Pots calling kettles black

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Mar 21

RE: Racism and Canada’s Dark History An op-ed piece in the 20 Mar 21 edition of the Hamilton Spectator by Darren Green.

When I read the title of the article, I wondered if the writer hadn’t had a Freudian slip, referring to a “dark” history of Canadian racism.  Soon I realized there was much less there than met the eye.

The writer devoted a great deal of attention to post-1948 South Africa, in an article about Canadian racism.  I guess if you need to fill space with dark color, you go with the deepest black.  But the author knows crucially little about Canadian history.  He doesn’t understand Canada’s handling of aboriginals in western Canada at all.  He didn’t know that permanent NWMP presence began in western Canada in 1873, not 1886, and that presence began to keep American whiskey traders out of Canada.

Don’t kid yourself, the Canadian west was going to get settled – either by Europeans loyal to the Crown, or by Americans.  The presence of the NWMP and the cheap land leases of the early 1880s were efforts by Macdonald to ensure that America didn’t grab Canada’s great North West.

Before 1951, an Indian wasn’t a British subject or a Canadian citizen.  The federal government did much to encourage Indians to give up “Indian” status and become British subjects, as Canadians were before 1946.  By far, most resisted, and when you combine that with the Riel rebellion of 1885, the government of Canada got in its mind that it needed to protect the people settling the west from Indian attacks like those that had occurred in the settlement of the American west.  Hence, the system of Treaties.

Nowadays, we expect the government not to allow entry into Canada of foreigners without proper controls and documentation, like a passport.  Well, Indians off the reserve were, legally, foreigners of a sort in the Dominion of Canada, and the system of Indian agents in those days was partly intended to protect Canada, British subjects, and the bands themselves.  The federal government’s duty was to protect British subjects first, and it had a duty of care to aboriginal bands.  Individual Indians were a nettlesome legal anomaly, being neither a British subject nor the citizen of another country.

The Canadian Citizenship Act of 1946 and amendments to the Indian Act of 1951 conferred on Indians Canadian citizenship – whether they wanted it or not. 

There is little particularly dark about Canada’s relations with Indian bands in the 19^th century, certainly not as compared to America’s treatment of its Indians or South Africa’s treatment of blacks.  It is doubly odd that an “Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association” should fuss about racism in the colonization of Canada, being practitioners of both.

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