The destruction of monuments is not an avenue that I favor. Education and the truth, as painful as it is, this is what I favor
Marc Miller said at his weekly press conference on Wednesday, noting in passing the irony
who wanted him to be in the Sir John A. Macdonald Building on Wellington Street in front of Parliament.
Since the recent discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a former Indigenous residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, voices have been rising from coast to coast to call for the removal of references to this painful past of children. monuments and historical places of the country.
Multiplication of requests in the name of reconciliation
Three City of Ottawa city councilors wrote a letter to the federal government on Wednesday asking it to initiate consultations on the name of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, the first to serve as Premier of the Canada and considered the architect of the residential schools program.
On Monday, a statue of his effigy was notably removed in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
At Ryerson University in Toronto, a statue was covered in graffiti overnight Tuesday, with Egerton Ryerson also helping to shape Canada’s residential school system.
While Minister Marc Miller acknowledges the dark past of Canada’s birth, he believes that this must be explained
rather than erased.
To call it residential schools was an understatement. They were re-education camps.
Often this explanation comes from Indigenous peoples, who have taken on the burden of telling this dark story to their children. And us, it is our children who teach us it, because they, they learn it at school, unlike us
, illustrated the minister.
Marc Miller also justified his mixed approach by pointing out the controversial nature of the debate in the House of Commons.Macdonald quickly became far too partisan. The more conservative are going to want to remind people that John A. Macdonald fought for gender equality “,” text “:” Discussions about John A. Macdonald quickly got way too partisan. The more conservative will want to remind people that John A. Macdonald fought for gender equality “}}”>Discussions about John A. Macdonald quickly became far too partisan. The most conservatives are going to want to remind people that John A. Macdonald fought for gender equality, he gave as an example.
Courtesy of Stephen Harper
The Harper government set out to rename places in Ottawa in honor of Conservative symbols when it gained a majority in 2011.
Within a few months, from 2011 to 2012, he had renamed the Old Ottawa City Hall in the name of former Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker, and the name of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had was attributed to the former Bank of Montreal building, the site of numerous press conferences, and to the former promenade de l’Outaouais, an important artery along the Ottawa River.
In 2015, former Senator Murray Sinclair objected to the tabling of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission being held in the Sir-John-A.-Macdonald Building. According to Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, some find it difficult to walk around the building
still today.
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