July First to August First
Moses Brantford Jr. leading an Emancipation Day parade down Dalhousie Street, Amherstburg, Ontario, 1894 - wikipedia
Original Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Saturday 24 July 2022
Here it is the fourth weekend of July, 2022, and high time to start thinking about Emancipation Day. Monday, August 1st, 2022 will be Canada’s second official Emancipation Day, the anniversary of day when slavery was abolished throughout the Empire by an Act of Parliament that went into effect in 1834.
The significance of this here in Canada and among all peoples who were once part of the British Empire is something to think about, especially since this is a relatively new addition to the official national calendar. What I find particularly interesting is that this is a restoration of a celebration that was commonplace in the 19th century, especially among Black Canadians, but gradually faded away as we conformed to U.S. American storylines throughout the 20th century, and began marking Black History Month, Martin Luther King Day, and, most recently, Juneteenth.
August 1st, 2022 is just a few days away, but I find myself still pondering a question that Kitchener commentator and citizen extraordinaire Melissa Bowman tweeted at 8:18 a.m. on July 1st, 2022, the 39th official Canada Day: “What if today we focused less on 'Canada' and more on Reconciliation?”
My first thought was, if less focus on Canada means downplaying the standard patriotic routines, which are mostly a pale imitation of traditional Independence Day hoopla down south, it wouldn’t be much of a loss.
As emphasised in my last post, Canada Day itself has only been an official designation since 1982. Instead of building on what came before, the inclination in the evolution of symbols of Canada since 1950 or so on has been towards erasing past practices with all their peculiarities -- Dominion Day; Red Ensign; King’s Highway; God Save the Queen; Wolfe the valiant; shamrock, thistle, rose entwine -- and generally conforming to what modern independent nations are expected to do.
Perhaps there hasn’t been time to create anything meaningful or distinct yet. And the times have not been favourable: Many obstacles have emerged since 1982, including the resurgence of separatist nationalism in Quebec, Western alienation, and above all, the steady infiltration of U.S.-style suspicion of government, which can be seen as a modern manifestation of anti-federal strains that have been part of the story of the republic down below from the very beginning.
In many ways, the call for action on Truth and Reconciliation has been yet another impediment to the development of the idea of Canada. For all these reasons, in comparison to the Centennial of Confederation in 1967, which those of us who lived through it remember as a watershed moment, the Sesquicentennial in 2017 was a near total bust.
I’m not sure, though, that the either/or choice here is Canada versus Reconciliation. What if we take the call to Truth and Reconciliation as an opportunity, not only to rebuild our relationship with the peoples who are Indigenous to the continent we share, but also to come together as a federated nation state, and set our sights on accomplishing something greater than just becoming one more independent nation state with all the trappings?
Sunday 25 July 2022
So what is reconciliation? In search of something to work with, I went to one of my favourite resources: the Online Etymology Dictionary:
reconcile (v.)
mid-14c., reconcilen, transitive, in reference to persons, "to restore to union and friendship after estrangement or variance," also of God or Christ, "restore (mankind, sinners) to favor or grace," from Old French reconcilier (12c.) and directly from Latin reconcilare "to bring together again; regain; win over again, conciliate," from re- "again" (see re-) + conciliare "make friendly" (see conciliate).
Reflexive sense of "become reconciled, reconcile oneself" is from late 14c. Meaning "to make (discordant facts or statements) consistent, rid of apparent discrepancies" is from 1550s. Mental sense of "make (actions, facts, conditions, etc.) consistent with each other in one's mind" is from 1620s. Sense of "bring into acquiescence or quiet submission" (with to) is from c. 1600. Related: Reconciled; reconciling.
Some of these meanings are problematic. I remember, at an all-day workshop at the Family Centre in Kitchener about the 94 calls to action put forward in the report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission back in 2015, one Indigenous voice asking, in effect: “When were things ever friendly and harmonious? What is there to bring together again?”
Whatever the answer may be, we can probably all agree that we’re not talking about “acquiescence or quiet submission.” That would be surrender in the face of defeat for one party, and triumph for another. This, to my mind, is the antithesis of reconciliation: it would be imposition, not mutual agreement.
Reconciliation means the elimination of discrepancies, the dissolution of differences, the removal, not just of tensions and grievances, but of all the factors behind them. It means actually solving problems, not settling scores or passing judgement. There must be agreement: I’m imagining something akin to the thought expressed in the refrain of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: “And, now our minds are one.”
Reconciliation is a reciprocal undertaking. It is an effort done with, not to, at least one other entity. If we took Canada out of the picture -- the people of Canada, our past and our future; our habits, orders and arrangements, including our very existence as a body politic -- there would be nothing to reconcile with.
Officially, as articulated by the Government of Canada, the “reconciliation journey” means: “Building a renewed relationship with Indigenous Peoples based on the recognition of rights, respect and partnership.”
“Renewed” is right word here: recognition of those rights began with agreements between Indigenous peoples and the Crowns of both France and Britain, and has remained, without a break, a founding principal of Canada, as articulated in our constitution.
It makes sense that the current emphasis is on the legacy of residential schools, because this is primarily, if not exclusively, a Canadian matter. Based on a model originally developed in the U.S., implementation of the residential school system began shortly after the introduction of settler home rule in this country, and subsequently involved the complicity of five or six generations of active Canadian citizenship, decade after decade, election after election, administration after administration.
We won’t be able to get anywhere if we cannot face the hard truth, which is that the century-long practice of forcibly taking children away from their parents and out of their communities, in order to systematically “take the Indian out of them” and train them in the ways of modern civilization, was an intrinsic part of independent nation-building from the outset. It was a corollary of exercising our self-assigned, heaven-storming “Dominion from Sea to Sea”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Canada was a mistake. We can take comfort and encouragement from the fact that things appear to be improving. We are beginning to get a sense of the enormity of this and comparable wrongs. An outrage committed in the past can be testimony as to how far we’ve come, and every scar, every open wound, every lingering injustice is an indication of the work that still needs to be done.
Ultimately, the burden falls on all of us together as citizens of Canada as a sovereign nation state that operates on democratic principles. This is why it is so important that we shoulder the blame, not slough it off on some potentate or other who returned to dust long ago. Shouldering the blame means accepting the responsibility, taking charge, and getting down to doing work that only the people of Canada can do.
Those monarchs from long ago aren’t blameless, of course, neither are the popes, bishops, admirals, sea dogs, capitalist scrooges, merchant princes and landlords of the day. But they weren’t omnipotent. As long as those European imperial powers were either at war, or on the brink of war, with one another, Indigenous peoples were able to maintain, and skillfully take advantage of, the balance of power. Of all the offences committed by the British and other Atlantic Empires in their heyday, the worst, and surely the most damaging, was abandoning the Indigenous people of Turtle Island, with whom they had long standing treaties of friendship, trade and mutual defence, by simply walking away.
In doing so, the imperial powers knowingly put the fate of their professed friends and allies entirely in the hands of powers and ambitions within English-speaking colonial settlements, in the case of the Netherlanders in 1667 and the French in 1763 (and again with the abandonment of the Mississippi watershed in 1803). For the British, in turn, it was handing their obligations and responsibilities over to powers and ambitions in the newly independent settler republic between 1783 and 1815, and here in this settler dominion from 1867 on.
This betrayal became a major factor in convincing settlers in both the United States and Canada that they had a “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our/their yearly multiplying millions.”
Wednesday 27 July 2022
The Pope has been here with us for the last few days, on a mission that can be seen as a distraction, if not a contradiction, to what I’ve been trying to say. With regard to the role of the Roman Catholic Church and all the other Christian denominations in the residential schools system over so many generations, I’m still convinced that the heart of the matter is their endorsement of, and complicity with, a modern nation building process led, structured, financed, legalised and enforced by the various governments over time. I sometimes think that Canada should make an official apology to the churches for engaging them in these crimes against humanity.
It is true that Canada as a modern nation state has many antecedents, including the Doctrine of Discovery as put forward by the Pope’s 15th century predecessors, and, more important, as a fundamental tenet of International Law. On this continent, almost all sovereignty passed through British hands — a land where papal authority was usurped by the reigning monarch in 1534, several generations before any sustained colonial settlement began. But whether by papal or royal decree, or by international law, the Doctrine of Discovery is an integral part of what we are.
Again, we can pass on the blame, and therefore the responsibility, to the various popes, bishops, kings and queens involved along the way. But there’s not much a king, a queen, bishop or a pope can do nowadays. I’m proposing that we shoulder the entire burden, if for no other reason than that, as citizens of a prosperous, peaceful, progressive sovereign nation state organised on democratic principles, it is within our power to move towards full reconciliation, and begin repairing the damage that was done.
Meanwhile, the countdown to the second official Canadian celebration of Emancipation Day, the anniversary of the abolition of slavery throughout the Empire that Canada was an integral part of at the time, continues: Just five more sleeps.
I’m writing from the point of view of someone for whom being assigned the task of teaching Atlantic World 1400-1800 to undergraduate students at the University of the West Indies was a life changing experience. So I’m inclined towards the view that Canada since 1867 is best honoured, contemplated and understood in the context of a longer, broader whole that encompasses many centuries and multiple continents.
Reconciliation is not a term that is commonly applied to another foundational aspect of North American cultures and society that needs to be redressed: the role of peoples and nations Indigenous to the continent of Africa in relation to the story of Canada, the United States, and the British, French and Netherlandish Caribbean. That’s what August 1st is all about.
Given the enormity of what happened, and continues to happen, one hesitates to suggest that here, too, Truth and Reconciliation should be the objective. But is the gravity of that legacy greater than that of settlers in relation to the Indigenous peoples of this hemisphere? An unfathomable truth cannot be measured against another unfathomable truth. In both cases, redemption can never be earned, achieved or in any way deserved. It feels wrong to ask for or even suggest it. But we can hope for it, seek it out, and strive towards it.
So, in answer to Melissa Bowman’s question, for next July First I’m for more, not less, focus on Canada. I’m also in favour of taking more than just Canada, the modern settler domain, into consideration. And, by the same token, I’m for emphasising Truth, in all its complexity, and genuine Reconciliation, taking the legacy of residential schools in Canada as the starting point, but prepared to go all the way. Going all the way includes connecting July First with August First, not as an alternative to U.S. formulations, but as another dimension to what happens when July Fourth is paired with Juneteenth: In the long and wide view, we’re inextricably connected with both holiday pairs.
We don’t talk about Providence or believe in destiny much any more, and the world is probably better for it. It might, however, be beneficial to make believe that our manifest destiny as Canadians is to complete this work, and achieve full reconciliation, honourably and peacefully, step by step, but with all due speed, seeking wisdom and developing understanding as we go along.
Friday 29 July 2022
That’s as far as I got in this train of thought. I want to post this before the Civic holiday / Emancipation Day weekend begins.