LEARN from the history of the monument, not destroy it. It is already written in the history books, so will burning history books be next? Welcome to Nazi Germany! Not all statues are either bad OR good replicas of the idolized, but we need to understand what created them and why, not try to annihilate the actual history that created them. Is this the age of educated “thugs” we are now entering? Pretty pathetic if it is. More violence, less understanding, zero tolerance?? Not in favour of this line of thinking or lack of reasoning and am seeing it too often in this and other columns. A visible, large statue is a reminder of what event(s) created it, good or bad. An empty space reflects the lack of a big part of a picture that very few will ever investigate. Leave them all there until ACTUAL change occurs, the re-address the demolition.
Once again, Kathleen May, you have articulated this issue in such an eloquent and reasonable way.
I applaud you. Brilliant article, beautifully written. THANK YOU