Was Peter Bryce, the One Dead White Man Who Bucked the Demonization Trend, a Saint or a Sinner?
Commentary
Many of Canada’s important historical figures have seen their statutes toppled and their names erased from buildings and maps in recent years in an outburst of historical cleansing. Among the victims: Sir John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, Sir Hector-Louis Langevin, and Samuel de Champlain, all former heroes and nation builders.
Whatever good these dead white men did in creating modern Canada has been ignored. Any act or statement contrary to contemporary Canadian values is see as warranting their public condemnation and erasure. The litmus test for doing so is any association, however remote or tangential, with Canada’s Indian Residential Schools….