Now that we are really politically correct do we take the Joseph Brant name off the hospital and never erect a statute in his name?

opinionred 100x100By Joseph A Gaetan

July 10th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir John A MacDonald, Henry Dundas-1st Viscount, Peter Russell, Hector Louis Langevin, Joseph Brant and Samuel Hatt, all have something in common, all were honoured in some way, some with statues, some by having cities, museums, hospitals, streets, or schools named after them.

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Joseph Brant portrait by George Romney

What these people, all men, also have in common is their names are being removed from their statues, either defaced or torn down. The reason, something in their past is so abhorrent today that ancestors of the recipients of their misdeeds feel the mere presence of them and their acts in history are now toxic beyond repair or forgiveness. As decades and centuries passed, the memory of their names lived on, while their deeds – both good and bad – were mostly forgotten today and they are being erased from history.

Years ago, I visited the Arizona Memorial and had no idea what to expect. Today, I still consider it amongst the most moving experiences in my life and no words can do justice to the experience and deep feelings that arose while standing over the Arizona and the 1102 sailors and marines entombed beneath.

auschwitz

Women in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

The Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial also stands today as a reminder of the atrocities that occurred between 1940 and 1945. About 1.1 million innocent men, women and children were gassed and then cremated at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The death toll from Auschwitz alone includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans. Hitlers “Final Solution” resulted in millions more being exterminated in his death camps, while many politicians across the world ignored what was happening.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, a local hero, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) was born in 1742, on the banks of the Ohio River. Brant was a Mohawk Indian chief who served as a spokesman for his people, as a Christian missionary, and a British military officer during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and the American Revolution (1775-1783). He was an influential military captain and a powerful diplomat who encouraged Indigenous tribes to share his political loyalties. During the American Revolution, “Brant fought throughout the war with an Indigenous-Loyalist band”, he also, “worked to form the Western Confederacy, a united group of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and western Indigenous peoples, created to block American expansion westward”.

Brant was always pretty good at getting grants from the British, but this Council probably isn’t going to hear his argument.

Joseph Brant often wore colourful costume, especially when he was at the Royal Courts in England.

From 1776 to his death in 1807, “Brant fought in vain with the British and Upper Canada governments for the rights of his people to obtain title to the lands of the Grand River Valley”. The African American Registry also claims “[the] slaves he captured during the American Revolution built the Brant House at Burlington Beach and a second home near Brantford. In all, Brant owned about forty African slaves”.
A 2009 Star article and a 2017 Spec article both identify Brant as a slave owner. In his article, Andrew Dreschel posed the question, “Is slave owner Joseph Brant next?” His article also asks, “why stop there if we’re reassessing the past by today’s ethical standards?”. Dreschel also queries whether other effigies are being torn down, “to help expunge the sins of the past”? According to Dreschel, “one can find a Joseph Brant statue in the city of Brantford, and a life sized one in Ottawa, part of the Valiants Memorial commemorating important Canadian military figures”.

Dreschel goes on to state, “Brant was not the only slave owner in early Upper Canada … Historian Alan Taylor estimates the colony had about 300 slaves at that time, mostly taken from rebel settlements during the American Revolution by Indians and loyalist Raiders”, adding, “we would certainly need to change the names of countless schools including Earl Kitchener Elementary School in West Hamilton named after [the] Imperial British general whose ruthlessness included using concentration camps during the Boer War in South Africa”.

An architects rendering of the new entrance to the Joseph Brant Hospital whch will now face the lake. The entrance will be off LAkeshore Road with the new parking lot just to the west of the hospital.

A rendering of the entrance to the Joseph Brant Hospital.  Do we take the Brant off the building?

 

In addition to the above the City of Burlington is home to a street named Brant, the Joseph Brant Museum, and the Joseph Brant Hospital.

In an article entitled, “The life of Sophia Pooley and the Queen’s Bush Settlement”, Carly Holmstead, Kayla Hefford, and Jennifer Williams write, “At the age of five, Sophia and her sister were taken to Niagara Falls, where they were sold to Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant”. After several years on the reserve, Brant sold Sophia to Samuel Hatt: “at twelve years old, I was sold by Brant to an Englishman in Ancaster, for one hundred dollars, – his name was Samuel Hatt, and I lived with him seven year”. To add insult to injury the article also states, “During the time Sophia was enslaved by Samuel Hatt, legislations had passed marking the end of slavery; unbeknownst to Sophia, she continued to live under the confines of slavery”.

Brant Museum transformed

The name can’t be taken off the museum – or could it be called a home from a particular period of time?

Sadly, slavery is alive, well and flourishing. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, approximately 45.8 million people worldwide are in some form of modern slavery. About 17 percent of the total number of people in modern slavery live where there is limited, if any, government action. These countries are characterised by government complicity (North Korea and Eritrea), low levels of political will (Iran), high levels of corruption (Equatorial Guinea), or widespread conflict (Libya). Few victims are being identified and there are even fewer prosecutions. According to the GSI, Canada is amongst the 12 G20 countries not taking action to stop the importation of goods and services that are at risk from being produced by forced labour.

Golda Meir

Golda Meir: she was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969.

Golda Meir once said, “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present”. The Arizona Memorial, Auschwitz and locally Joe Brant are still here to remind us and the world of the “day of infamy”, the “Holocaust”, and of a Mohawk Indian chief who served not only as a spokesman for his people but also as a Christian missionary and a British military officer during two major 18th century conflicts. Applying the “cancel culture” to Joe Brant’s honours would serve little while leaving the remnants of his legacy intact could serve as a model for recollection and reconciliation.

Joseph A Gaetan B.G.S, the author, was born during a time when Italo-Canadians were not treated kindly by some citizens and the government of Canada.

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