A newly-established cheap website think tank, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, has proposed that the government set aside funds so that every Aboriginal child can go to university. This sounds like a good idea to me. However, the Institute needs to find a far better name. Since 1945, Canada has repudiated pretty much everything Sir John A. Macdonald stood for: the British Empire, unthinking anti-Americanism, hanging Riel, the Chinese Head Tax, Native residential schools, protectionist tariffs, extreme centralization, and spending on grandiose nation-building public works. (Would the Institute support a trans-continental high-speed train? How about giving the federal government the right to veto all provincial statutes?) Adding Laurier to the name of the institute is also unfortunate, although less so. If Laurier stood for anything at all, it was political expediency. Even by that standard, he was less effective than his protégé Mackenzie King. Laurier’s many compromises (between French and English, Catholics and Protestants, protectionists and free traders, racists and anti-racists, imperialists and Canadian nationalists) were ultimately less successful than the similar compromises made by King, who held power for longer. If the Institute wants to be a credible force in the fields of Native, immigration, and economic policy (some of the topics listed on its website), it will need to skim search the Canadian historical record again for a more appropriate name. Macdonald and Laurier were extremely partisan figures, the former calling the latter a traitor during the 1891 election campaign. Are they really suitable role models for today’s politicians?
This Institute may end up doing some useful work (although the fact it has a mediocre website, no physical address, and no university affiliation doesn’t augur well). However, it really needs to dump the existing name. The people who set up this Institute probably know very little about Macdonald and Laurier. If they did, they wouldn’t have chosen this name. The name choice suggests either historical ignorance or a really reactionary mentality. (I believe the former is more probable, because we are in Canada). The Institute’s website shows the modern Canadian flag as well as the Canadian Red Ensign is use in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The creators of the website should be aware that the Canadian Red Ensign has appropriated by white supremacist/ neo-Nazi organizations in Canada. Check out the website of the “white nationalist” immigration reform organization Canada First, although don’t do so at work!
The Red Ensign, once the emblem of the Federal Govt, is now the symbol of those who want a return to the good old days in Canada.
Anyway, to someone with enough knowledge of Canadian history, the Red Ensign seems like a singularly inappropriate symbol for an Institute that has visible-minority and francophone directors. Most of the people on the institute’s board have university degrees, so the fact they would want to identify themselves so closely with Macdonald and the Red Ensign is itself a sad statement the average Canadian’s level of historical knowledge. In the United States, you would never find an organization called the “Jefferson Davis Center for Racial Equality”. That’s because Americans who have made it out of high school know enough about their own history to realize such a name would be ridiculous. Sadly, Canadians get most of the historical information from watching US TV, so they know much less about their own country’s past leaders and symbols.
File this name in the department of the absurd. This is almost as amusing to me as Justin Trudeau’s oration at his father’s 2000 funeral, which began with the words “Friends, Romans, and Countrymen”. (These were the opening words of the speech Shakespeare’s Mark Antony delivered at the funeral of Julius Caesar, who had been assassinated because he was in the process of establishing a dictatorship in Rome. Justin’s Father, a retired Canadian Prime Minister, had died of natural causes).
The Past Speaks 
I’m saddened by the appropriation of the ensign. As a British historian, these are symbols and stories near and dear to my heart!
By the way, the new Texas school board standards bring Jeff Davis back into the mainstream of the curriculum. From an article in the NYTimes on 11 March: “the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.” If I thought they were doing it in a useful way, I might be impressed, but given the rest of the curricular changes, this is part and parcel of a “states right vs big government” theme that they’re pushing through.
Article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11texas.html
I’m saddened too, but the white supremacists have fallen in love with that flag so it is tainted. For them it represents the good old days of the Chinese Head Tax, etc. Thanks for the NY Times link.
Cheap website? What about the cheap shots you’ve taken here? If you clicked on the “Contact” button, you would find the physical address quite clearly displayed. Too much skimming, not enough careful reading, hmmm? Civil discourse and disagreement should always be encouraged. Personally insulting and inaccurate rubbish, not so much. The Red Ensign is remembered with respect and affection by many, and although it is offensive and disagreeable to have a flag that flew over many noble endeavours commandeered by a group representing some repugnant ideas, I do not accept their ownership of that flag! Why don’t you take the trouble to do a little research about the new institute and its founders before you jump to such astonishingly ignorant conclusions? And, for the record, I am not affiliated.
P.S. Ok, I stand corrected about the no physical address thing. It seems they have a bit of office space in Ottawa. But it doesn’t appear that they know much about Canadian history yet feel qualified to speak about Canadian public policy in important areas such as immigration and Native policy. That offends me because it suggests a cavalier disregard for the discipline to which I have devoted my adult life! The study of history should be central to the design of public policy and, indeed, to one’s life as a whole. To simply pillage the historical record for a couple of prestigious names is disgusting.
Just to pile on here, but why criticize them for lacking a university affiliation?
I have nothing against academics (I am one) but surely we don’t have a monopoly on intellectual virtue.
Of course not, maybe I shouldn’t have criticized them for lacking an affiliation. I was pretty angry when I wrote the original post. I was pissed off because people who seem to know very little about Macdonald and Laurier have set themselves up as experts on them and have then proclaimed that M and L are heroes whose values we should emulate in 2010 in fields such as immigration and Native policy. I’m far from an expert on either man, but I know that neither man was a hero and that their values are totally alien to those of today’s society. They weren’t villains either, I hasten to point out, just people from a radically different time and place.