Canada is systematically erasing its national heroes
National Post, 01 July 2023
A nation without heroes quickly becomes a country without stories, or without inspiring ones
Can a nation exist without heroes? Canada seems to be attempting just that.
Dominion Day — its proper, original name — has become an annual occasion to catalogue the latest civic silliness. Last year, it was the Forks in Winnipeg that imagined “Canada Day” out of existence. This year it was Calgary city council, which cancelled the city’s fireworks display in order to advance “reconciliation.” That was something of a wet firecracker, so council reversed itself in the face of public outrage.
Neglect of proper public ceremony needs to be pointed out, and Canada has become quite practised at that (witness the anemic coronation ceremonies in Ottawa). Yet more insidious is the systematic removal of heroes from our history.
Under the current federal government, the targets have been Conservative figures from the past, Sir John A. Macdonald principal among them. But soon the wheel will turn and grind up Liberals, too — beginning with Wilfrid Laurier and ending, perhaps, with Jean Chrétien, the last of the Indian Affairs ministers of the assimilationist school.
Last week, in my Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day column, I suggested that the quatercentenary of the birth of François-Xavier de Montmorency-Laval de Montigny was a suitable occasion to celebrate an essential figure in the history of Canada. Born in 1623 in France, he was Canada’s first Catholic bishop and was essential to the foundation of Quebec.
In 1980, St. John Paul II declared Bishop Laval to be “blessed,” along with Marie de l’Incarnation, a Quebec pioneer in education for Indigenous girls and in writing Indigenous languages. In 2014, Pope Francis canonized both of them.
St. François Laval left a noble and wealthy family in France to subject himself to the rigours of life across the seas. Aside from preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the rough precincts of early Quebec, his influence was monumental in limiting the excesses of the colonial authorities.
He struck an early blow for religious liberty and limited government — a century before the American Revolution — by refusing to allow the French governor precedence at religious ceremonies. More importantly, he fiercely battled colonial and commercial leaders on the alcohol trade, which was lucrative for the French but devastating for the Indigenous population, whose dignity he defended.
Laval definitively shaped the ethos of early colonial Canada, creating a more humane European presence than would otherwise have been the case. By his death in 1708, he was already recognized as an historic figure of the first order.
We need to know about our heroes. And if a consensus has emerged to cancel — or at least suspend — the entire late-19th century generation of the Fathers of Confederation, then we need to propose other heroes. St. François Laval is one such, having died 150 years before Confederation, and therefore “untainted” by the policies of the time.
Ten days ago, the National Capital Commission announced that the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway will be renamed Kichi Zībī Mīkan. In Algonquin, it means “great river road,” which is just its old name — the Ottawa River Parkway — in a different language. But “Ottawa River” was more specific, as there are plenty of “great rivers.” Mississippi is the Ojibway word for “great river.”
“Great River Road” does not propose anything inspiring, aside from the warm feeling that some people get from using different languages, like maître d’ or majordomo when the English equivalent “master of the house” seems too direct. Why not choose a name that might propose something worthy of aspiration?
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