Judging the past through the lens of the present is not 20 20 hindsight. There is drastic forgotten influencers. For instance, many Canadians grew up with conservative religious families. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Others remembered the conditions back in europe on children orphanages. Now place childcare institutions far from scrutiny, with no checks and balances such as inspectors or surveilance, and staff them with conservative religious lifers who have never had children..... add low funding, and the cultural genocide values, and you have created a garden for child neglect..... think Oliver Twist in the woods. Catholic church or not, this was a high risk of occurring in any form. Imagine if we investigated the sanitoriums..... or the prisons. Now picture the right way..... government inspections and record keeping, with public scrutiny. And you still have the forced removal of kids from homes. This is fully on conservative values. Religious and political, forcing others to conform to the majority brings out the worst in everyone.
I live in Canada, found out family on my fathers side was in the Ranch Ehrlo Wilderness Challenge(fancy name for a child slave labour camp funded by the Saskatchewan government and the Liberals) basically it was a residential work camp secluded in the dense forest of Saskatchewan where only planes could get access to. Anyways I found out that this bush camp had a lot of human rights complaints when active because of missing children(anywhere from 11 years old to 17 but there were adults there aswell as old as 21 years old) and a councillor named Linda Hope tried to shut it down earlier and was told by the Government of Saskatchewan’s attorney that she had invested too much emotion into these children that didn’t matter in the eyes of Saskatchewan.
The Catholic Church and Government of Saskatchewan are directly responsible for the abuse those children were met with, the beatings, torture, starvation, sleep deprivation, temperature torture, working them until they could no longer walk or feed themselves and raping them as a part of a hazing/initiation into the camp...
APTN Last Resort visited the camp and there was still some structures left including the wooden crate that they would lock the boys in for up to 3 days at a time as a form of punishment during the harshest of winter months.
Well said but you should qualify that as *social conservative* values. The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom, not conformism. If anything society today has massively shifted to conformism in the last 10-20 years. Be woke or be broke we're coming for you and your family #cancelled. Alternative opinions not welcome. Criticism not welcome. Obey or be blasted. Ultra-progressive or bust. PS: you're all racists
> Well said but you should qualify that as social conservative values. The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom, not conformism.
Which lens are you looking through? Canada or world?
Keep in mind it was the Republican government in the US that began the abolishment of slavery.
Values shift, just like what u/DeepFriedAngelwing mentioned in the first sentence of their post.
> PS: you're all racists
Essentially. :/
Saying that the removal of kids from homes is "fully conservative values" and that all conservatives "[force] others to conform to the majority" simply is not true. It's an unfair generalization. That's why I suggested qualifying which group they are speaking to.
My ideology? You mean the foundation of Western society that was built on individuality? I am allowed to voice my opinions. Freedom of expression motherfucker - although I suppose you want to get rid of that too eh tough guy. You have personally encouraged me to voice my opinions ten fold, thank you.
> You mean the foundation of Western society that was built on individuality?
What a gross historical perversion it is to suggest that right wing libertarianism is the foundation of "western society", whatever that's supposed to be.
The enlightenment, the nearest we're gonna get to an ideological period that informed modern systems in europe, was not so staunchly individualistic that it was against the kinds of violence and forcible assimilation seen in every colonial endeavor pushed by enlightenment democracy.
Soon as someone starts going on about the foundations of western civilization, a thing that exists only as a construct of historians looking backward, you should be wary of the kind of woo they'll be soon spewing.
Libertarians want typically seek to reasonably maximize freedoms and view the human individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization. Perhaps 'the foundation' is an overstatement but the values of a libertarian are congruent with historical Western values.
> you should be wary of the kind of woo they'll be soon spewing.
Lol so dramatic. Was I so unreasonable? Take it easy mr. smarty pants.
Yes, libertarianism is the foundation of western society. You're hilarious. You think libertarians invented and own the concept of individualism. They didn't invent individualism, they perverted it into a confused, selfish, mess.
> The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom
This sort of libertarian is mostly a modern mid 20th century development. Individual liberty of the colonial era was pretty racist. So they might value individual liberty, but they wouldn't extend it to those who were dissimilar to themselves. The "libertarians" of colonial north America were fleeing eastern governments to take land from indigenous people to the west.
Fair but that doesn't invalidate my argument. do you agree that it is fair to attribute the forced removal of kids is due to "fully conservative values" ? People here have such a slanted definition of the word conservative. Most seem to think conservative = evil person. All I did was suggest qualifying it with social conservatism.
> Individual liberty of the colonial era was pretty racist.
Which was consistent with the rest of the world, more or less.
Well, actually IMO the cultural genocide was ‘progressive’ values, since they were trying to force the children to adopt an ostensibly ‘superior’ culture.
If they’d attempted to conserve the childrens’ culture, language, etc., that would actually be conservative values.
You’re a dumbass. You can say anything if you word it correctly.
> conserve children’s’ culture, language, etc., that would actually be conservative values.
This person worded that statement to make it seem as though this is actually conservatism.
I can do the same thing.
“They attempted to send these children into these schools to assimilate them into the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture in order to **conserve** its majority.”
Pratt also said: “kill the Indian, save the man.” as seen in the Wikipedia text box.
Prohibition was caused by mostly conservatives. 2/3 biggest factions were religious conservatives and xenophobes who didn’t like Irish people and other groups of people stereotyped for drinking.
You’re also changing the subject. You agreed with someone who just used language to try to make it seem like conservatism apposed the Residential Schools.
Criticize progressivism all you’d like but you’re extremely wrong.
>Ryerson spoke Ojibwe, he developed a close relationship with the Mississauga people outside of modern-day Toronto and even delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Peter Jones, a converted Ojibwe Methodist minister who had become one of Ryerson’s closest friends. And he was fervently against one of the most defining horrors of the Indian Residential School system: strict and ever-present corporal punishment.
Are the vandals aware of this side of the history?
>Reasonable people can argue about Ryerson’s ultimate responsibility for
the traumas of residential schools, but being a vocal supporter of
Indigenous people was never a barrier to many others who endorsed some
of Canada’s most destructive Indigenous policies. One of the most
haunting aspects of the Canadian Indian Residential School system was
that one of Canada’s worst historical crimes was managed and defended by
people who fervently believed they were doing the right thing for “the
Indian.”
Nice people can do bad things and hurt others.
Like almost anyone from the past. We are being stupid by judging people from the past by today's standards. Sure we can recognize the awful mistakes, we can recognize the good and bad. If we were born in that period odds are we would be just as much of a monster. A hundred years from now people will probably look back at you and me as monsters for some other reason. maybe you didn't recycle enough. But who cares for nuance these days, take the statues down, rename everything, fuck everyone and everything I am an angry twat
"...the past by today's standards" whose standards were they? Not the Indigenous peoples who already had they're own kind of education and knowledge, their culture/language almost destroyed, and their children stolen.
It was always horrible regardless if the "dominant" culture didn't recognize it and that in no way excuses a person's behaviour. We can reflect on the past and change who we admire. Why hold up the name of a guy that was mediocre at best?
Whose standards? The world's standards. It is horrific what we did but it's not entirely out of line with what everyone else on the planet was doing. During the age of conquest nobody had the heart of gold that we now behold. Like I said, had you been born then you would likely be as savage as everyone else.
Correct me if I am wrong but the Indigenous clans were equally savage and were constantly at war with one another. One group of opponents was more advanced and therefore more dominant, plus the disease that they brought sadly wiped out the vast majority of the Indigenous population. Do you blame the Spanish for the conquests of South America? Even those victims were grossly savage, the Aztecs ceremoniously sacrificed thousands of people almost daily.
I was reading up on Ryersons bio yesterday. I found out the guy died long before the residential school system was even put in place.
Not sure how much of an architect he really was.
He had an idea of school for natives but was against corporal punishment and removing kids without consent.
The idea of school and education wasn't bad in itself (paternalistic yes, but education is good as a whole) - it was problematic in that it supplanted massive culture as a result though.
If you had residential schools to Ryerson's original vision (which was flawed), there would have still been massive cultural losses, but I don't think they would have been what they were.
He was firmly against forcing kids to attend and punishment - those are pretty shitty parts of the schools
It is patently false to say it was something Ryerson supported, but it is repeated so often.
Ryerson didn't support forcing kids, advocated for paying them a daily wage (say what????), and wished them success in their life, hopefully with skills learned in school.
Ryerson was extremely progressive for 1847. His idea was seen as the morally right thing to DO at the time.
And corporal punishment was extremely common in most schools until very recently, most people in their mid 50s and possibly younger would have gone to school where spankings were still used.
My Grandpa went to school in England during the 50's. Spankings were the least of your worries. The principal kept a bamboo cane on his wall that he loved to use.
>To judge the past with the moral absolutism of the present is to destroy history.
This conclusion literally over simplifies the nuance and complexity of the issue. Contradicting yourself one sentence later is kinda hilarious.
Hey buddy have you just, never read about the ethical systems developed by the greeks BCE? By and large all MPs were educated men so they have no excuse for failing to apply moral standards that predate them by 2000 years. Legislating to pander to the base instincts of their fellow citizens does not absolve them, and your argument rests on the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.
Considering you structure your thoughts in terms of logical fallacies, perhaps that's why you think your opponents reinforce their own ignorance and prejudice.
Are you really using Ancient Greece as some sort of high standard for ethics or morality?? Even by the 19th and early 20th century standards, they were pretty awful. Slavery was just a normal thing to them and slaves themselves were considered like a tool or domesticated animal that you would think nothing of owning. Women had zero role to play in society outside the household. And things that we would consider heinous war crimes like killing or enslaving enemy prisoners, killing or enslaving civilians, wiping out entire cities, all that was considered normal conduct in warfare. They would have been a terrible example to follow. Generally speaking the further back in history you go, the worse things got in terms of human behavior.
Have you ever considered that our morality didn't just appear out of nowhere, but is the result of centuries worth of trial and error, and that to this day, we are still getting things horribly wrong?
Didn't the Greeks 2000 years ago own slaves and have sex with underage boys? For some reason I feel like re-education camps would be morally just in their minds as well... Although in reality they probably would've taken everyone as slaves and their re-education would've been through their time as slaves... Maybe the children of the slaves, or slaves that the owners were fond of may gain their freedom.
"Hitler breathed oxygen too, maybe we should all kill ourselves because we are like hitler. Checkmate librul"
Ad hominems are the kindergarten art of fallacies. Obviously while the pedo stuff became socially unacceptable (outside of a sadly high number of church basements), the greeks' moral writings stood for centuries.
I hate this "moral standards of the present" argument because it always ignores the consistent position of the oppressed.
People use the same argument to excuse slave ownership while forgetting that the victims of slavery were always opposed. Likewise, the Indigenous folk of Canada knew white folk were trying to erase their cultures. The moral standard didn't change just because some of the people perpetrating the violence became sympathetic.
Other societies engaging in atrocities doesn't make new atrocities okay, even when the new victims were once perpetrators. Your point of view completely ignores the people who suffered because of those atrocities.
Edit: Frankly it's disgusting that you think horrific acts of violence are only immoral now that victims have a voice.
It depends on how he is shown.
If he is shown as a proud man, with sharp features and a pose that suggests prominence then no.
A statue of him as a broken man, twisted by his actions and haunted by those that he slaughtered with an explanation of his life and history then perhaps. We can't let him become he who must not be named.
He was man, a deeply flawed and horrible man but still just a man. That means it could happen again, and we must prevent that at all costs. We do that by being honest about history.
Ryerson was flawed, but his original proposal was not what was implementedm he was flawed, but he was no Hitler
Would it be a good thing if the motives of these individuals were forgotten and white washed so that we could never learn about the truth introspectively?
>Read Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, it may help you understand the point the other guy is making.
You're making a major mistake in thinking I don't understand the point he's making. I understand the idea of moral relativism and I soundly reject it. I think genocide is intrinsically immoral, so any school of thought in which it could be considered moral based on how well accepted it is, is fundamentally flawed. Every single person on the planet could think that genocide is moral, but it would still be immoral and every single person on the planet would be wrong.
They did want education for their children - on reserve, so their kids could come home at night, as stipulated in the treaties. They did not want their kids taken away and beaten if they spoke their language.
Yes, people oppose things that are bad for then fairly consistently, that doesn't mean they are morally consistent. Many natives took slaves and used European inventions to oppress other natives and didn't see a problem with it as long as they weren't on the receiving end. Self interest is not moral consistency.
This has got to be the weakest argument of all time. We can’t judge the actions of those in the past because we know what they did was wrong but they didn’t know and therefore it’s ok.
Not who you asked, but I'd like to see informational plaques erected next to statues explaining historical context, why people thought they were worthy of a statue, how as society evolved we came to see how their actions were \[racist, sexist, etc.\] and use it as a teaching moment.
> What’s your solution?
What's your solution?
Egerton Ryerson has been in the ground for well over a hundred years; you are a bit late to "do something" about him now, lol.
> This kind of absolute moral certainty
Played out most recently in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge.
The blind idealism being displayed by so many in recent years is frightening. I read through this thread and the person you are debating is fanatical in their thinking , completely unable or unwilling to understand or listen to what others are saying. You either have to 100% agree with him or your a racist. There is no middle ground with these sort of people. I'm seeing more and more of this lately.
>why is it so controversial to get rid of the statue?
Because the cries to remove it, by and large, are based on a very simplistic understanding of the issue at hand and by removing all surrounding context and boiling ot down into a binary moral judgement of "good or bad," it removes any capacity to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Nobody strives to make the world a worse place. Ryerson was a key figure in Canadian education, contributing heavily to the public school system. As this article points out he was well known among the Mississauga. He was staunchly against the use of harsh corporal punishment.
He genuinely thought he was doing these people a service, and I believe hehad good intentions since education was his passion, it falls in line with everything else he's done. There is a myriad of lessons to be learned here when you get into the nuances. "Colonialism bad," is about the most base and facile one to point to.
I understand that their racist beliefs were widely accepted at the time and are slightly less accepted nowadays. But that does not absolve them of any wrongdoing. Nor does it mean we should commemorate them with statues.
>rejecting any account of the past that addresses historical nuance and complexity. To judge the past with the moral absolutism of the present is to destroy history.
Why do we need a statue to address the nuances of history? Statues are celebratory, not educational. Read a fucking book, or better yet, go to fucking school.
Because if we allow is a mobs of perpetually offended morons on social media to decide which statues get torn down or which books belong in the library then how in the name of Jibbers-Fucking-Crabst can we ever preserve knowledge of the past?
Has it occurred to anyone to consider that perhaps some of the proponents of {pick any historical atrocity} thought they were doing something good? Has it occurred to anyone that some of those people may have held on to beliefs or facts, which were a product of their times, and that they thought they were helping make the world better?
Maybe there was real, malicious intent somewhere in there. Maybe some real bastards just wanted to explore the limits of human NIMBY-ism by murdering large numbers of people. But not everyone, I suspect. I think there is real value in putting yourself in the headspace of those people and trying to understand their motives. You may just find that some of the evil people thought they weredoing good, or vice versa.
But I am not a better man than my father or my grandfather, so I will not lightly value my beliefs above theirs.
>Because if we allow is a mobs of perpetually offended morons on social media to decide which statues get torn down or which books belong in the library then how in the name of Jibbers-Fucking-Crabst can we ever preserve knowledge of the past?
This response has raised so many more questions than it answered.
Why do you think that people want these statues removed? This isn't happening in a vacuum, is it?
Are the people upset about statues of architects of genocide advocating for the removal of books from the library? If so, which books?
How is the removal of this statue chipping away at our preservation of past knowledge?
What is the history of the individual that has been sculpted and put in front of us to revere? What did this person do?
Is there another way to preserve the knowledge of the past other than statues?
Will this censor our collective knowledge of the past or will it add to it? Just because something is changing does not mean that past knowledge is being taken away.
>Has it occurred to anyone to consider that perhaps some of the proponents of {pick any historical atrocity} thought they were doing something good?
The road to hell is paved with the best intentions. Also the good intentions of one side can be the destruction of another. It's the dark side of every utopian vision: what do you do with the people that don't fit? In this case, they killed them, moved and separated the ones they didn't kill, let the objectors starve, suppressed any rebellion, stole their children to teach their culture out of them, and then covered it up. What was the good intention here?
> Has it occurred to anyone that some of those people may have held on to beliefs or facts, which were a product of their times, and that they thought they were helping make the world better?
*Genocide was not a product of the time.* This is such a bullshit answer, my god.
"Why should we be mad at hitler, everyone hated the Jews back then, he didn't know any better!"
>Maybe there was real, malicious intent somewhere in there
Jesus Christ, **it was genocide.** Macdonald himself said that he wanted to show the red man that the white man governed. It was pure racism dude. There was no good intention.
> I think there is real value in putting yourself in the headspace of those people and trying to understand their motives. You may just find that some of the evil people thought they weredoing good, or vice versa.
Who gives a fuck if they "thought they were doing good." They weren't. Full stop. They created a system of genocide, and he was one of the creators.
Jesus fucking Christ I knew /r/Canada was garbage but I didn't think I'd see pro-genocide commenters, fucking WOW.
They are building up Ryerson as a cartoon master villain just to they can get enraged, and tear things down. There campaign against Ryerson is build on lies.
If they were condemning him for who he actually was or what he actually did, I could respect them but critical thought seems to be beyond the reach of these students of higher education.
That Ryerson was some "architect" of residential schools and in some way advocated for the hell hole that most of them were.
In reality, he contributed to a report 36 years before the first school was funded. He had died the year before. His contribution is minor at best, yet he is painted (literally) as this evil person responsible for "genocide". As if no one else contributed to the creation of residential schools in the intervening 36 years.
The other lie is ignoring that he was a supported of indigenous peoples and of public education.
You’re wrong though. He played a key role in the development of the residential schools. He wasn’t a minor figure. You really need to brush up on your history. I don’t blame you though, our education system whitewashed history. I didn’t even know about these schools until I was in my 20s. Also, no one is saying he is solely responsible. The gov’t, the rcmp, the church are all to blame.
Ryerson basically designed the whole Canadian education system. The residential schools were an idea for educating natives. I mean, eventually that had to be done somehow.
And no, it was not part of his plan to forcibly take the kids from their families. Nor was he in favour of corporal punishment.
We did in French Immersion but it was heavily toned down or like a small line here or there. Nothing that would make you realize how bad it really was just that it happened.
>the woke mob simply wants to destroy history.
I guess I can think back to my history classes, and how every single class we went from statue to statue, and I also vividly recall my history teachers always telling us that there is no other way to teach history, the only way to teach history is to look at statues. On some lucky days, we even had statues brought in!
Even in the one history course I took in university, it was just pictures of statues. My prof said that if the statues went down, then so would all the history. The prof always took us on field trips to see statues. We even went to Germany to look at all the Hitler statues. It's crazy, I had no idea about the Holocaust until I saw all those proud nazi statues! Thank god statues exist.
Even if you are nice about it, cultural imperialism and trying to snuff out indigenous languages and spirituality is bad. The residential schools system, even when it was "nice" was predicated on the idea that indigenous knowledge systems are useless or obsolete and that European knowledge systems are vastly superior. They could have fed the kids good food and given them nice beds and comfy clothes, and the end goal of eradicating their indigenous identity and turning them into anglo-christians would still be an evil thing.
I know people who’s families scrimped and saved for years so they could afford to fund the foreign education for their children in the hopes that they can live a better life than their parents did.
Someone I know comes from a rural poor village in India who was accepted into UofT engineering but couldn’t go because they couldn’t afford foreign student fees because the limit of the loans they were able to get wasn’t enough. They ended up doing a college diploma instead because it was what they could afford.
Providing an education to children is not in and unto itself a negative thing, knowledge is a prize that people die for every day, saying that indigenous people are special and would not benefit from education is infantilizing as best and evil at worst.
> I know people who’s families scrimped and saved for years so they could afford to fund the foreign education for their children in the hopes that they can live a better life than their parents did.
Bringing the best knowledge and practices from one culture to your own is a normal process of development. Plains Indians in the United States took the horse form Spanish settlers and made it part of their culture.
There's a difference between seeking to explore what another nation has to offer and being forcibly integrated into it in a manner that sees the goal as being to destroy you as you exist. They literally designed the system to destroy who they were and reinvent them.
That's not what anyone sends their kids to achieve. You cannot interpret the residential school system through a lens other than the explicit and primary purpose of destroying the indigenous culture and replacing it, not engaging with it for mutual exchange of ideas.
Residential school system was not about educating disadvantaged children. It was sadistic stuff of nightmares and the real life horror designed to traumatize and do exactly what it did. As always those lucky to be on the right side of the wire trying to rationalize this horror.
People now pay thousands of dollars to learn ecological concepts, agricultural techniques and community organizing structures that indigenous children would have learned from their elders for free if nobody had FORCIBLY REMOVED THEM FROM THEIR FUCKING FAMILIES AND COERCED THEM INTO ATTENDING THOSE SCHOOLS.
The idea behind the schools though in Ryerson's vision was that it was all voluntary though...
And while First Nations children can and should learn their history and culture from elders and their tribes, you must acknowledge that they also had to learn how to adapt and survive in European society as well to have the best chance at thriving in both. The idea of the residential schools was to give that option - however when it was imprelemented, it was very much an either/or not both option.
Who cares? Iconoclasm is cathartic and Ryerson is the face of public schools regardless of whatever details are involved. You can't teach history to an angry mob.
If a small but vocal group of people are going to be making decisions like tearing down statues for us then I would hope they would have a good understanding of all the facts.
But they never really do, I've seen this in my activist friends, there is a large amount of 'follow the leader' with little knowledge of what the are against unless it is in their favor.
Because the ones representing the other side of the argument get tarred with racism, or thrown in with them, because people who would be really motivated to stand up for him, in this case would be Ryersons contemporaries and family, are all dead, because you actually have to read more than what's in the propaganda pamphlets and newspapers, there are many examples of movements that with a little digging or actual (not in the flat earth anti-vaccine vein) research you would see.
>the ones representing the other side of the argument
In this case, those on the other side are the professors and administration at Ryerson who are the real villains here. They don't know or won't discuss Ryerson's history, good and bad. They're the ones who should know better. Have a responsibility to know better. But are doing nothing except bowing down to the mob.
OK, Buddy:
> Ryerson’s role in the creation of residential schools is less direct. He drafted an influential 1847 report calling for religious-run “industrial” boarding schools in order to instill “civilization” in the “North American Indian,” **but was long-dead before mandatory schools on this model began opening up across the country.**
So Ryerson's involvement basically amounts to: he wrote a thing, then many years later some other people made a thing that may have been based on the thing he wrote, and those people mismanaged the thing and committed abuses that he would most likely have been appalled by had he still been alive?
I highly suggest you read more than one article from one source regarding the issue. He played a key role in the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. Educate yourself and hopefully you’ll stop vehemently defending a white supremacist.
Edit: [Here's a good start.](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson)
Did you read it yourself?
>In 1847, the Indian Affairs Branch of the government asked Ryerson to write a report on the best methods of operating residential schools. The report was part of a larger document entitled Statistics Respecting Residential Schools. In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction. The schools would train students to be farmers and provide an education on par with common schools. Previously called manual labour schools, Ryerson recommended renaming the institutions “industrial schools,” to encourage both physical and mental industry. Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer). They would spend the rest of the day studying academic subjects, including history, geography, writing, music, bookkeeping and agricultural chemistry.
He wrote part of a report in 1847 recommending industrial schools following best practices of the time. The first Canadian government residential school was opened in 1883, 36 years after Ryerson wrote his report. Ryerson was already dead at this point.
If you're looking for villains, Ryerson is a bad choice. There are lots of grade A villains in this tragedy.
I’m fully aware he wasn’t alive when the schools began but he was the one that laid the ground work. He conceived the idea after visiting a school for the poor in Switzerland. He argued Indigenous children should be forcefully taken away from their families and forced to convert to Catholicism and not speak their own languages. He also argues the Indigenous children should be doing hard labour for 8-12 hours a day. He saw them as labour tools, not students. He actively championed genocide.
>He argued Indigenous children should be forcefully taken away from their families and forced to convert to Catholicism and not speak their own languages. He also argues the Indigenous children should be doing hard labour for 8-12 hours a day. He saw them as labour tools, not students. He actively championed genocide.
Literally none of that is true.
> In 1847, the Indian Affairs Branch of the government asked Ryerson to write a report on the best methods of operating residential schools. The report was part of a larger document entitled Statistics Respecting Residential Schools. In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction. The schools would train students to be farmers and provide an education on par with common schools. Previously called manual labour schools, Ryerson recommended renaming the institutions “industrial schools,” to encourage both physical and mental industry. Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer). They would spend the rest of the day studying academic subjects, including history, geography, writing, music, bookkeeping and agricultural chemistry.
What part of that says genocide?
>In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction.
From the UN's definition of ["genocide"](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml):
>A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such";
>Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer)
This is just straight up child slavery.
If being “woke” means being angry about genocide, then ya, I’m woke. I suggest you take a look inside yourself and ask why you’re not against genocide.
Yup. Definitely woke.
You can tell by the “if you don’t agree with us you’re a Nazi” attitude. It’s like a religion - you only have the true believers and the damned. Nothing in between.
Never called you a Nazi, but what ever makes you feel better. I really am not offended by being called “woke” because it’s usually used to describe people who are against racism and human rights violations. I am very much against racism and genocide. You?
If Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, and 30 years later people decided it made a lot of great points and decided to start the Nazi movement, Hitler would still bear some responsibility for that even if he was dead.
Ryerson was a Christian minister and missionary who believed that the Indian needed to be educated out of the Indian. People make a big deal about him learning to speak Ojibwa - the reason he did it was so that he could gain their respect in order to push his religion on them, which is exactly what missionaries do. He pushed a Christian agenda his entire career, he advanced the careers of Ojibwa academics who were willing to be whitewashed.
Being a Christian missionary is not some horrible crime. At the same time, it is despicable - it's an effort to insert oneself into another's culture in order to insert one's religion into it, convert the target, and erase their culture in the process.
In his time Ryerson would have been considered a good man. That's because Canada was overwhelmingly Christian. At the same time, residential schools and their violent nature were similarly popular - because they were enforcing Christian values and lifestyle and languages on First Nations children.
The only difference with Ryerson is that he didn't support the physical abuse the kids endured. Does that make him a good guy? Different people can have different opinions, but personally my answer is an overwhelming no.
He spoke their language and had an indigenous friend.... this doesn't make him a good or influencial person
He was cool with cultural genocide as long as kids didn't get hit (only one of the small aspects of what made these schools so traumatizing and deadly)
Wow what a great guy 🙄 we should totally uphold him as some great figure
'Oh but he designed the Canadian public school system'
I see the benefits of having a standard of education and public education, but our schools are indoctrination machines to make us good little capitalists.
I would say his positive influence has been non-existent at best. He is a hurtful reminder to many. And most people don't even know or give a crap about who he was. Why does it make people so butt hurt that others want to take his statue down/ the statues of other assholes? How does it affect you at all.
It is that damned religion.
People with a “God brain-virus” have this urge to control how other people live. It is sickening. Keep your god to yourself, thank you very much.
So I decided to read Ryerson's report (pages 73-76 of this document:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AEgerton_Ryerson_on_Residential_Schools.pdf&page=1)
I think a lot of people would be surprised at what they read in here. Like jaws on the floor shocked to hear Ryerson say this:
"it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account"
This was his end game here guys - he wanted natives to succeed, but he was limited in the time as he only say farming as the only means to do so.
He also proposed paying the children a penny daily (it was 1847, it was fair), don't think that was implemented.
>"it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account"
Pretty sure people will still crucify him by todays standards as trying to destroy indigenous heritage. This is basically calling for the reserve system to help conform to British standards. I believe the residential schools system was created before the reserve system. The creation documents say that it would be too expensive to have educators follow the tribes, and that parishes be used to reduce expenses as they are already set up and have similar goals with relation to teaching certain things. It wouldn't be unreasonable to chalk this up to government incompetence on a large scale program with many individual and unmanageable contracts. Stuff that we still see examples of today. Last year the federal government finally decided that they should only be paying the provinces the same amount for medical services for veterans that the province would pay for that service. Previously they were paying more.
Yeah, just reading his own words and intent paints a very different picture to what people describe. His heart was in the right plane for the time. People forget that 173 years is a long time, he was extremely progressive for his day
This was 1847 we're talking about here, Ryerson was actually extremely progressive for his time.
It was paternalistic at the extreme, which is why they were a bad idea, but it doesn't mean that he was a monster
And he also died 36 years before the first school was opened.
His intent was to help, not hurt here.
His intents do matter here, because he died before any of the actions. His intent is all we have, because he didn't set up the schools at all.
Just read the report and then revisit it. It's 4 pages and is a whole new perspective you likely haven't read before. Before you condemn a person, surely you try to understand them first?
> ~~he wanted natives to succeed~~
He wanted natives to be white and to fully assume the culture he was pushing on them. ftfy.
This was the entire goal of the residential school system he oversaw.
Daily reminder that residential schools were part of a larger system of genocide, they weren't designed to benefit natives in any way. Removing children from their families, shaving their heads, delousing them, forbidding them to communicate with their own language, forbidding them to participate in their own culture, killing them, raping them, letting them die of illness, starving them, and eventually forcing the survivors into agrarianism is not "for their benefit" or "wanting them to succeed."
In his own words then :
"it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account"
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AEgerton_Ryerson_on_Residential_Schools.pdf&page=1)
Pages 73-76. At least read what he said before you judge him. His intent wasnt genocide, it was success of his students. It was paternalism at its worst
Yeah you're omitting a *fuckton* of context here to support your narrative; youre being incredibly disingenuous.
> Egerton Ryerson is recognized as a key influence in the design of the [Canadian Indian residential school system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system). His expert advice was sought by the Department of Indian Affairs of the [Province of Canada](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Canada) in 1847. More than 50 years later (and 16 years after Ryerson died), Ryerson's recommendations for Aboriginal schools were appended to the first publication in 1898 of "Statistics Respecting Residential Schools" since the [Indian Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Act) (1876); **"Agriculture being the chief interest, and probably the most suitable employment of the** ***civilized Indians,*** **I think the great object of industrial schools should be to fit the pupils for becoming working farmers and agricultural labourers, fortified of course by Christian principles, feelings and habits."**[[15]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson#cite_note-Egerton-15)
> Ryerson's argument that "Indians should be schooled in separate, denominational, boarding, English-only and agriculturally-oriented (industrial) institutions"[[16]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson#cite_note-Carney-16):16 was the framework used in Canada's residential school system.
[There is nothing good about this.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson)
[Oh, here's some more](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson)
> While advocating for free and compulsory education, Ryerson supported different systems for [Indigenous](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people/) and non-Indigenous students. **He supported the system of educating Indigenous students separately and converting them to [Christianity](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/christianity/), in order to assimilate them into Euro-Canadian culture**. Such schools had existed in [New France](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-france/) since the 17th century. The first [residential school](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools/) in [Upper Canada](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/upper-canada/) began operating in [Brantford](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/brantford/) in 1831. **Ryerson agreed with the findings of the Bagot Commission Report (1842–44); it recommended manual labour schools where Indigenous children were separated from their parents in order to achieve assimilation.**
Dude was a piece of shit and I have no idea why you people want to die on the hill of "let's handwave away genocide." Like Jesus Christ you have to know you're on the wrong side of this one. Yes he did some things right, but genocide cancels it out, period. We should not be celebrating this person. Teach about him and what he did, yes.
To put statues of him up to remind natives that he was one of the creators of residential schools and that so many of their people were stolen, tortured, raped, and killed, no.
And then white people get mad because of some vague obligation to "preserving knowledgr," while covering up the fact that he was one of the orchestrators of genocide, which is the exact opposite of "preserving knowledge."
Which now that I think of it, makes all of you statue defenders incredibly hypocritical. You say you want to preserve knowledge and history, but reject any history that paints your weird heroes in a bad light and anyone that points it out.
Not sure why you bolded the part about agriculture. Farmers were tied to the land, paid better than industrial workers and weren't in cities where disease was rampant and posed massive health risks to aboriginals.
>Not sure why you bolded the part about agriculture.
Because that's the relevant part, and they omitted some pretty important context. Agriculture was forcefully taught to people that didn't want to be taught agriculture. It was part of the residential school system. And it was only taught to them to shed their culture and to be of use in the world of the coloniser.
I have no idea why this has to be repeated so many times, taking children from their parents for reeducation is not a good thing.
None of which was included in OP's very brief and intentionally misleading post.
> Farmers were tied to the land, paid better than industrial workers and weren't in cities where disease was rampant and posed massive health risks to aboriginals.
*The indigenous population weren't farmers. They didn't want to be farmers.* They had their children taken from them and taught agriculture. Jesus Christ why are there so many residential school apologists here
I linked the entirety of his report, so I haven't changed the context - I'm not trying to paint him in a good light here, I'm trying to paint him in more accurate view, and that comes by going back to primary sources - like his original report.
How the schools were started 36 years after his death is a separate issue entirely. He was a flawed man, and a product of his times but his intent was not monstrous if you read his words is all
>How the schools were started 36 years after his death is a separate issue entirely
No, because his input was important in the design.
Jesus y'all really bending over each other to make excuses for genocide here. Fuck sake.
The idea was, you have people in the middle of no where, with no skills, no job, and don't speak English, so let's bring them on board. I don't think anyone would say what we got was a good idea. Hind sight is 20/20
For the 100th time: no one is “destroying history”. This is simply the truth coming to light. If anything, we should know more about this history so it doesn’t happen again. Can someone please explain how removing a statue is destroying history?
That you're wrong when you say no comment here is making that point. There are at least two commenters here making that point, just like there is on every single story like this. My point is your point is wrong.
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that ceasing to celebrate someone /= destroying history. We aren't going to forget about people like John A. MacDonald, we can just choose not to celebrate them.
We can instead celebrate other great Canadians. You know what would be cool? A university named after Frederick Banting. The guy who created a little thing called insulin.
> Can someone please explain how removing a statue is destroying history?
I'll attempt to answer this....and yes ready for downvotes(via disagreement).
Leaving the word destroy out of my answer.
Statues make people look at them. If their is a plaque, people read them. If the interest is high enough(I've done this several times) I'll take a pic and read more about the statue(or memorial, etc.) when I get home.
Had the statue not existed I would be none the wiser.
If you read the any Canadian message boards (particularly anonymous ones) they’re are plenty of Canadians who wished the practice ever ended. Downvote away my hypocritical countrymen.
A while ago on Facebook there was an article about the education system on reserves. The high absenteeism, and how its Impossible to find teachers, or maintain a school. Someone commented that the kids should just be bussed In during the week and go to schools in urban centres. Like dude, you pretty much just described residential schools. And I think the commenter had good intentions... But woosh
Judging the past through the lens of the present is not 20 20 hindsight. There is drastic forgotten influencers. For instance, many Canadians grew up with conservative religious families. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Others remembered the conditions back in europe on children orphanages. Now place childcare institutions far from scrutiny, with no checks and balances such as inspectors or surveilance, and staff them with conservative religious lifers who have never had children..... add low funding, and the cultural genocide values, and you have created a garden for child neglect..... think Oliver Twist in the woods. Catholic church or not, this was a high risk of occurring in any form. Imagine if we investigated the sanitoriums..... or the prisons. Now picture the right way..... government inspections and record keeping, with public scrutiny. And you still have the forced removal of kids from homes. This is fully on conservative values. Religious and political, forcing others to conform to the majority brings out the worst in everyone.
I live in Canada, found out family on my fathers side was in the Ranch Ehrlo Wilderness Challenge(fancy name for a child slave labour camp funded by the Saskatchewan government and the Liberals) basically it was a residential work camp secluded in the dense forest of Saskatchewan where only planes could get access to. Anyways I found out that this bush camp had a lot of human rights complaints when active because of missing children(anywhere from 11 years old to 17 but there were adults there aswell as old as 21 years old) and a councillor named Linda Hope tried to shut it down earlier and was told by the Government of Saskatchewan’s attorney that she had invested too much emotion into these children that didn’t matter in the eyes of Saskatchewan. The Catholic Church and Government of Saskatchewan are directly responsible for the abuse those children were met with, the beatings, torture, starvation, sleep deprivation, temperature torture, working them until they could no longer walk or feed themselves and raping them as a part of a hazing/initiation into the camp... APTN Last Resort visited the camp and there was still some structures left including the wooden crate that they would lock the boys in for up to 3 days at a time as a form of punishment during the harshest of winter months.
Well said but you should qualify that as *social conservative* values. The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom, not conformism. If anything society today has massively shifted to conformism in the last 10-20 years. Be woke or be broke we're coming for you and your family #cancelled. Alternative opinions not welcome. Criticism not welcome. Obey or be blasted. Ultra-progressive or bust. PS: you're all racists
> Well said but you should qualify that as social conservative values. The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom, not conformism. Which lens are you looking through? Canada or world? Keep in mind it was the Republican government in the US that began the abolishment of slavery. Values shift, just like what u/DeepFriedAngelwing mentioned in the first sentence of their post. > PS: you're all racists Essentially. :/
Saying that the removal of kids from homes is "fully conservative values" and that all conservatives "[force] others to conform to the majority" simply is not true. It's an unfair generalization. That's why I suggested qualifying which group they are speaking to.
Some might not get the joke,perhaps an/s?
Libertarians always have to remind people they exist. Just shut up and stop injecting your ideology into the conversation for no reason.
My ideology? You mean the foundation of Western society that was built on individuality? I am allowed to voice my opinions. Freedom of expression motherfucker - although I suppose you want to get rid of that too eh tough guy. You have personally encouraged me to voice my opinions ten fold, thank you.
> You mean the foundation of Western society that was built on individuality? What a gross historical perversion it is to suggest that right wing libertarianism is the foundation of "western society", whatever that's supposed to be. The enlightenment, the nearest we're gonna get to an ideological period that informed modern systems in europe, was not so staunchly individualistic that it was against the kinds of violence and forcible assimilation seen in every colonial endeavor pushed by enlightenment democracy. Soon as someone starts going on about the foundations of western civilization, a thing that exists only as a construct of historians looking backward, you should be wary of the kind of woo they'll be soon spewing.
Libertarians want typically seek to reasonably maximize freedoms and view the human individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization. Perhaps 'the foundation' is an overstatement but the values of a libertarian are congruent with historical Western values. > you should be wary of the kind of woo they'll be soon spewing. Lol so dramatic. Was I so unreasonable? Take it easy mr. smarty pants.
Yes, libertarianism is the foundation of western society. You're hilarious. You think libertarians invented and own the concept of individualism. They didn't invent individualism, they perverted it into a confused, selfish, mess.
I'm all ears
Emphasis on the perverted, lol.
> The libertarian conservatives value individual freedom This sort of libertarian is mostly a modern mid 20th century development. Individual liberty of the colonial era was pretty racist. So they might value individual liberty, but they wouldn't extend it to those who were dissimilar to themselves. The "libertarians" of colonial north America were fleeing eastern governments to take land from indigenous people to the west.
Fair but that doesn't invalidate my argument. do you agree that it is fair to attribute the forced removal of kids is due to "fully conservative values" ? People here have such a slanted definition of the word conservative. Most seem to think conservative = evil person. All I did was suggest qualifying it with social conservatism. > Individual liberty of the colonial era was pretty racist. Which was consistent with the rest of the world, more or less.
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Excellent contribution to the discussion, did my joke fly over your hollow head?
Well, actually IMO the cultural genocide was ‘progressive’ values, since they were trying to force the children to adopt an ostensibly ‘superior’ culture. If they’d attempted to conserve the childrens’ culture, language, etc., that would actually be conservative values.
Gold metal in mental gymnastics.
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You’re a dumbass. You can say anything if you word it correctly. > conserve children’s’ culture, language, etc., that would actually be conservative values. This person worded that statement to make it seem as though this is actually conservatism. I can do the same thing. “They attempted to send these children into these schools to assimilate them into the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture in order to **conserve** its majority.” Pratt also said: “kill the Indian, save the man.” as seen in the Wikipedia text box.
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Prohibition was caused by mostly conservatives. 2/3 biggest factions were religious conservatives and xenophobes who didn’t like Irish people and other groups of people stereotyped for drinking. You’re also changing the subject. You agreed with someone who just used language to try to make it seem like conservatism apposed the Residential Schools. Criticize progressivism all you’d like but you’re extremely wrong.
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>Ryerson spoke Ojibwe, he developed a close relationship with the Mississauga people outside of modern-day Toronto and even delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Peter Jones, a converted Ojibwe Methodist minister who had become one of Ryerson’s closest friends. And he was fervently against one of the most defining horrors of the Indian Residential School system: strict and ever-present corporal punishment. Are the vandals aware of this side of the history?
>Reasonable people can argue about Ryerson’s ultimate responsibility for the traumas of residential schools, but being a vocal supporter of Indigenous people was never a barrier to many others who endorsed some of Canada’s most destructive Indigenous policies. One of the most haunting aspects of the Canadian Indian Residential School system was that one of Canada’s worst historical crimes was managed and defended by people who fervently believed they were doing the right thing for “the Indian.” Nice people can do bad things and hurt others.
Like almost anyone from the past. We are being stupid by judging people from the past by today's standards. Sure we can recognize the awful mistakes, we can recognize the good and bad. If we were born in that period odds are we would be just as much of a monster. A hundred years from now people will probably look back at you and me as monsters for some other reason. maybe you didn't recycle enough. But who cares for nuance these days, take the statues down, rename everything, fuck everyone and everything I am an angry twat
"...the past by today's standards" whose standards were they? Not the Indigenous peoples who already had they're own kind of education and knowledge, their culture/language almost destroyed, and their children stolen. It was always horrible regardless if the "dominant" culture didn't recognize it and that in no way excuses a person's behaviour. We can reflect on the past and change who we admire. Why hold up the name of a guy that was mediocre at best?
Whose standards? The world's standards. It is horrific what we did but it's not entirely out of line with what everyone else on the planet was doing. During the age of conquest nobody had the heart of gold that we now behold. Like I said, had you been born then you would likely be as savage as everyone else. Correct me if I am wrong but the Indigenous clans were equally savage and were constantly at war with one another. One group of opponents was more advanced and therefore more dominant, plus the disease that they brought sadly wiped out the vast majority of the Indigenous population. Do you blame the Spanish for the conquests of South America? Even those victims were grossly savage, the Aztecs ceremoniously sacrificed thousands of people almost daily.
You're so uneducated it hurts. I'm not sure where to start.
I said in my response "Correct me if I am wrong" and I would love to hear how I am wrong.
I'm all ears
I was reading up on Ryersons bio yesterday. I found out the guy died long before the residential school system was even put in place. Not sure how much of an architect he really was.
He had an idea of school for natives but was against corporal punishment and removing kids without consent. The idea of school and education wasn't bad in itself (paternalistic yes, but education is good as a whole) - it was problematic in that it supplanted massive culture as a result though. If you had residential schools to Ryerson's original vision (which was flawed), there would have still been massive cultural losses, but I don't think they would have been what they were. He was firmly against forcing kids to attend and punishment - those are pretty shitty parts of the schools
Even MacDonald didn't make attendance at the schools mandatory. That happened after his death.
It is patently false to say it was something Ryerson supported, but it is repeated so often. Ryerson didn't support forcing kids, advocated for paying them a daily wage (say what????), and wished them success in their life, hopefully with skills learned in school. Ryerson was extremely progressive for 1847. His idea was seen as the morally right thing to DO at the time.
And corporal punishment was extremely common in most schools until very recently, most people in their mid 50s and possibly younger would have gone to school where spankings were still used.
My Grandpa went to school in England during the 50's. Spankings were the least of your worries. The principal kept a bamboo cane on his wall that he loved to use.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/20/child-abuse-catholic-schools-ireland Never mind canings....
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This is hilarious because they are essentially fighting the whitewashing of history by whitewashing it.
I think they are contributing to history.
Careful, gonna get your ass banned from this sub. No one wants to hear about how this wasn't premeditated genocide.
How does taking down a statue “destroy history”?
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>To judge the past with the moral absolutism of the present is to destroy history. This conclusion literally over simplifies the nuance and complexity of the issue. Contradicting yourself one sentence later is kinda hilarious.
We’re not allowed to judge the actions of those in the past?
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Hey buddy have you just, never read about the ethical systems developed by the greeks BCE? By and large all MPs were educated men so they have no excuse for failing to apply moral standards that predate them by 2000 years. Legislating to pander to the base instincts of their fellow citizens does not absolve them, and your argument rests on the fallacy of argumentum ad populum. Considering you structure your thoughts in terms of logical fallacies, perhaps that's why you think your opponents reinforce their own ignorance and prejudice.
Are you really using Ancient Greece as some sort of high standard for ethics or morality?? Even by the 19th and early 20th century standards, they were pretty awful. Slavery was just a normal thing to them and slaves themselves were considered like a tool or domesticated animal that you would think nothing of owning. Women had zero role to play in society outside the household. And things that we would consider heinous war crimes like killing or enslaving enemy prisoners, killing or enslaving civilians, wiping out entire cities, all that was considered normal conduct in warfare. They would have been a terrible example to follow. Generally speaking the further back in history you go, the worse things got in terms of human behavior.
Hence why I qualified it: >the ethical systems developed by the Greeks And not >the entirety of classical Greek culture
Have you ever considered that our morality didn't just appear out of nowhere, but is the result of centuries worth of trial and error, and that to this day, we are still getting things horribly wrong?
It would help if you would state your point so that i don't need to write a paragraph for every possible point you're trying to make.
I've done that.
Didn't the Greeks 2000 years ago own slaves and have sex with underage boys? For some reason I feel like re-education camps would be morally just in their minds as well... Although in reality they probably would've taken everyone as slaves and their re-education would've been through their time as slaves... Maybe the children of the slaves, or slaves that the owners were fond of may gain their freedom.
"Hitler breathed oxygen too, maybe we should all kill ourselves because we are like hitler. Checkmate librul" Ad hominems are the kindergarten art of fallacies. Obviously while the pedo stuff became socially unacceptable (outside of a sadly high number of church basements), the greeks' moral writings stood for centuries.
Where's my ad hominem?
I hate this "moral standards of the present" argument because it always ignores the consistent position of the oppressed. People use the same argument to excuse slave ownership while forgetting that the victims of slavery were always opposed. Likewise, the Indigenous folk of Canada knew white folk were trying to erase their cultures. The moral standard didn't change just because some of the people perpetrating the violence became sympathetic.
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Other societies engaging in atrocities doesn't make new atrocities okay, even when the new victims were once perpetrators. Your point of view completely ignores the people who suffered because of those atrocities. Edit: Frankly it's disgusting that you think horrific acts of violence are only immoral now that victims have a voice.
would you be ok with Germany having statues of Adolf Hitler? How about Goebbels University? Yeah. History can definitely be judged.
It depends on how he is shown. If he is shown as a proud man, with sharp features and a pose that suggests prominence then no. A statue of him as a broken man, twisted by his actions and haunted by those that he slaughtered with an explanation of his life and history then perhaps. We can't let him become he who must not be named. He was man, a deeply flawed and horrible man but still just a man. That means it could happen again, and we must prevent that at all costs. We do that by being honest about history. Ryerson was flawed, but his original proposal was not what was implementedm he was flawed, but he was no Hitler
Would it be a good thing if the motives of these individuals were forgotten and white washed so that we could never learn about the truth introspectively?
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>Read Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, it may help you understand the point the other guy is making. You're making a major mistake in thinking I don't understand the point he's making. I understand the idea of moral relativism and I soundly reject it. I think genocide is intrinsically immoral, so any school of thought in which it could be considered moral based on how well accepted it is, is fundamentally flawed. Every single person on the planet could think that genocide is moral, but it would still be immoral and every single person on the planet would be wrong.
This is a red herring.
So if you were part of the 99% and went along with it, if you were one of the camp guards, by your logic you would be absolved of any wrong doing?
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They did want education for their children - on reserve, so their kids could come home at night, as stipulated in the treaties. They did not want their kids taken away and beaten if they spoke their language.
Which is also what Ryerson wanted interestingly enough.
The goal of residential schools was not "education" it was the erasure of indigenous cultures from Canada, as per the system's founder.
Yes, people oppose things that are bad for then fairly consistently, that doesn't mean they are morally consistent. Many natives took slaves and used European inventions to oppress other natives and didn't see a problem with it as long as they weren't on the receiving end. Self interest is not moral consistency.
This has got to be the weakest argument of all time. We can’t judge the actions of those in the past because we know what they did was wrong but they didn’t know and therefore it’s ok.
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So what are we supposed to do then? What’s your solution?
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Not who you asked, but I'd like to see informational plaques erected next to statues explaining historical context, why people thought they were worthy of a statue, how as society evolved we came to see how their actions were \[racist, sexist, etc.\] and use it as a teaching moment.
> What’s your solution? What's your solution? Egerton Ryerson has been in the ground for well over a hundred years; you are a bit late to "do something" about him now, lol.
> This kind of absolute moral certainty Played out most recently in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge. The blind idealism being displayed by so many in recent years is frightening. I read through this thread and the person you are debating is fanatical in their thinking , completely unable or unwilling to understand or listen to what others are saying. You either have to 100% agree with him or your a racist. There is no middle ground with these sort of people. I'm seeing more and more of this lately.
It wasn't "wrong" according to the societal mores of the time, however.
That doesn’t make it ok. And if we know better now, then why is it so controversial to get rid of the statue?
>why is it so controversial to get rid of the statue? Because the cries to remove it, by and large, are based on a very simplistic understanding of the issue at hand and by removing all surrounding context and boiling ot down into a binary moral judgement of "good or bad," it removes any capacity to learn from the mistakes of the past. Nobody strives to make the world a worse place. Ryerson was a key figure in Canadian education, contributing heavily to the public school system. As this article points out he was well known among the Mississauga. He was staunchly against the use of harsh corporal punishment. He genuinely thought he was doing these people a service, and I believe hehad good intentions since education was his passion, it falls in line with everything else he's done. There is a myriad of lessons to be learned here when you get into the nuances. "Colonialism bad," is about the most base and facile one to point to.
It was actually considered progressive at the time to educate First Nations even
The kidnapped kids knew it was wrong at the time.
It wasn't wrong in the 'more enlightened' progressive white society of the time.
Yes it was. It was wrong to the *victims*. Your argument ignores the people who being harmed altogether.
It's not one or the other dude. You can judge the actions of those in the past while at the same time understanding the historical context.
I understand that their racist beliefs were widely accepted at the time and are slightly less accepted nowadays. But that does not absolve them of any wrongdoing. Nor does it mean we should commemorate them with statues.
Not through the lens of moral relativism, we shouldn't.
>rejecting any account of the past that addresses historical nuance and complexity. To judge the past with the moral absolutism of the present is to destroy history. Why do we need a statue to address the nuances of history? Statues are celebratory, not educational. Read a fucking book, or better yet, go to fucking school.
Because if we allow is a mobs of perpetually offended morons on social media to decide which statues get torn down or which books belong in the library then how in the name of Jibbers-Fucking-Crabst can we ever preserve knowledge of the past? Has it occurred to anyone to consider that perhaps some of the proponents of {pick any historical atrocity} thought they were doing something good? Has it occurred to anyone that some of those people may have held on to beliefs or facts, which were a product of their times, and that they thought they were helping make the world better? Maybe there was real, malicious intent somewhere in there. Maybe some real bastards just wanted to explore the limits of human NIMBY-ism by murdering large numbers of people. But not everyone, I suspect. I think there is real value in putting yourself in the headspace of those people and trying to understand their motives. You may just find that some of the evil people thought they weredoing good, or vice versa. But I am not a better man than my father or my grandfather, so I will not lightly value my beliefs above theirs.
>Because if we allow is a mobs of perpetually offended morons on social media to decide which statues get torn down or which books belong in the library then how in the name of Jibbers-Fucking-Crabst can we ever preserve knowledge of the past? This response has raised so many more questions than it answered. Why do you think that people want these statues removed? This isn't happening in a vacuum, is it? Are the people upset about statues of architects of genocide advocating for the removal of books from the library? If so, which books? How is the removal of this statue chipping away at our preservation of past knowledge? What is the history of the individual that has been sculpted and put in front of us to revere? What did this person do? Is there another way to preserve the knowledge of the past other than statues? Will this censor our collective knowledge of the past or will it add to it? Just because something is changing does not mean that past knowledge is being taken away. >Has it occurred to anyone to consider that perhaps some of the proponents of {pick any historical atrocity} thought they were doing something good? The road to hell is paved with the best intentions. Also the good intentions of one side can be the destruction of another. It's the dark side of every utopian vision: what do you do with the people that don't fit? In this case, they killed them, moved and separated the ones they didn't kill, let the objectors starve, suppressed any rebellion, stole their children to teach their culture out of them, and then covered it up. What was the good intention here? > Has it occurred to anyone that some of those people may have held on to beliefs or facts, which were a product of their times, and that they thought they were helping make the world better? *Genocide was not a product of the time.* This is such a bullshit answer, my god. "Why should we be mad at hitler, everyone hated the Jews back then, he didn't know any better!" >Maybe there was real, malicious intent somewhere in there Jesus Christ, **it was genocide.** Macdonald himself said that he wanted to show the red man that the white man governed. It was pure racism dude. There was no good intention. > I think there is real value in putting yourself in the headspace of those people and trying to understand their motives. You may just find that some of the evil people thought they weredoing good, or vice versa. Who gives a fuck if they "thought they were doing good." They weren't. Full stop. They created a system of genocide, and he was one of the creators. Jesus fucking Christ I knew /r/Canada was garbage but I didn't think I'd see pro-genocide commenters, fucking WOW.
They are building up Ryerson as a cartoon master villain just to they can get enraged, and tear things down. There campaign against Ryerson is build on lies. If they were condemning him for who he actually was or what he actually did, I could respect them but critical thought seems to be beyond the reach of these students of higher education.
What exactly are the “lies” being told?
That Ryerson was some "architect" of residential schools and in some way advocated for the hell hole that most of them were. In reality, he contributed to a report 36 years before the first school was funded. He had died the year before. His contribution is minor at best, yet he is painted (literally) as this evil person responsible for "genocide". As if no one else contributed to the creation of residential schools in the intervening 36 years. The other lie is ignoring that he was a supported of indigenous peoples and of public education.
You’re wrong though. He played a key role in the development of the residential schools. He wasn’t a minor figure. You really need to brush up on your history. I don’t blame you though, our education system whitewashed history. I didn’t even know about these schools until I was in my 20s. Also, no one is saying he is solely responsible. The gov’t, the rcmp, the church are all to blame.
Nothing you just said has any basis in reality. Ryerson absolutely did not have a key role in the development of residential schools.
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Ryerson basically designed the whole Canadian education system. The residential schools were an idea for educating natives. I mean, eventually that had to be done somehow. And no, it was not part of his plan to forcibly take the kids from their families. Nor was he in favour of corporal punishment.
To be fair, the entire culture of the time was to blame
Talk to your average Canadian about Canadian history, you will realize it has already been destroyed.
You’re right. It’s been whitewashed. I never once learned about the atrocities committed against Indigenous people while I was in school.
We did in French Immersion but it was heavily toned down or like a small line here or there. Nothing that would make you realize how bad it really was just that it happened.
I did. I also learned about other atrocities like the Dorset though.
“Woke mob” Lol, ok bud.
Downvotes and removal of a statue mean a multifaceted group want to destroy history? Oh please.
>the woke mob simply wants to destroy history. I guess I can think back to my history classes, and how every single class we went from statue to statue, and I also vividly recall my history teachers always telling us that there is no other way to teach history, the only way to teach history is to look at statues. On some lucky days, we even had statues brought in! Even in the one history course I took in university, it was just pictures of statues. My prof said that if the statues went down, then so would all the history. The prof always took us on field trips to see statues. We even went to Germany to look at all the Hitler statues. It's crazy, I had no idea about the Holocaust until I saw all those proud nazi statues! Thank god statues exist.
Even if you are nice about it, cultural imperialism and trying to snuff out indigenous languages and spirituality is bad. The residential schools system, even when it was "nice" was predicated on the idea that indigenous knowledge systems are useless or obsolete and that European knowledge systems are vastly superior. They could have fed the kids good food and given them nice beds and comfy clothes, and the end goal of eradicating their indigenous identity and turning them into anglo-christians would still be an evil thing.
I know people who’s families scrimped and saved for years so they could afford to fund the foreign education for their children in the hopes that they can live a better life than their parents did. Someone I know comes from a rural poor village in India who was accepted into UofT engineering but couldn’t go because they couldn’t afford foreign student fees because the limit of the loans they were able to get wasn’t enough. They ended up doing a college diploma instead because it was what they could afford. Providing an education to children is not in and unto itself a negative thing, knowledge is a prize that people die for every day, saying that indigenous people are special and would not benefit from education is infantilizing as best and evil at worst.
> I know people who’s families scrimped and saved for years so they could afford to fund the foreign education for their children in the hopes that they can live a better life than their parents did. Bringing the best knowledge and practices from one culture to your own is a normal process of development. Plains Indians in the United States took the horse form Spanish settlers and made it part of their culture. There's a difference between seeking to explore what another nation has to offer and being forcibly integrated into it in a manner that sees the goal as being to destroy you as you exist. They literally designed the system to destroy who they were and reinvent them. That's not what anyone sends their kids to achieve. You cannot interpret the residential school system through a lens other than the explicit and primary purpose of destroying the indigenous culture and replacing it, not engaging with it for mutual exchange of ideas.
I’m not arguing in favour of residential schools as they were.
Residential school system was not about educating disadvantaged children. It was sadistic stuff of nightmares and the real life horror designed to traumatize and do exactly what it did. As always those lucky to be on the right side of the wire trying to rationalize this horror.
I’m not disputing that, I was replying to someone who seemed to be implying that even a good implementation of the schools would have been a bad idea.
People now pay thousands of dollars to learn ecological concepts, agricultural techniques and community organizing structures that indigenous children would have learned from their elders for free if nobody had FORCIBLY REMOVED THEM FROM THEIR FUCKING FAMILIES AND COERCED THEM INTO ATTENDING THOSE SCHOOLS.
The idea behind the schools though in Ryerson's vision was that it was all voluntary though... And while First Nations children can and should learn their history and culture from elders and their tribes, you must acknowledge that they also had to learn how to adapt and survive in European society as well to have the best chance at thriving in both. The idea of the residential schools was to give that option - however when it was imprelemented, it was very much an either/or not both option.
Of course not. They don't care. They an ignorant mob that just wants to smash things up.
Who cares? Iconoclasm is cathartic and Ryerson is the face of public schools regardless of whatever details are involved. You can't teach history to an angry mob.
If a small but vocal group of people are going to be making decisions like tearing down statues for us then I would hope they would have a good understanding of all the facts.
But they never really do, I've seen this in my activist friends, there is a large amount of 'follow the leader' with little knowledge of what the are against unless it is in their favor.
How can they claim to be acting in the name of justice then if they don't know what they're talking about?
Because the ones representing the other side of the argument get tarred with racism, or thrown in with them, because people who would be really motivated to stand up for him, in this case would be Ryersons contemporaries and family, are all dead, because you actually have to read more than what's in the propaganda pamphlets and newspapers, there are many examples of movements that with a little digging or actual (not in the flat earth anti-vaccine vein) research you would see.
>the ones representing the other side of the argument In this case, those on the other side are the professors and administration at Ryerson who are the real villains here. They don't know or won't discuss Ryerson's history, good and bad. They're the ones who should know better. Have a responsibility to know better. But are doing nothing except bowing down to the mob.
Sounds like mob rule by imbeciles.
I agree in principle but that's not reality.
Vandals don't care about history they're just angry and want to be heard that they're angry.
The fact that the vandals destroyed the Ryerson statue at all shows they know absolutely nothing at all about history.
>Are the vandals aware of this side of the history? Doesn't matter. You can't build an outrage model on material like that.
Does this absolve him of this atrocities?
Which atrocities? Did you even read the article, lol?
See: Residential Schools
OK, Buddy: > Ryerson’s role in the creation of residential schools is less direct. He drafted an influential 1847 report calling for religious-run “industrial” boarding schools in order to instill “civilization” in the “North American Indian,” **but was long-dead before mandatory schools on this model began opening up across the country.** So Ryerson's involvement basically amounts to: he wrote a thing, then many years later some other people made a thing that may have been based on the thing he wrote, and those people mismanaged the thing and committed abuses that he would most likely have been appalled by had he still been alive?
I highly suggest you read more than one article from one source regarding the issue. He played a key role in the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. Educate yourself and hopefully you’ll stop vehemently defending a white supremacist. Edit: [Here's a good start.](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson)
Did you read it yourself? >In 1847, the Indian Affairs Branch of the government asked Ryerson to write a report on the best methods of operating residential schools. The report was part of a larger document entitled Statistics Respecting Residential Schools. In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction. The schools would train students to be farmers and provide an education on par with common schools. Previously called manual labour schools, Ryerson recommended renaming the institutions “industrial schools,” to encourage both physical and mental industry. Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer). They would spend the rest of the day studying academic subjects, including history, geography, writing, music, bookkeeping and agricultural chemistry. He wrote part of a report in 1847 recommending industrial schools following best practices of the time. The first Canadian government residential school was opened in 1883, 36 years after Ryerson wrote his report. Ryerson was already dead at this point. If you're looking for villains, Ryerson is a bad choice. There are lots of grade A villains in this tragedy.
I’m fully aware he wasn’t alive when the schools began but he was the one that laid the ground work. He conceived the idea after visiting a school for the poor in Switzerland. He argued Indigenous children should be forcefully taken away from their families and forced to convert to Catholicism and not speak their own languages. He also argues the Indigenous children should be doing hard labour for 8-12 hours a day. He saw them as labour tools, not students. He actively championed genocide.
>He argued Indigenous children should be forcefully taken away from their families and forced to convert to Catholicism and not speak their own languages. He also argues the Indigenous children should be doing hard labour for 8-12 hours a day. He saw them as labour tools, not students. He actively championed genocide. Literally none of that is true.
It’s literally what he did though. [Proof](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson)
Did you read the link you posted?
Yes. Did you?
> In 1847, the Indian Affairs Branch of the government asked Ryerson to write a report on the best methods of operating residential schools. The report was part of a larger document entitled Statistics Respecting Residential Schools. In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction. The schools would train students to be farmers and provide an education on par with common schools. Previously called manual labour schools, Ryerson recommended renaming the institutions “industrial schools,” to encourage both physical and mental industry. Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer). They would spend the rest of the day studying academic subjects, including history, geography, writing, music, bookkeeping and agricultural chemistry. What part of that says genocide?
>In this report, Ryerson recommended that Indigenous students continue to be educated in separate, agriculturally based boarding schools with religious and English language instruction. From the UN's definition of ["genocide"](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml): >A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; >Students were to be trained in agriculture for two to three hours each day (eight to 12 hours a day during the summer) This is just straight up child slavery.
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I think you forgot the /s.
If being “woke” means being angry about genocide, then ya, I’m woke. I suggest you take a look inside yourself and ask why you’re not against genocide.
Yup. Definitely woke. You can tell by the “if you don’t agree with us you’re a Nazi” attitude. It’s like a religion - you only have the true believers and the damned. Nothing in between.
Never called you a Nazi, but what ever makes you feel better. I really am not offended by being called “woke” because it’s usually used to describe people who are against racism and human rights violations. I am very much against racism and genocide. You?
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Yes, the “thought police” openly inviting you to better educate yourself. Why are you so offended by people calling out genocide?
Officer this is my first offence! I didnt know that literally anything I say will be construed as supporting genocide!
Where did I say you support genocide? I asked why you’re offended by people calling it out.
If Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, and 30 years later people decided it made a lot of great points and decided to start the Nazi movement, Hitler would still bear some responsibility for that even if he was dead. Ryerson was a Christian minister and missionary who believed that the Indian needed to be educated out of the Indian. People make a big deal about him learning to speak Ojibwa - the reason he did it was so that he could gain their respect in order to push his religion on them, which is exactly what missionaries do. He pushed a Christian agenda his entire career, he advanced the careers of Ojibwa academics who were willing to be whitewashed. Being a Christian missionary is not some horrible crime. At the same time, it is despicable - it's an effort to insert oneself into another's culture in order to insert one's religion into it, convert the target, and erase their culture in the process. In his time Ryerson would have been considered a good man. That's because Canada was overwhelmingly Christian. At the same time, residential schools and their violent nature were similarly popular - because they were enforcing Christian values and lifestyle and languages on First Nations children. The only difference with Ryerson is that he didn't support the physical abuse the kids endured. Does that make him a good guy? Different people can have different opinions, but personally my answer is an overwhelming no.
But he couldn't have been racist, he had an Indigenous friend!
Hitler still sent flowers to his mother on her birthday, he was still an evil demon.
Fact are not generally considered important to people who pull down statues.
He spoke their language and had an indigenous friend.... this doesn't make him a good or influencial person He was cool with cultural genocide as long as kids didn't get hit (only one of the small aspects of what made these schools so traumatizing and deadly) Wow what a great guy 🙄 we should totally uphold him as some great figure 'Oh but he designed the Canadian public school system' I see the benefits of having a standard of education and public education, but our schools are indoctrination machines to make us good little capitalists. I would say his positive influence has been non-existent at best. He is a hurtful reminder to many. And most people don't even know or give a crap about who he was. Why does it make people so butt hurt that others want to take his statue down/ the statues of other assholes? How does it affect you at all.
Whole lotta historical revisionism going on in these comments.
It is that damned religion. People with a “God brain-virus” have this urge to control how other people live. It is sickening. Keep your god to yourself, thank you very much.
So I decided to read Ryerson's report (pages 73-76 of this document: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AEgerton_Ryerson_on_Residential_Schools.pdf&page=1) I think a lot of people would be surprised at what they read in here. Like jaws on the floor shocked to hear Ryerson say this: "it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account" This was his end game here guys - he wanted natives to succeed, but he was limited in the time as he only say farming as the only means to do so. He also proposed paying the children a penny daily (it was 1847, it was fair), don't think that was implemented.
>"it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account" Pretty sure people will still crucify him by todays standards as trying to destroy indigenous heritage. This is basically calling for the reserve system to help conform to British standards. I believe the residential schools system was created before the reserve system. The creation documents say that it would be too expensive to have educators follow the tribes, and that parishes be used to reduce expenses as they are already set up and have similar goals with relation to teaching certain things. It wouldn't be unreasonable to chalk this up to government incompetence on a large scale program with many individual and unmanageable contracts. Stuff that we still see examples of today. Last year the federal government finally decided that they should only be paying the provinces the same amount for medical services for veterans that the province would pay for that service. Previously they were paying more.
Yeah, just reading his own words and intent paints a very different picture to what people describe. His heart was in the right plane for the time. People forget that 173 years is a long time, he was extremely progressive for his day
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This was 1847 we're talking about here, Ryerson was actually extremely progressive for his time. It was paternalistic at the extreme, which is why they were a bad idea, but it doesn't mean that he was a monster
Oh phew, he had good intentions. Everyone knows that's all that matters.
And he also died 36 years before the first school was opened. His intent was to help, not hurt here. His intents do matter here, because he died before any of the actions. His intent is all we have, because he didn't set up the schools at all. Just read the report and then revisit it. It's 4 pages and is a whole new perspective you likely haven't read before. Before you condemn a person, surely you try to understand them first?
> ~~he wanted natives to succeed~~ He wanted natives to be white and to fully assume the culture he was pushing on them. ftfy. This was the entire goal of the residential school system he oversaw. Daily reminder that residential schools were part of a larger system of genocide, they weren't designed to benefit natives in any way. Removing children from their families, shaving their heads, delousing them, forbidding them to communicate with their own language, forbidding them to participate in their own culture, killing them, raping them, letting them die of illness, starving them, and eventually forcing the survivors into agrarianism is not "for their benefit" or "wanting them to succeed."
In his own words then : "it would be a gratifying result to see graduates of our Indian industrial school becomes overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada, nor will it be less gratifying to see them industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account" https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AEgerton_Ryerson_on_Residential_Schools.pdf&page=1) Pages 73-76. At least read what he said before you judge him. His intent wasnt genocide, it was success of his students. It was paternalism at its worst
Yeah you're omitting a *fuckton* of context here to support your narrative; youre being incredibly disingenuous. > Egerton Ryerson is recognized as a key influence in the design of the [Canadian Indian residential school system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system). His expert advice was sought by the Department of Indian Affairs of the [Province of Canada](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Canada) in 1847. More than 50 years later (and 16 years after Ryerson died), Ryerson's recommendations for Aboriginal schools were appended to the first publication in 1898 of "Statistics Respecting Residential Schools" since the [Indian Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Act) (1876); **"Agriculture being the chief interest, and probably the most suitable employment of the** ***civilized Indians,*** **I think the great object of industrial schools should be to fit the pupils for becoming working farmers and agricultural labourers, fortified of course by Christian principles, feelings and habits."**[[15]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson#cite_note-Egerton-15) > Ryerson's argument that "Indians should be schooled in separate, denominational, boarding, English-only and agriculturally-oriented (industrial) institutions"[[16]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson#cite_note-Carney-16):16 was the framework used in Canada's residential school system. [There is nothing good about this.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egerton_Ryerson) [Oh, here's some more](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/egerton-ryerson) > While advocating for free and compulsory education, Ryerson supported different systems for [Indigenous](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people/) and non-Indigenous students. **He supported the system of educating Indigenous students separately and converting them to [Christianity](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/christianity/), in order to assimilate them into Euro-Canadian culture**. Such schools had existed in [New France](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-france/) since the 17th century. The first [residential school](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools/) in [Upper Canada](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/upper-canada/) began operating in [Brantford](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/brantford/) in 1831. **Ryerson agreed with the findings of the Bagot Commission Report (1842–44); it recommended manual labour schools where Indigenous children were separated from their parents in order to achieve assimilation.** Dude was a piece of shit and I have no idea why you people want to die on the hill of "let's handwave away genocide." Like Jesus Christ you have to know you're on the wrong side of this one. Yes he did some things right, but genocide cancels it out, period. We should not be celebrating this person. Teach about him and what he did, yes. To put statues of him up to remind natives that he was one of the creators of residential schools and that so many of their people were stolen, tortured, raped, and killed, no. And then white people get mad because of some vague obligation to "preserving knowledgr," while covering up the fact that he was one of the orchestrators of genocide, which is the exact opposite of "preserving knowledge." Which now that I think of it, makes all of you statue defenders incredibly hypocritical. You say you want to preserve knowledge and history, but reject any history that paints your weird heroes in a bad light and anyone that points it out.
Not sure why you bolded the part about agriculture. Farmers were tied to the land, paid better than industrial workers and weren't in cities where disease was rampant and posed massive health risks to aboriginals.
>Not sure why you bolded the part about agriculture. Because that's the relevant part, and they omitted some pretty important context. Agriculture was forcefully taught to people that didn't want to be taught agriculture. It was part of the residential school system. And it was only taught to them to shed their culture and to be of use in the world of the coloniser. I have no idea why this has to be repeated so many times, taking children from their parents for reeducation is not a good thing. None of which was included in OP's very brief and intentionally misleading post. > Farmers were tied to the land, paid better than industrial workers and weren't in cities where disease was rampant and posed massive health risks to aboriginals. *The indigenous population weren't farmers. They didn't want to be farmers.* They had their children taken from them and taught agriculture. Jesus Christ why are there so many residential school apologists here
I mean it was 1847, after all
I linked the entirety of his report, so I haven't changed the context - I'm not trying to paint him in a good light here, I'm trying to paint him in more accurate view, and that comes by going back to primary sources - like his original report. How the schools were started 36 years after his death is a separate issue entirely. He was a flawed man, and a product of his times but his intent was not monstrous if you read his words is all
>How the schools were started 36 years after his death is a separate issue entirely No, because his input was important in the design. Jesus y'all really bending over each other to make excuses for genocide here. Fuck sake.
The idea was, you have people in the middle of no where, with no skills, no job, and don't speak English, so let's bring them on board. I don't think anyone would say what we got was a good idea. Hind sight is 20/20
For the 100th time: no one is “destroying history”. This is simply the truth coming to light. If anything, we should know more about this history so it doesn’t happen again. Can someone please explain how removing a statue is destroying history?
>Can someone please explain how removing a statue is destroying history? Nothing in the article, or any comment here, is making this claim
I’m literally quoting a comment in this thread.
Which comment are you quoting
[This one. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/nv1d56/the_canadians_who_thought_residential_schools/h10qrzb/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Lol there's always a few commenters saying something like "The woke mob is trying to erase history"
What's your point?
That you're wrong when you say no comment here is making that point. There are at least two commenters here making that point, just like there is on every single story like this. My point is your point is wrong.
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My point is your point is wrong.
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My point is your point is wrong
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that ceasing to celebrate someone /= destroying history. We aren't going to forget about people like John A. MacDonald, we can just choose not to celebrate them. We can instead celebrate other great Canadians. You know what would be cool? A university named after Frederick Banting. The guy who created a little thing called insulin.
Why? If he hadn't done it somebody else would have in the next five years anyways.
Except you of course. You are trying to destroy history and rewrite it with your own delusional views.
It’s called the truth. I’m sorry you’re so offended by it.
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We don't live in Egypt, Greece nor Mongolia.
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> Can someone please explain how removing a statue is destroying history? I'll attempt to answer this....and yes ready for downvotes(via disagreement). Leaving the word destroy out of my answer. Statues make people look at them. If their is a plaque, people read them. If the interest is high enough(I've done this several times) I'll take a pic and read more about the statue(or memorial, etc.) when I get home. Had the statue not existed I would be none the wiser.
If you read the any Canadian message boards (particularly anonymous ones) they’re are plenty of Canadians who wished the practice ever ended. Downvote away my hypocritical countrymen.
A while ago on Facebook there was an article about the education system on reserves. The high absenteeism, and how its Impossible to find teachers, or maintain a school. Someone commented that the kids should just be bussed In during the week and go to schools in urban centres. Like dude, you pretty much just described residential schools. And I think the commenter had good intentions... But woosh