It is endlessly ironic that George Orwell’s 1984 is still assigned reading in Canadian high schools. If students make it to Chapter Five of this classic dystopian novel, they read the following:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
The parallels to our own society must be blindingly apparent to even the most oblivious student. Throughout English Canada, woke activists have for some years been waging a startlingly successful campaign to rename streets and buildings, topple statues of historical figures, and remove old books from libraries.
The usual target of the historical vandalism is, of course, modern Canada’s perennial villain: the dead white male. When the statue topplers get bored, they mix it up a little by going after a dead white female, like Queen Victoria.
The most recent instance of historical sabotage occurred in Toronto. In a closed-door, late-night decision, the city council voted to rename Dundas Square. It is now Sankofa Square. Changing a beloved 200-year-old landmark’s name to a Ghanaian word nobody in the country understands is a level of passive aggression only Canadians are capable of.
The case for renaming Dundas Square rests on the historical misunderstanding that the 18th century British politician Henry Dundas was a supporter of slavery.
When William Wilberforce introduced a motion in the British Parliament to abolish slavery in 1792, Dundas moved to amend it. His amendment, however, merely consisted of adding the word “gradually”. While he was a strong proponent of abolition, Dundas was concerned that proceeding without careful planning would lead to chaos – not to mention noncompliance from plantation owners.
The Henry Dundas Committee has published a variety of articles debunking modern fake news about Dundas, which the judicious reader can investigate online (hdcommittee.medium.com).
The dark temptation to erase or alter history is deeply rooted in the human psyche. In Ancient Rome, emperors were sometimes condemned after their death. Their property was seized, their names were chipped off marble monuments, and their statues defaced.
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards erased what they called the Four Olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia attempted to wipe out all history before 1975, which the dictator Pol Pot renamed Year Zero.
In modern Canada, adherents of woke ideology are animated by the same desire to purge historical figures guilty of perceived infractions – anyone that does not live up to the 21st century cosmopolitan worldview.
Though they are a small minority, the far Left’s disproportionate dominance of cultural institutions results in decisions which alienate the majority, like renaming Dundas to Sanofka.
A return to a healthy national pride, which accepts historical nuance and context, would do our increasingly divided country much good.
Editor’s note: My bi-monthly Counter Current column is originally published in the Salt Spring Islands Marketplace paper (islandsmarketplace.com/issue.pdf). This piece was published on December 29th, 2023.
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