Hindsight as Foresight – by Henry Smidstra

Last Summer Grace and I took a leisurely
road trip through the western United States heading up through the New England
coast to the Maritimes, returning through Quebec and Ontario. We enjoyed wonderful
weather for sightseeing, taking as many secondary roads as possible soaking up
the scenery and local sights. Both of us being interested in history, stopped
at many historical markers along the way and were conscious of the fact that
beneath the modern road surfaces lay the trails and road beds on which many had
traveled before, journeys representing hopes, dreams, and fantasies, as well as
trails of heartbreak, tears, and the trauma of death or conquest in war.  We followed in the footsteps of prospectors
in quest of gold; in the tracks of settlers in search of land. We crossed the
trail of the Nez Pierce men women and children, being chased through
Yellowstone Park by “machine” gun wielding US army soldiers. We stopped at the
hill where Custer made his last stand, and at Wounded Knee where hundreds of
mostly defeated and defenceless aboriginal families were massacred by US army guns
in the freezing cold on December 31st 1890. Even at the venerated rock at
Plymouth Massachusetts there were historical markers, reminders of broken promises
and of King Phillip’s war. Here too exploitation and injustice by settlers from
England had occurred; wrongs done to the original inhabitants of the land.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, in his recent book, Justice in Love, suggests that the
settler communities’ action toward the Aboriginal peoples was not merely
misguided acts of paternalistic love done in the best interests of the Natives,
or ostensibly for the eternal wellbeing of their souls. He writes that
basically, “…they did not view the Indians as bearers of an ineradicable
dignity; it saw them as members of an out-group, the out group of savages who
had to be brought into Christian civilization. It did not ask whether it was
wronging them. They paid no attention to what justice required” (p.223). He does
qualify this by saying that there were certainly some sincere and just
colonials that treated them with justice in love as equals as justice requires.
In my reading and research I notice that the concept and term “race” was a
concept used regularly in Canadian literature of the time, as in “two founding
races, the French and the English.”  The dominant
assumed prevailing mentality of the 19^th century was of Anglo-Saxon
cultural and moral superiority and can be traced as developing in intensity in
US and Canadian History until the 1960s. Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling’s
1899 poem, White Man’s Burden, is probably
typical of public mentality of the time, “…. To wait in heavy harness on
fluttered folk and wild…..half devil – half wild.”

Sad are the colonial stories of war and
relocation, including the deportation of the Acadians after the conquest of New
France by Britain.  Unjust too are the
past policies of disenfranchisement not only the disenfranchisement of First
nations, but also of peoples of other than western European origin that
immigrated in great numbers. One thinks of the stories of the Chinese, Japanese,
Ukrainians, Doukhobors, and Sikhs, who came to Canada with great expectation to
flourish in the new country.  With racial
bias and written from a legal positivist mindset, the numbered Canadian Plain’s
treaties were entered into, corralling once proud self-sufficient Aboriginal
nations into dependency creating reservations, to provide land and freedom of
enterprise for the influx of Anglo-European settlers and fortune seekers.
Europe had run out of room for its homeless unemployed, and was also looking
for new sources of wealth for its economy. During the early part of the 20^th
century, the Canadian West was offered to interested immigrants as the “next Best West.” Most immigrants I’m guessing
felt that they had a God-given right to do business as they saw fit and settle
in the places they desired. In the beginning, in the 17^th century,
the fur industry was the dominant industry, and the pace of “development” had
been more gradual. At that time the policies of mercantilism gave structure and
order to the pace of development; but, in the 18^th and 19^th
centuries, “progress and development” moved at breakneck speed, creating a millionaire’s
haven during the gilded age, while synonymously wreaking terrible misery and
heartbreak for aboriginal communities as well as for many settlers less able to
endure the race of physical emotional survival in the new economic landscape,
never mind the physical climate, of the “New World.”

Re-tracing our childhood and family immigration
histories, Grace and I drove through the Maritimes, and then into what was once
considered the Lower and Upper Canadas. Personally having arrived on the
Canadian shores at Halifax as a 5 year old at Pier 21, I spent a day updating
my childhood roots and memories. Visits to the Halifax citadel, as well as to
Louisburg, and to the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, made it perfectly clear
that Canada was also acquired by war and conquest. Continuing on, we followed
rail lines closely in many areas, the very rail system that had been part of
John A. Macdonald’s national policy to secure a federal union from sea to sea;
a plan which ultimately drove home the last word about who was in charge in
Canada, essentially in the West ending Aboriginal and Metis sovereignty and
control over their own traditional way of life.  Railroad and steamship companies had made a
“killing” in “opening” up and developing the Dominion of Canada. As a child I had
ridden an immigrant train on this rail line from Pier 21 in Halifax to my
family’s destination in historic loyalist country in Southern Ontario. My
father had been attracted to the Canadian shores for a future for his children,
he wrote to relatives in Holland; he could no longer see a future for us in
Holland especially after World War II. In Canada spoke highly of its freedom
for private enterprise and opportunity for a future. Sadly he died a year after
our arrival in our new country.   

Many changes have occurred here in these
S.E. Ontario counties above Lake Ontario and to the North of the St Lawrence
River over the years, revealing how transitory economic structures and forms of
industry and transportation really are. Some rail lines have all but
disappeared; some turned into bicycle and ATV trails. Former bustling social
and business centres are now bypassed by new major highways and air travel; old
factories and mills empty, outdone by modern multinationals. One particular
small town, Delta Ontario, about 80 kilometers N.E. of Kingston, was once a
centre of considerable commercial importance as well as politically involved in
its pre-confederation years, before the Act of Union of 1840. The small picturesque
town has a historic mill still standing, now as a museum. In 1796 Loyalist
industrialist Abel Stevens from Vermont built the first mill, and soon after it
was purchased by William Jones, a prominent local citizen, who in 1810 built
the present historic stone mill that operated until 1963. Once Delta had been a
bustling business and social centre; however, today many commercial buildings
betray that they have seen better days. A historical marker indicates that in 1834
and 1836, elections held here for the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada had
turned hotly contentious with conflicting ideological forces. Differing political
ideals had created partisan polarization in the loyalist community, between the
Tories and those known as the “Reformers” (later to be called clear Grits, and
yet later, the Liberals). The local historical marker states that the voting
then was done in the open, not by ballot, in the centre of town at the
“hustings,” and the voting took several days.  Intimidations and bullying regarding the
voting led to disturbances which became violent. The altercations are recorded
as the “Beverly Riots,” in which, “…. Reform voters were crowded against the
platform, hit with fists, had their clothing torn, and had sharp objects thrust
into their flesh by the opposing Tory voters.” These years of pressing for
“responsible government” and economic reform were eventful years with frequent heated
debates and action from farmer-based, populist, pressure groups, for election
reform and free trade after the manner of the American democratic republican
model. The Tories desired governance with a mandate for appropriate traditional
regulation for healthy trade and civic life for the common good. Confederation
arose out of much public debate and activism to bring some restraint to the
Republican Whiggish hubris. It is interesting to note that John A. Macdonald’s political
origins arose in a confluence of moderate Reformer and Tory background; he was
a liberal-conservative according to historian J.A. Lower (Canada an outline history, Toronto: the Ryerson Press, 1966). John
A. Macdonald was born in Kingston Ontario, not so far from Delta. Today a quiet
warm receptive atmosphere prevailed here in Delta, and in the many  of the small historic towns where we stopped,
a warm community spirit, civic pride, and hospitality, welcomed us without all
the patriotic flag waving we observed often in the States. Flourishing
community is life really about people and about their wellbeing and peace, not
simply about the health of the economy, or about the celebration of war
victories of the past. Social-political structures are necessary, but they must
not become absolute, and they need the humility and flexibility to serve for
the common good.

From a 21^st century point of
view of post-civil rights and racial equality awareness, the presumptions and
assumptions of racial and cultural supremacy of those early days amaze me. Charlottetown
PEI was interesting; I can’t get over the fact that there were no First
Nation’s representatives among the Fathers of Confederation; there, nor through
the Quebec Conference leading up to the passing of the BNA in 1867. Any concern
was mostly paternalistic. Besides the British and the French, Aboriginal and
Metis nations did not count then, I guess, by the social standards of that
time. In reading the historic literature, it is apparent that the fathers of
confederation presumed an Anglo Saxon superiority as well as holding that the
open wilderness of the Canadian prairies and the northern Territories was
basically wasteland and needed the civilizing touch of Anglo-European economic,
political, and technical development. However, at the outset, the founding
fathers had to acknowledge and learn to negotiate with each other as political equals
as representatives of differing “races” in Canada. The new Dominion of Canada
was a non-homogeneous society to be governed as a federation.

It is easy to point fingers of judgment and
blame at the founding fathers (and mothers?) of the past for racial and
cultural bias, but they were people of their time, as we all are. We need to
negotiate and deal with current reality and the racial and cultural bias of
today, a task which is never as clear as is that of hindsight. The leaders and
developers of colonial Canada were human beings socialized in the basic moral,
social, economic, and political thinking of their colonial Victorian Culture.
We are products of the powers, spirit, and prevailing cosmologies of the 20th/21st
century. I will assume most of the “fathers” were doing the best they could,
given the social cognitive scripts they were thinking and reasoning from. I
know well that the fathers of Confederation were motivated towards building a
Canadian Nation to prevent being absorbed by default by the manifest destiny
motivated encroachment of United States on British Colonial territory.
Confederation was a wise and brave accomplishment, and Canada bears the stamps
of the father’s focus in creating a federation, and not a republic. The multi-cultural
mosaic in Canadian society also displays a different social fabric than the seemingly
atomised individualism of America. We saw more celebration of life and culture
and less flag waving and veneration of national myths in the Canadian communities
that we visited. However, as we learned from the “Beverly Riots”, there had
been aggressive voices in the 18^th century pressing for reciprocity and
economic liberty. Such pressures still exist today.

Canada, I suggest, is not beyond reproach
in its historical policies of assimilation and encroachment on traditional
Aboriginal lands and culture; there was more than nation building for the
common good going on at and after the time of Confederation, there was also
lots of economic activity along the lines of exploitative free enterprise,
yielding lots of private profit for some. Canada is a big country, and Upper
Canada was far from Upper and Lower Canada, not just in distance only, but also
in culture at that time. I suppose that John A. MacDonald would not have had
much in common with the prairie culture and of what the human commonweal of the
west would require; the fabric of Canadian society then, especially of the
rural and remote areas of the North and West, was very different from that of
traditional English society of that time. MacDonald was loyal to the British
Way of life. I suggest also that there is more to building the commonweal than
economic development and national security. Building quality communities in
which all people can flourish equitably needs intentional guidance and can’t be
left as an assumption of trickle-down benefits from corporate or entrepreneural
profits. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, and it is easy to be critical and find
fault from a 21^st century perspective. The founders and leaders of
new commonwealth were faced with some incredible historical, social changes. We
can and must learn from their insight as well as their short-sightedness and
not repeat their economic pragmatism and racial-cultural biases.

Today, as in the past, we face many urgent
critical issues. Among them, oil pipelines, unemployment, global warming, crime,
homelessness and poverty, economics – and following up on Aboriginal rights and
treaty issues.  Our present circumstances
will someday be the past, and it will be clearer then as to what actions would
be best to take today. What we need to do today, though, is to do the best we can
in building the common good with a holistic point of view. Knowing our history,
its shadows as well as its highlights, we can learn from the mistakes and
oversights of the past; we need not naively repeat them. In order for Canadian
society, for all Canadians to move forward in just and life flourishing ways,
an awareness of past injustices needs to be honest and accurate before true
reconciliation can occur. Thelka Lit is quoted in Saturday’s The Vancouver Sun, by Jonathan Fowlie,
as wondering if the BC Liberal Party knows what they want to make an apology
for. (“Clark’s deputy chief of staff
resigns,” Saturday, March 2, 2013, p. A.4). 
Fowlie notes the negative reaction from notable ethnic leaders in
Richmond BC regarding the ill-conceived ethnic voters’ strategy to use an
apology to win votes in B.C. Thelka Lit, co-chair of the Canada Association for
Learning & Preserving the History of WW II in Asia, is quoted as saying,
“An apology without sincerity is not just empty words but it is also an insult
to the victims…. An apology can only be made meaningful if it is accompanied by
historical research, an acknowledgment of history, consultation with all
concerned parties, and preservation of historical sites, community education,
and a recording of historical injustice in school curricula.” Lit also
emphatically implies that BC was not among the least of the perpetrators of
racial injustice in Canada. These are important words to take to heart as we
pray and work for a just society.  1986
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel indicates that the most important issue
facing our society in the 21^st century is addressing an ideology of
hate, “….attitudes of bigotry and prejudice.” Wiesel counsels pro-active
strategies encouraging mutual respect of all people, of all beliefs, and
acknowledging each other as equally human.[i]

 A
flourishing society cannot be well grounded on the un-reconciled injustices of
the past. We must look at all sides of current social-political issues of our
day, not simply apply partial pragmatic single-policy economic solutions. We
may no longer overlook racially biased injustices either, still driven subtly
by policies of assimilation and accommodation. Many current solutions, it seems
to me, are posed reductionistically, narrowly from an economic development
point of view. What is good for all Canadians (individualistically) it is
proposed, is developing economic prosperity, to bring the benefits of economic
development into every community. In response to the “idle No More,” the
official government’s proposals that I have heard seem to propose economic
development as the global salvific answer to all Aboriginal communities’ needs.
Have the lessons from the past been learned?

Besides the obvious need to correct racial
biases by consulting with Aboriginal leaders as equal human beings and
correcting wrongs, there is the importance of recognizing the value of the holistic
Aboriginal way of life.  For them,
spirituality coheres in every aspect of their lives and in the very fabric of
creation. Their traditional way of life was, and still desires to be, a way of
life spiritual at the core; not simply a secularized pursuit of progress, personal
individual profit, or of aggressive resource exploitation and commodity
consumption. The Aboriginal way it seems to me is a way of being in community,
a relational, dynamic, way of being in solidarity with all life itself based on
an ethos of respect, respect for the Creator’s gift of human life, of the land,
its living creatures, and its rivers and streams. What I currently worry about
is that in Corporate Canada’s vortex of high pressure, high powered, globalized
economics, we may repeat the old mistakes and injustices wrought by policies of
assimilation, extinguishment, and secularization.