TORONTO — The union representing Ontario's public elementary school teachers is calling on all elementary schools in the province to pull the name of Canada's first prime minister from their buildings.
The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario passed a motion at its annual meeting last week calling on all school districts in Ontario to rename schools and buildings named after Sir John A. Macdonald.
The union said it wants the name change because of what it calls Macdonald's role as the "architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples." Macdonald was prime minister during the time the federal government approved the first residential schools in the country.
Felipe Pareja, the teacher who brought forward the motion, said the vote on the matter was not unanimous.
"It was a healthy debate, it was by no means one-sided," said Pareja, a french teacher in the Peel District School Board. "But ultimately when the vote was called, the floor voted clearly to adopt the motion."
Pareja says that Macdonald's part in establishing the Indian Act, as well as his part in Indigenous peoples' suffering when their land was being taken for Canada's national railway are "darker" sides of Macdonald's history that need to be addressed.
"There's no doubt, they're not comfortable things to talk about, but it doesn't make them any less necessary to talk about and to acknowledge," said Pareja. "This really is something that we see as being in the context of (truth and reconciliation) more than anything else."
Pareja also said it might be difficult for Indigenous students and teachers to go to a school named after someone who he says was complicit in the genocide of Indigenous people.
The ETFO passed Pareja's motion as a recommendation, which means it will now be up to different school boards across Ontario to decide whether they implement the change or not.
The ETFO's call comes after a student-led campaign at Toronto's Ryerson University last month pushed for the school to change its name out of respect for residential school survivors.
The downtown university is named for Egerton Ryerson, a pioneer of public education in Ontario who is widely believed to have helped shape residential school policy through his ideas on education for Indigenous children.
And in June, the name of founding father Hector-Louis Langevin was stripped from the building that houses the Prime Minister's Office on Parliament Hill. Langevin argued for a separate school system with a specific mandate to assimilate Indigenous children.
Pareja said the Macdonald issue, if acted upon by school boards, wouldn't be the first case of a motion in the teachers' union leading to change.
Last year, he said a motion passed by the federation led to Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, Ont. changing their sports teams' names from the "Chinguacousy Chiefs," because it was seen as hurtful to Indigenous people.
A LOOK AT PROMINENT CANADIAN FIGURES WHO'VE RECENTLY SPARKED CONTROVERSY
An elementary teachers' union in Ontario has issued a call to remove the name of Canada's first prime minister from schools in the province. The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario said it wants Sir John A. MacDonald's name pulled because of what it calls his role as the "architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples." Macdonald was prime minister during the time the federal government approved the first residential schools in the country.
The call comes as a number of other figures from Canadian history have recently been scrutinized. Here are five such cases:
Hector-Louis Langevin
Until recently, the Prime Minister's offices were housed in a building known as the Langevin Block, named after Hector-Louis Langevin, a father of Confederation and an architect of the residential school system. The name of the building was changed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in light of Langevin's legacy: as minister of public works, Langevin argued that a separate school system for Indigenous youth was needed to assimilate them into Canadian culture. Several Indigenous MPs had asked for the name of the building to be changed last February and, in June, their request was granted. The building is now called the Office of the Prime Minister and the Privy Council.
Egerton Ryerson
Ontario's public education system owes its beginnings to Egerton Ryerson but he is also believed to have helped shape residential school policy through his ideas on education for Indigenous children. An Indigenous students' group and the Ryerson Students Union have called for Toronto's Ryerson University to change its name out of respect for residential school survivors. The groups have also called for the removal of a statue of Ryerson that currently stands on campus. The university has acknowledged that Ryerson's ideas contributed to the residential school system, but it hasn't changed its name or removed the statue.
Edward Cornwallis
As governor of Nova Scotia, Edward Cornwallis founded Halifax in 1749. A bronze status in his honour stands in one of the city's parks. But Cornwallis is also known for levying a "bounty" on the scalps of Mi'kmaq people after an attack on European colonists in the area. Mi'kmaq groups have long argued that the statue should be removed, and have called his actions a form of genocide against Indigenous peoples. Members of the Nova Scotia Assembly of Mi'kmaq Chiefs agree that the statue should come down.
Matthew Begbie
Judge Matthew Begbie's statue once stood outside the Law Society of British Columbia. The former judge was known for ordering the hanging of six War Chiefs of the Tsilhqot'in Nation in 1864 for murder. Chief Joe Alphonse of the Nation said the chiefs were defending their territory and traditional way of life against a foreign aggressor — colonial Europeans — and continued to honour them. The Law Society announced last April that it would remove the statue, calling it a negative symbol of the province's colonial past. But Begbie's name still adorns several public spaces in B.C.
Paul de Chomedey
An engraving on a Bank of Montreal building in Montreal's Place D'Armes square notes that Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, killed an Iroquois chief with his bare hands in 1644. It sits just across the street from de Chomedey's statue, a popular tourist attraction in the city. The engraving has sparked anger from an Indigenous high school teacher, who told The Canadian Press that another marker should be mounted to emphasize that the chief was defending his territory. A spokeswoman has said the bank will remove the engraving, pending approval from the Quebec government.
