[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think the issue people take with these sorts of arguments - "It was just a time of war" or "Both sides did stuff" - is that one side was basically an invading/occupying force and the other wasn't. People often joke about how "Everyone except the First Nations are all immigrants" as a kind of comeback against anti-immigration rhetoric. But in reality, immigration involves people relocating into a new territory and into an existing society with the consent of the current occupants, subjecting themselves to the existing laws and social establishment. People who don't meet one of these two prerequisites (consent/deferral to existing authority) are normally referred to as either illegal immigrants or as invaders. If a group of people unilaterally decides to move into a new region and sets up its own rules and claims its own territory while disregarding the authority of the current inhabitants thus leading to conflict and ultimately war, we don't normally "both sides" it.

It is true that Britain ran a colonial empire and invaded many territories. The NS situation of around 1750 doesn't exactly fit the invasion scenario though. France administered this territory for over 100 years and then ceded it to Britain (Treaty of Utrecht). France and the Catholic church (who converted many Mi'kmaq) encouraged what Britain viewed as a rebellion. Britain already controlled Annapolis Royal before Halifax was founded. France tried to invade Annapolis Royal and Boston, gathering an armada in Halifax harbour only a few years before Halifax was founded.

More fundamentally though I just don't know how we should get from discussing details of history to threatening to destroy the Cornwallis statue. I do not think it is plausible today to argue that Cornwallis has a kind of fan base that the statue or street name contribute to and that any of this is materially harmful to anybody living in NS today.

I have no problem with a democratic debate about what to do with Cornwallis Park and I don't think the Cornwallis statue needs to remain there forever, although I tend to be opposed to the destruction of any historic works of art (and really we have no shortage of places to put statues but we DO have a dwindling amount of physical history and historical art in NS). I am not sure if it is possible to deal with the Cornwallis statue in a democratic way. We will see.

In practical terms I find it a bit weird that the city might make Cornwallis Park into a treaty-themed park while planning the new Friendship Centre at the other end of downtown.

I think nuance and complexity are very important if they're intended to help people have a more complete view of history and learn more accurate/complete lessons from it. But sometimes the call for nuance can be more about an attempt to muddy the waters and actually prevent clear lessons from being learned. It really depends on the situation.

I agree with all of this although I think that today in NS the lack of nuance or rush to judgement is a bigger problem than subversive racist narratives promoted by muddying the waters.

I brought up Africville because it is actually still quite relevant today (unlike Cornwallis) and cannot be fully understood simply by saying that it was done by bad actors from start to finish. It is very challenging to know how to solve social problems after they have been started or when they have persisted for generations, and even well-meaning people and experts screw up all the time when trying to help.

There is no question that the lack of services in Africville and poor quality of life there had its roots in racism (going back at least to the 1910's when the city already was ignoring the area, and there is no doubt that there was a lot of racism back then). But a lot of planned housing programs didn't do so well either and I don't think we can say that those were rooted in a negative racist intent.

Cancel culture can be a big issue for someone who has one specific employer who has the power to arbitrarily drop you for reasons such as aversion to bad publicity or potential loss of customers and/or ad revenue. However, in the case of people condemning/campaigning against a politician hoping for them to lose re-election, I generally think of that as democracy rather than canceling. There have always been attack ads intended to vilify politicians.

I am thinking more of Twitter "virality" and the like than traditional attack ads. The phenomenon of a rumour or meme getting shared over and over when it has little basis in fact, and snowballing to the point where setting the record straight is impossible.