This article originally appeared in the National Post. An excerpt appears below.
By Christopher Dummitt, October 31, 2024
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 honour of Charles Bagot, the 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 — defenestrated from positions of honour 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, amongst its recommendations, his appointed commissioners called for residential schooling.
That this report didn’t 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…
Continue reading at the National Post.
Christopher Dummitt is a historian of Canadian culture and politics at Trent University and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
