commemoration

Saturday June 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 12, 2020

‘Their time has come’: Calls increase for removal of statues linked to colonial legacy

As statues and monuments of leaders from bygone eras are being toppled in response to growing calls to end systemic racism and discrimination, the sentiment is also growing here in Canada.

Sir John A. Macdonald available at Redbubble.com

Just this week, protesters in Belgium vandalized a statue of King Leopold II, whose rule of Congo led to the death of 10 million people. At Oxford University, there are calls to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, an architect of the apartheid. And in Bristol, England, a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was dragged through the streets and dumped into the harbour.

Meanwhile in the United States, several statues honouring Confederate generals and slave owners have also been taken down in response to the anti-Black racism protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd.

Canada is not immune to this, either. A Change.org petition calling for the removal of a Sir John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal has received more than 10,000 signatures as of Wednesday evening.

Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was an architect of the residential school system and led starvation tactics against Indigenous people in the Prairies.

“He was very proactive in starvation of Indigenous people, so why would we want a statue of him?” said Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

David MacDonald, a political science professor at the University of Guelph, told CTV News Channel that he believes these statues should be taken down.

“(Macdonald) certainly was the architect of several genocides in Canada, therefore I think it’s time that we continue to address his legacies and there shouldn’t be bridges and schools and all sorts of things named after someone who so blatantly went out to destroy Indigenous nations in this country,” he said.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plants told reporters on Wednesday that there are no immediate plans to take down the statue, but she is looking at ways to address systemic racism in the community.

“There is also an opportunity to create a dialogue between what was the past and what was right then or what was acceptable then, where at one point we’re like, as a society, ‘enough,’” she said.

November 9, 2018

A similar statue of Macdonald was taken down in Victoria, B.C., in 2018. Its artist said he is ashamed to admit that he didn’t know about residential schools until after he crafted the statue and now believes these monuments should also be taken down.

“We still need to confront our racism towards Indigenous people and if we have to tear down a few sculptures, great,” said John Dann.

Similar petitions in Toronto are calling for the city to rename Dundas Street, which is named after Henry Dundas, who delayed the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and for Ryerson University to take down its statue of the school’s founder Egerton Ryerson,who also helped develop the residential schools. (CTV News)

 

Statues from r/canadapoliticshumour

 

Friday May 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 8, 2020

VE-Day 75th: Pandemic forces move to online commemoration

After a year of bitter fighting through Sicily and up through Italy, Canadians moved to Europe where thousands stormed ashore on D-Day eventually ending the war in Europe 75 years ago today

June 6, 2019

Major public celebrations to note the several landmark events leading up to the final victory in Europe (VE-DaY)  have been forced to cancel due to the pandemic. In their place a series of alternative and informative activities have been created online by many related institutions. This includes the Juno Beach Centre, Canada’s main interpretive centre and museum of the war effort located at the invasion beach in Normandy France

Marie Eve Vaillancourt is exhibitions and development manager for the centre. She says the long planning that went into the expectation of public events in and with the centre for surrounding cities and Holland, all had to be quickly turned around and online content created.  She says they’re very proud of the online content which is itself informative and at times emotional. She says it’s important to inform and remember these events and people no matter by what method.

July 13, 2018

Seventy-five years ago through equally bitter and deadly fighting, Canadians pushed through Normandy and northern France and into the Netherlands, liberating along the way to the grateful joy of citizens. Other Canadians moved towards and into Germany itself, to eventual total victory.

Major public celebrations had been planned for this landmark anniversary as Canadians liberated town after town in April and into May. A huge celebration has been planned to mark Operation Faust when the Canadian army negotiated a unique ‘truce’ to truck food supplies to starving Dutch through still armed German lines.  The German forces there surrendered  to the Canadians a few days later, and  of course the final surrender of all German forces on May 7, to take effect May 8 ending the war in Europe, or Victory in Europe Day (VE-Day).

Ms. Vaillancourt notes that while there is very much an important human aspect to the crowds and speeches and interpersonal contacts, the online stories and information will give another aspect to this time. It will allow for greater individual learning experience, and perhaps prompt discussion within families.

Lest We Forget. (Radio Canada International) 

Thursday June 6, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 6, 2019

When the tide turned: Canadians hold massive D-Day event at Juno Beach

World leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, gathered on France’s Normandy coast today to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the remarkable military and political achievement known as D-Day.

May 5, 2000

There have been two commemoration events along the 10-kilometre stretch of coastline that Canadians fought to liberate — one Canadian, one international.

As many as 5,000 people, including French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, attended the Canadian event. Thursday’s commemoration in France follows another memorial, on Wednesday in the U.K., that was attended by leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and Justin Trudeau.

Their chests laden with medals, Canadian veterans listened solemnly, overlooking the tall grass and sandy expanse below in Normandy on Thursday.

Naturally, the beach today looks entirely different from the one that greeted the invading allies on June 6, 1944. The three major communities along the coastline have regained in many respects the sleepy resort quality they enjoyed before the Germans came.

Three-quarters of a century ago today, Fred Turnbull was sitting in a landing craft plowing through the grey, choppy surf towards the shell-raked Normandy coast.

November 11, 2009

His landing craft took ashore a section of troops from the Régiment de la Chaudière, a reserve brigade.

His first hint of the invasion’s cost in blood was the sight of the bodies of military divers floating in the surf — killed as they tried to disarm metal obstacles booby-trapped by the Germans.

The rising tide carried the landing craft over the deadly traps, but all six boats — including Turnbull’s barge — were blown up after they had delivered their troops and turned back to sea to get more.

Turnbull and his men had to swim from the barge to the beach. There they waited as the battle raged around them for three hours before a larger landing ship came in and took them off.

“That was the worst part of it, waiting to be rescued,” said Turnbull.

The soldiers cracked jokes about their plight and tried to remain calm while waiting for retrieval. One enterprising sailor liberated a bottle of rum from the wreckage — which no doubt made the time pass more comfortably.

June 6, 2014

Canadian military planners had expected 1,800 casualties on D-Day — killed, wounded and captured. According to federal government records, the day saw 1,074 Canadian casualties during the taking of the beachhead.

D-Day was just the beginning, though. By the end of the Normandy campaign, more than 5,000 troops had been killed out of roughly 18,000 Canadian casualties. (CBC)

A crazy amount of social media shares on this one…


 

Wednesday April 18, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday April 18, 2012

Canada’s last great step forward

There was no sunshine in Ottawa when they signed the Constitution Act on April 17, 1982. While the gunmetal grey skies above Parliament Hill opened with a deluge, demonstrators in Quebec City wore black armbands, waved the fleur-de-lis, and denounced their brethren as “vendus.”

No matter. In the shadow of the Peace Tower, the federal government had arranged a spray of flags, a fusillade of cannon, a flock of birds and a flight of fighter jets. Thirty thousand spectators cheered.

The Queen, seated on a canopied stage, gave the new Constitution legitimacy. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in a morning suit and a top hat, gave it eloquence. Both gave it their signatures, and a sense of occasion, too.

To reporters who had spent some two years covering parliamentary debates, intergovernmental conferences, committee hearings and court challenges, all played out in the shrillest of tones, the ceremony on April 17 marked the end of a political season for the ages.

Surely, we thought, this was the last of the wasting battles over rights and powers between the federal government and the provinces, which had flared episodically since the mid-1960s.

Surely, we thought, this was the war to end all of Canada’s Constitutional Wars, “The Last Act,” as Ron Graham, the mellifluous chronicler, called his account of the feverish events that unfolded in November 1981.

Before Canada’s Thirty Years War did come to end, there would still be disastrous agreements at Meech Lake and Charlottetown, both intended to fix a Constitution that needed no fixing.(Source: Ottawa Citizen)