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  #61  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2021, 8:34 PM
scryer scryer is offline
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What in the woke is going on here...
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There is a housing crisis, and we simply need to speak up about it.

Pinterest - I use this social media platform to easily add pictures into my posts on this forum. Plus there are great architecture and city photos out there as well.
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  #62  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2021, 9:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
I don't think this stuff is nearly as mean-spirited or exclusionary as it's often made out to be.

It's very common for people to make assumptions based on actual or assumed demographics.

I mean, if you think of someone from Detroit, what would they look like?

If you randomly think of someone from Sweden, what would they look like in your mind?
Actually the only person I know here in Ottawa from Sweden could be mistaken upon meeting them as being from Detroit if you know what I mean and they have a strong Swedish accent
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  #63  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2021, 9:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Kitchissippi View Post
Of course it doesn't resonate with you because you don't have to live with it on a daily basis. For non-white Canadians, the inevitable question they always have to address when they meet someone is "where are you from originally?" as if they have to explain their family history and reassert their "canadianess".

also
Travelling in Europe—
Euro: Where are you from?
— "Canada."
Euro: You don't look Canadian.
— "Oh, what's a Canadian supposed to look like?"

Crossing the US Border:
<hands Canadian passport>
Border Guard: What's your citizensihip?
— "Canadian." <thinking, how the F#@K else would I have this passport>
Border Guard: Where were you born?
<clenches teeth and surrenders the answer sheepishly>

This shit becomes normal to you, it becomes part of how you see yourself, to the point that you don't know who you are without it. It never goes away.
Travelling 'back 'ome' in I think 2000 the passport guy at the airport in the UK looked at my UK passport, spoke to me and quickly figured out I've lost my accent (moved here at age 9 from the UK but lived in the USA and Canada for a year each before that) and said to me 'ah, you must be one of those poor folks whose parents forced them to move to the colonies and now you've seen the light and you're back for good' My wife and kids were stunned at this level of 'banter' at the airport and I engaged in some friendly talk with him for a minute or two telling him where we were going etc. Can't imagine that crossing into the USA from Canada where they always seem surly and suspicious.
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  #64  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2021, 9:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Kitchissippi View Post
It might not be necessarily mean-spirited but you don’t realize what that does to the other person’s sense of identity. A first generation white Swedish immigrant, if they lose their accent will probably get their Canadian identity rarely questioned in casual conversation. A 4th or 5th generation Japanese Canadian however will have to explain sooner or later. On the #11 bus when Inuit come aboard speaking Inuktitut, some people were treat them like foreigners. Sometimes they even get innocently “ni-hao”ed. Totally cringe-worthy thinking this is their capital.

When a non-white person recounts these situations, they are not blaming you personally for it, they’re saying how they experience things so you might see their point of view. If I tell you about the pain I’m suffering from an injury, I’m not blaming you for the injury, I just need your understanding, and if there is something we can do about the cause of the injury you might be able to help out too. I think this is how reconciliation starts.
In a bunch of these examples you've given it's not even a case of discrimination or harm. It's just the human brain jumping to what appears "normative" to it.

It's totally impossible to control for that, and also for the fact that people can't possibly have knowledge that covers all of the multiple identities that can exist. And people are still gonna be ignorant. Even if they're not mean-spirited. Members of my family have been asked by fellow Canadians in Canada if they were from France... because they were speaking French. I stopped counting how many times people have asked us what language we were speaking in Anglo-Canada (and speculating about all sorts of weird things). And this did not happen in the Yukon or Newfoundland.

Even in what might be the most gay-friendly city in the world (San Francisco), 75-80% of people are still hetero, which means that general society there is still going to be hetero-normative to some degree.
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  #65  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2021, 9:41 PM
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While we're on this...

You guys can shoot me now but I am not sure that it's really all that healthy to bombard people (especially kids) with messaging that if their personal reality or identity is not perfectly represented or portrayed as the norm to a self-defined optimal level, that this constitutes deliberate and intolerable harm towards them.
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  #66  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 5:44 AM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
While we're on this...

You guys can shoot me now but I am not sure that it's really all that healthy to bombard people (especially kids) with messaging that if their personal reality or identity is not perfectly represented or portrayed as the norm to a self-defined optimal level, that this constitutes deliberate and intolerable harm towards them.
Aren't we all different in some way? In other words, it is impossible to achieve the perfection that you mention. We need to celebrate and accept our differences. I can recall feeling as an outsiders as a young child simply because I was blonde at the time.
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  #67  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 5:46 AM
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In general we should re-evaluate how we used Imperial Figures to name places and monuments in our country. Not saying we should re-name Victoria BC, but there are a lot of things we could do that would revive accurate historical names
For example - who the heck is Logan from Mount Logan, Canada's highest peak. The Americans did the right thing by renaming McKinley to Denali.
Likewise renaming Queen Charlotte Islands to Haida Gwaii is also a good example.
Locally we need to recognize the Algonguin past, Zibi is a good example (not to say that it doesn't have any controversy)
Speaking of Victoria, why not rename Victoria Island to its proper name Asinabka?

Statues of Historicic political figures should be banned, I cringe when I pass by Queen Elizabeth on her horse in front of Rideau Hall, that statue has got to go!!!
This is a very sad statement. Because history has warts, we should bury it. If we don't learn our history, how do we make progress?

Public service, which is bound to be littered with errors in judgement especially in hindsight, is becoming a dirty word.
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  #68  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 6:10 AM
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Like others, I think re-naming the parkway for Macdonald was a dumb idea in the first place. It was done recently and without consultation so it shouldn't be a big deal to change it to something more appropriate.

On statues, I think my position is that rather than try to erase or forget the history, the statues of figures like Macdonald should be accompanied by plaques that detail the full story. We need to acknowledge the skeletons in our national closet.
Fair enough to acknowledge history's skeletons, but what is the full story? What is the balanced story that comes closest to truth?

This reminds me of a trip to Raleigh North Carolina, and taking a walking tour with a northerner, who went out of her way to walk around the back of the Capitol building so we would not see a Confederate statue. I asked about it, because I was there to learn, but I was denied. Is it ever a good idea to deny our history? Nobody learns the good or the bad.

I personally could be bitter and offended about the past and those who made certain decisions, but I accept that world in the past was less enlightened and that we should look forward to a better and more just future. Those in the past made decisions based on beliefs of time.

What was discovered in Kamloops should shock nobody? This was an inevitable discovery and was probably known to some degree. Those involved have lots of difficult decisions ahead to decide whether to exhume the bodies and try to identify the children. I question whether that is a good idea but that is thankfully not up to me. I do hope that any records are made available.
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  #69  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 6:13 AM
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My question to everybody. How would Canada be different if Sir John A. MacDonald had not existed?
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  #70  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 7:25 AM
YOWetal YOWetal is offline
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Originally Posted by lrt's friend View Post
My question to everybody. How would Canada be different if Sir John A. MacDonald had not existed?
Well it depends on leadership theory and if you think there was any other possible outcome for confederation and early nation building.

Do we not band together and therefore are swallowed up by the US? Or maybe a confederation occurs but a weaker central government means we lose the west or later Quebec. Personally I think someone else probably does most of the same things. I’m 100% sure residential schools exist regardless.
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  #71  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 8:56 AM
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My question to everybody. How would Canada be different if Sir John A. MacDonald had not existed?
I am always reluctant about “great man” theories, but it is certainly possible there would be no Canada. He essentially crashed the Charlottetown conference (which was supposed to be about a maritime union) and convinced them to join Canada. This was not inevitable.

He played a leading role in forming the Great Coalition in Canada which led to confederation, played a leading role in writing an extremely stable constitution (currently the third oldest federal constitution in the world), actually got the CPR built, acquired Rupert’s land and convinced BC and PEI to join. The National Policy contributed to Canada being viable as an independent country.
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  #72  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 9:11 AM
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Another question worth asking, were indigenous people of the era treated any better in the US, Australia, Argentina, Brazil or Japan?
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  #73  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 3:33 PM
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Since this thread is still live, I feel like it's worth throwing an unpopular opinion out there for discussion:

John A. MacDonald wasn't particularly important. Most Canadians are just so uninformed about Canadian history and so inured and inundated with American history that there's this impulse to transform John A. MacDonald into a sort of Canadian version of George Washington. I would wager that more than 95% of Canadians couldn't name more than three people in this painting without googling it:



In the absence of a solid understanding of Canadian history, it's easy (and tempting) to want to assign personal/human agency to historical events. It makes understanding history much easier when the answer is that x, y or z happened because a "great man" did it. That's the only explanation I can come up with for how people can claim with a straight face that Canada (or some aspect of Canada) only exists by dint of John A.'s brilliance or greatness.

In reality John A. was a petty drunk who happened to be extremely fortunate in his political life and extremely unfortunate in his private life. His three principal professional accomplishments were (1) being in the right place at the right time to secure leadership of the one federal party that was all-but-guaranteed to win him political power, (2) being corrupt enough to keep power once he had it, and (3) hanging Louis Riel.

Now my bit of personal speculation: I would wager that if we could hop into a time machine and hurl John A., in his drunk stupor, in front of a racing carriage to his death, and then come back to the present time, we'd see way less that would have changed than is commonly assumed. And what little would have changed maybe might have changed for the better.

Last edited by passwordisnt123; Jun 5, 2021 at 3:46 PM.
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  #74  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 7:41 PM
Richard Eade Richard Eade is offline
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I expect that it is the recent ‘discovery’ at the BC Residential School that is what prompted this thread, so I feel justified in using Residential Schools as the basis of my input. Even though I am concentrating on the Residential School facet, it points out that we can not, necessarily, attribute malice to past decisions. I expect that this will be an unpopular opinion, here, but I am open to correcting comments. (I am old enough to have studied British history in school, not Canadian history, so I have had to pick up my opinions from varied sources through my life.)

None of us were around at the time that the past decisions were made, so we are looking back at them with our current, though somewhat varied, perspectives. Add to that, the interpretations the media is feeding us, and it is easy to say things like; “We need to have a Parliamentary Inquest into the decision of Residential Schools!” As if an inquest now will have any influence over a 130-year-old decision.

And, of course, the media, of all kinds, has been reveling in the sensational nature of the words that people are using to describe the finding of 215 buried children; regardless of how inaccurate the words are. When one hears that there were 215 children in a “mass grave”, it conjures up visions. But, despite the fact that our Prime Minister used that very term, it does not reflect what was actually found. The ground-penetrating RADAR has found 215 ‘likely’ graves – each one separate. I expect that, similar to all other Residential School yards where children’s graves have been dug up or exposed by flood-waters, each child was actually buried in a coffin and provided with a dignified ‘Christian’, burial.

No, the bodies were not returned to their families. Canada had not been in the habit of repatriating bodies; be they children under the responsible care of the government, or soldiers killed in battles. It is only recently that the American concept of bringing home the dead has taken hold here.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, Residential Schools were certainly not a new, developed-in-Canada, concept. I knew a man, since passed, who attended one in England for his childhood. The descriptions he gave of hunger (lack of money to provide ‘all-you-can-eat’ meals), beatings (extremely strict, religious rules, with corporal punishment to maintain order in over-crowded conditions), etc. are remarkably similar to those described by Aboriginals who talk about Canadian Residential Schools. He did not have knowledge of sexual abuse. I am not saying that sexual abuse didn’t happen in Canadian Residential Schools, but under today’s standards, it seems easy to declare something as sexual abuse – which may not have had any sexual intent.

I’d also like to talk about the number of child graves found – 215. We need to remember that this is 215 children over a period of 80 years! And during that time, there were great illnesses (TB, the Spanish Influenza, measles, etc.), and physical tragedies (that particular BC Residential School burned in 1923 and had to be completely rebuilt – which might also account for lost records). The BC Residential School was also the largest one, with the most children passing through it. Unfortunately, I have not found a break-down of the number of children who attended that BC Residential School, out of the estimated 150,000 total for all schools over nearly 100 years.

215 sounds like a lot of children dying, but it is, likely, far fewer than would have died if the children were left with their families.

Historical child mortality rates for aboriginal populations in Canada are hard to get, but Tina Moffat, B.Sc. did a pretty thorough tabulation of infant (death within the first year, after a live-birth) mortality rates for the Fisher River Reserve in her 1992 Thesis for McMaster University.

Her table is reproduced here:

Table 5.1 Estimated Infant Mortality Rates per 1000 Live Births. Fisher River: 1910-1939

Year          Deaths     Corrected Births     IMR      Burials     Uncorrected Births     IMR
1910-19 74 263 281.4 74 234 316.2
1910-19(2) 63 259 243.2 63 234 269.2
1920-29 52 221 235.3 52 206 252.4
1930-39 56 246 227.6 56 225 248.9
1910-39 182 730 249.3 182 665 273.7
2 Infant mortality rate for the decade excludes 11 deaths caused by the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918.

The number of births was ‘corrected’ by estimating possible unrecorded births, based on death records, post-first-year, for the various cohorts.

Pretty dismal survival rates. Between 25% and 30% of live-birth babies died within their first year. These numbers, of course, do not include deaths of older children.

After the second World War, things got better, with the introduction of much better drugs and health-care. By 1985, the infant mortality rate was down to about twice the national average. You can read T. Moffat’s Thesis here: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstr...1/fulltext.pdf

So, as a mind-experiment, I think back to a time in the 1600s, when the Aboriginals of (what will become) Canada are first being encountered: They are a stone-age people, subsisting off the land by wandering between areas of periodic food source. They are, mostly, family-oriented tribes, with a loose social structure between Bands. There are often wars.

Interaction between the new-arrivals and the Aboriginals proves to be beneficial to the newcomers, since the Aboriginals have local knowledge of things that the foreigners want; but not the resources to provide them in large quantities – until the ‘White-man’ provides the tools. The Aboriginals, now with the ability to do so, begin taking far more out of the natural landscape than they previously could, because it is seen as a benefit to them. With guns, not only can they kill many more beaver, but they have a definite advantage in the wars. And the newcomers brought wars of their own, which were fought here.

Alas, although the Aboriginals were happy to take the advantages provided by the ‘White-man’, contact also came with disease and problems; such as alcohol, and restrictions of historic migrations. Conflicts arose more often, leading to the governing bodies, both foreign and Aboriginal, setting up conditions. Some through formal Treaties, others not. The consequence of many of these arrangements were that the populations, Aboriginal and others, were segregated. The ‘White man’ was more or less happy to stay in their townships and farm their plots. Many Aboriginals, who used to have free-run of all of the territory, felt too confined to the ‘Reserves’.

The Aboriginals used to need to move around to find enough food to survive. Then they acquired better tools and were able to take much more out of the environment, which they could trade for goods and food. They no longer needed to travel so far, but doing so provided them with greater personal gain. It was capitalism. Being restricted in their movements restricted their gains.

There should be no confusion between not having the facility to strip out natural resources, and the conscious desire to take the bare minimum and, thus, endure a subsistence living with many deaths. Given the opportunity, Aboriginal people were willing to kill more than necessary. Take, for instance, the people who used the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump: When they had the opportunity, they would run as many buffalo over the cliff as they could. They would then take from the dead what could easily be carried when they moved on. Of course, after bounties such as these, the Aboriginals would pray to the appropriate God so that they would be able to do the same again, next time they return.

This is not to be considered a slight against Aboriginals. They are human and have the same desires to improve their lives as anyone else would. Whether it is a fisherman over-fishing ‘The Banks’ to have more fish to sell, or a fellow in Brazil who is burning away forest so that he can increase the size of his farm to raise more cattle, humans tend to try to get more. It has been the same in every culture since the dawn of Man.

But, back to the mind-exercise: The governing bodies tried to correct some of the wrongs. The populations were segregated, alcohol was not to be transferred into Reserves, payments were made to compensate for loses, etc..

Over time, it was recognized that limiting interactions still inflicted harm. But it was also clear that there was no going back. The newcomers would not be leaving and the Aboriginals could not be stripped of all modern amenities that they had grown accustomed to. Other measures would need to be tried.

It was obvious, from the ‘White-man’ point of view, that the Aboriginals were much less well-off than the new-comers. Therefore, Aboriginals were offered the opportunity to ‘join’ the ‘White-man’ side. Each Aboriginal person could get $160 dollars, or 160 acres of farm land, by giving up their Aboriginal status. This was a relatively generous offer, since the new Federal Government of Canada was paying a lot to support the Aboriginals on their Reserves.

The new Federal Government also realized that the death-rate of Aboriginals was very high, and their prospects to survive without Government aid was very low. As mentioned, the past had been lost, and the old Aboriginal way of life could not be returned. The options were; status quo on the Reserves; or to try to help them move on – to better fit into a more ‘modern’ way of life. The best way to do the second choice, it was reasoned, was to educate the children.

Unfortunately, with so many, and such spread out, Reserves, it was far too expensive for the Government of the day to support a separate small school in each one. A better way, it was determined, was to follow the tried-and-true method of gathering the children and housing them in large Residential Schools. This, it was felt, would give the children the best chance of building a future life within the dominant society. At the time, the thinking was much more about a ‘Melting-pot’ than a mosaic of cultures.

Despite Macdonald’s oft-quoted remark that the Residential Schools could “take the Indian out of the children”, I think that the sentiment, by the majority at the time, was to try to provide a ‘better life’ for future generations of Aboriginals. With the huge death-rate among the Aboriginals, and the prospect of nothing better than to be subsidized by Government money for the future, the government tried something. If it turned out that, like other church organized efforts, there was incidents of abuse, I sincerely do not think that that was part of the original goal. (Should it be something that the Government apologizes for? Absolutely! Is it something that religious organizations should apologize for? Absolutely!) At the time, religious orders were seen as the height of ‘goodness’. Trusting the children to Nuns seemed like a safe thing to do.

I think that there is too much romanticism about what could have / should have been. Once the ‘White-man’ came across the ocean to stay, the ‘paradise’ of subsistence living was lost for the Aboriginals. People who used their best judgement, based on what they knew at the time, to improve the situation, are now being found wanting, by today’s standards.

Oh, and if you think that taking babies away from their mother’s isn’t still going on today, here is a recent CBC article that you might want to read: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...erts-1.5648940
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  #75  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 8:19 PM
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In reality John A. was a petty drunk who happened to be extremely fortunate in his political life and extremely unfortunate in his private life. His three principal professional accomplishments were (1) being in the right place at the right time to secure leadership of the one federal party that was all-but-guaranteed to win him political power, (2) being corrupt enough to keep power once he had it, and (3) hanging Louis Riel.
1) He became leader of the Liberal Conservatives in 1857, and their victory was hardly all but guaranteed, he was in and out of office three times before confederation. 2) He lost the 1873 election because of a corruption scandal 3) Riel was hanged in 1885, he had played a leading role in Canadian politics for 30 years at that point.

If you’re going to claim Macdonald made no contribution to the political events he is associated with (Confederation, the Constitution, the CPR, the National Policy, etc) then you should present an alternative theory of others who accomplished these tasks.

Heavy drinking was fairly common in the 19th century. The introduction to the Burns documentary on prohibition provides a good overview.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GECsin42oS0
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  #76  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 10:06 PM
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If you’re going to claim Macdonald made no contribution to the political events he is associated with (Confederation, the Constitution, the CPR, the National Policy, etc) then you should present an alternative theory of others who accomplished these tasks.
I never said he made no contribution. I used five (or six depending on how you count them) adjectives or nouns to describe the man. They were: petty, unimportant, corrupt, drunk and fortunate/unfortunate (I counted those as one coin with two sides but I guess you could see them as separate). I think I'm on pretty solid ground in asserting each of those five/six.

In terms of an alternate theory, we're dealing in the realm of counterfactual history here so it's highly speculative. But I think one interesting perspective when discussing this is to look at it in the context of his WAR, or his Wins Above Replacement. Using this metric, we'd ask questions like: what was his unique contribution above or below that of any of his contemporaries? Did he have any superlative value that none of his contemporaries had or that even any of the other Fathers of Confederation lacked? I haven't seen any evidence of any such superlative value if he had one. Was he uniquely qualified in a way that no other Father of Confederation could have possibly done x, y or z? I've seen no evidence of that either. Quite the contrary actually. I think any less corrupt Father of Confederation could have arguably done better if only by virtue of their being less corrupt. That's why I'd argue that, if we could hop in a time machine and shove John A. in a drunken stupor before a racing carriage, he could easily be replaced by almost any one of contemporaries who would be just as competent, if not more so. In other words, his Win Above Replacement value, in my estimation, was low. For example, I'm sure almost any other member of his Tory cabinet could have just as competently exterminated indigenous peoples and cultures, created an underclass of Chinese serfs, and hanged Louis Riel for having the audacity to advocate for the rights, land, and survival of the Métis people.
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  #77  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 10:24 PM
thewave46 thewave46 is offline
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Originally Posted by passwordisnt123 View Post
In reality John A. was a petty drunk who happened to be extremely fortunate in his political life and extremely unfortunate in his private life. His three principal professional accomplishments were (1) being in the right place at the right time to secure leadership of the one federal party that was all-but-guaranteed to win him political power, (2) being corrupt enough to keep power once he had it, and (3) hanging Louis Riel.

Now my bit of personal speculation: I would wager that if we could hop into a time machine and hurl John A., in his drunk stupor, in front of a racing carriage to his death, and then come back to the present time, we'd see way less that would have changed than is commonly assumed. And what little would have changed maybe might have changed for the better.
The neat thing about this is that we can argue until the end of time.

My counter-counter argument:

Sir John A.'s corruption was part of the 'getting the deal done' aspect. In a modern sense, corruption is viewed as evil, but in a old-school sense, it was part of the game.

Historical figures who died on the hill of nobility couldn't accomplish much because getting people to agree on a principled stand falls apart almost instantaneously.

Without what would be considered modern day corruption, the CPR wouldn't have been built. Could someone else have been equally corrupt? Maybe.

A more 'principled' leader may have chafed at playing nice with George Etienne Cartier, as Francophones were second-class citizens in the British Empire. It's hard to see George Brown playing so nicely with him.

Some things are luck. Some things are results of the person's character (both good and bad). I don't think Canada's formation was necessarily inevitable.
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  #78  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 11:35 PM
lrt's friend lrt's friend is offline
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I don't think Canada's formation was necessarily inevitable.
What happened at the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences would suggest that a failure of Confederation was a real possibility. Many of the 'Fathers of Confederation' required a lot of convincing and there was a lot of compromise needed to seal the deal. Who were the others who could have accomplished this?

Many major decisions were made in the 1860s and 1870s that brought together Canada as a viable country big enough to fight off 'manifest destiny' that was running rampant south of the border.

The British North America Act was in itself a massive achievement, which considered the failings of the American constitution that resulted in the Civil War that was taking place at the time when the Fathers of Confederation were meeting.
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  #79  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2021, 11:44 PM
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What happened at the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences would suggest that the failure of Confederation was a real possibility. Many of the 'Fathers of Confederation' required a lot of convincing and there was a lot of compromise needed to seal the deal. Who were the others who could have accomplished this?

Many major decisions were made in the 1860s and 1870s that brought together Canada as a viable country big enough to fight off 'manifest destiny' that was running rampant south of the border.
Yes, and had our neighbours not been engaged in a hugely destructive Civil War and Reconstruction during that time, history might have had other ideas.

To bring the discussion to a more modern analogy, I don't necessarily believe anyone can be a manager in a business. Some had that special political touch that can achieve the best out of the employees and successfully accomplish the goals of the business. Some are ham-fisted 'principled' clods that drive talent out and are actively destructive to the cause.
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  #80  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2021, 5:26 AM
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Originally Posted by passwordisnt123 View Post
I never said he made no contribution. I used five (or six depending on how you count them) adjectives or nouns to describe the man. They were: petty, unimportant, corrupt, drunk and fortunate/unfortunate (I counted those as one coin with two sides but I guess you could see them as separate). I think I'm on pretty solid ground in asserting each of those five/six.

In terms of an alternate theory, we're dealing in the realm of counterfactual history here so it's highly speculative. But I think one interesting perspective when discussing this is to look at it in the context of his WAR, or his Wins Above Replacement. Using this metric, we'd ask questions like: what was his unique contribution above or below that of any of his contemporaries? Did he have any superlative value that none of his contemporaries had or that even any of the other Fathers of Confederation lacked? I haven't seen any evidence of any such superlative value if he had one. Was he uniquely qualified in a way that no other Father of Confederation could have possibly done x, y or z? I've seen no evidence of that either. Quite the contrary actually. I think any less corrupt Father of Confederation could have arguably done better if only by virtue of their being less corrupt. That's why I'd argue that, if we could hop in a time machine and shove John A. in a drunken stupor before a racing carriage, he could easily be replaced by almost any one of contemporaries who would be just as competent, if not more so. In other words, his Win Above Replacement value, in my estimation, was low. For example, I'm sure almost any other member of his Tory cabinet could have just as competently exterminated indigenous peoples and cultures, created an underclass of Chinese serfs, and hanged Louis Riel for having the audacity to advocate for the rights, land, and survival of the Métis people.
You make it sound like Riel was a philosophy professor. He led an armed rebellion. Treason is a crime in every country. His sentence should have been commuted due to his mental illness (as many of Macdonald’s contemporaries as well as the jury that convicted him, called for).

The only person who possibly could have played a leading role in the Liberal Conservative party was John Galt, and he turned down the Premiership because he didn’t think he could maintain control of the legislature and recommended Macdonald and Cartier. Your alternate history lacks a viable leader.
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