Over the holidays, I got a grumpy Christmas greeting in a mass emailing from the Canadian Institute for Historical Education. It had the above image at the top. I guess you can put a Santa hat on anyone and make things all Christmassy. But in the text that followed the Grinch seemed to have taken over.
The grumpy message was not about Christmas or about Canada's first prime minister. It's another endless defence of an 18th century British politician who never set foot in North America but has had his name plastered over towns and roads and counties and squares all over southern Ontario for centuries: Henry Melville, Lord Dundas.
At heart, it's a cry of rage over the fact that Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto was renamed Sankofa Square last year.
The new name is Sankofa Square, because the city recognized it was long past time to have a few local places that honour, for instance, all the Afro-Canadians who have been helping to build this city for centuries. To serve this good cause, the city found it reasonable that names of long-ago foreign aristocrats who never had any significant role in the city could be dispensed with.
But the CIHE insists it means killing history.
Remember when Toronto's beloved and historic Maple Leaf Gardens was replaced by the Air Canada Centre, later the Scotiabank Centre. Or when the iconic SkyDome, chosen by a mass consultation of southern Ontario residents, somehow turned into the Rogers Centre (not to be confused with the other Rogers arena in the city, or the one in Edmonton, or the one in Vancouver). The CIHE has never been moved to defend "history" in cases like those.The CIHE's argument is always the same: the people who urged a name change are just wrong. They don't know history, and that disqualifies them from participation in public discussion. It all leads back to the promise in their name: that when they take over, they are going to ram the True History of Canada (one that deifies Lord Dundas forever more, I guess) down the throats of schoolchildren.
It reminded me of the message historians Patrice Dutil and JDM Stewart gave in the book talk I mentioned here in November : that it is unacceptable that statues of John A. Macdonald have been questioned, and the only reason it happens is because kids are not getting taught the right history. That their opponents may have different views of history -- ones well worth discussing and debating -- never comes up.
These campaigns are not unique to Canada. On New Year's Day I happened to catch a Bluesky post (someone called ottoenglish@bluesky.com), quoting an old promise from Nigel Farage, the fascist-adjacent leader of Britain's Reform Party.
One of the first things a Reform government will do is make sure the young are taught correctly about our history.
