You've got to pull back the curtain

Whenever I read about something dumb and un-Canadian some official or other is proposing, I look into the background of who is doing the proposing.

That's what I did when I read about the Toronto District School Board deciding to remove the name of Sir John A. Macdonald from one of its schools.

People, we are talking about the guy who created Canada!  The visionary who had the guts and determination to envision a huge country from sea to sea and then make it happen.  The guy who hailed from a teeny, tiny country, yet imagined a massive land of hundreds of thousands of acres and actually created it.

Canada's sacred public schools.

Ya, that guy.

Yes, we know that Macdonald did a lot of things that are now considered evil in some quarters, but let's remember that many native parents pushed for residential schools so their kids could be educated and fed.  That's another inconvenient fact no one ever mentions.  Children on reserves were starving to death and residential schools saved them.

And as to the sexual abuse, the majority of it was perpetrated on younger children by older.  Another reality always overlooked, but I always do my research and that's a fact.

But back to the school board.  Who is the head?  A guy called Neethan Shan.  The vice-chair is a guy called Zakir Patel and the director of education is a guy called Clayton La Touche.  None is of Canadian heritage, so none can really be expected to grasp the gravitas of Macdonald's accomplishments.  La Touche is also the guy who led a group of high school kids on a field trip to the Grassy Narrows First Nation to stage a noisy and violent protest, joined by pro-Palestinian disrupters.

Ya, that guy.

Neethan Shan is a Tamil from Sri Lanka; La Touche was a backup singer for Raffi.  Not exactly Canadian scholars, but nevertheless duly-elected.  Patel is of Gujarati descent, so as I say, these guys are steeped neither in Canadian history, nor heritage, so Macdonald's breathtaking accomplishments, I would wager, are by definition not top-of-mind.  Their cultural and historic heroes would obviously be Gandhi and Nehru.

This is NOT racism, so don't go there.  We are all one race, the human variety, so that's the end of that argument.  I am talking background, culture and core beliefs, which influence everything we all believe and do.  Why do you think they ran to get on the school board?  To change things because that's why anyone runs for any public office.  They want to change something.

Well, erasing Sir John is certainly one way to do it, but it's wrong.  Macdonald created Canada -- the country everyone clamors to get into.  So, settle down and leave the guy, his name and his statues in place.