Earlier this month, the Vancouver school district renamed Sir William Macdonald Elementary to Xpey’ Elementary. (Xpey’ means “cedar” in a Musqueam dialect.)
The renaming is part of a move to expunge tributes to colonial settlers and oppressors.
A couple of months ago, The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario passed a motion calling on local school boards to change the name of schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald. They cite Macdonald’s “central role as the architect of genocide against Indigenous peoples … and the ways in which his namesake buildings can contribute to an unsafe space to learn and to work.”
They have a good point. Macdonald, like many of the white men who held power in the early years of Canadian history, did so by either enforcing or riding on the coattails of racism, sexism, and pretty much every kind of lever of oppression available in their society at that time.
Some of them might have had fleeting thoughts that what they were doing was less than fair, but most seemed to believe they were doing God’s work and “civilizing” those who needed their guidance. And no wonder, folks like Sir John A. Macdonald had themselves been raised in societies which believed that colonizing (stealing) other countries was the right and Christian thing to do.
We haven’t heard calls to change New Westminster’s Richard McBride school’s name – yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it happens.
McBride was Conservative premier of British Columbia in 1914 when the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship, arrived in Vancouver. The ship had 376 passengers on board, most of whom were Sikh migrants from what was then British India.
McBride refused to have the boat stay in port and said, “To admit Orientals in large numbers would mean the end, the extinction of the white people. And we always have in mind the necessity of keeping this a white man’s country.”
And then there’s May Day. To be sure, it harkens from a colonial era that didn’t recognize Indigenous people’s rights, women’s rights and whole lot of other rights that we have come to cherish in this modern age.
The powers that be in this city have tip-toed around the origins of May Day for decades, but with the latest look at the celebration (see story page 1), we expect the conversation will be rekindled with vigour.
And that’s a very good thing.
