The Weaponization of History and Jean Chrétien

The piece below was written by Patrice Dutil, professor of politics and public administration at what used to be Ryerson University until mindless political correctness transformed what began as Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1948 — and should have stayed that way — into the mediocre Toronto Metropolitan University.

Patrice Dutil is an exceptional outlier in this rush to mediocrity in many similiar Canadian institutions of so-called higher education.

Dutil’s latest work is The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada (UBC Press). He is the co-host of Witness to Yesterday, a podcast on Canadian history.

Thought he doesn’t employ the term, one of his themes is “presentism,” smugly critiquing past events and practices based on trendy and temporary present-day beliefs and values without carefully considering past beliefs and values.

The vilification of Chrétien regarding his interpretation of the Indian Residential Schools (IRSs) stemmed from an interview he gave on October 24, 2021 where he opined that “We can’t rewrite history … terrible things happened.”

When asked how he reacted:

“Chrétien answered that the topic was never raised while he was minister of Indian affairs from 1968 to 1974 [a period when some of the residential schools were still in operation], a portfolio to which he was genuinely committed both professionally and personally (he and his wife, Aline, adopted an Indigenous boy from the Northwest Territories). Chrétien then volunteered that he had lived in a boarding school for most of his youth and had known hardships.”

Chrétien was immediately pilloried for being insensitive when comparing his boarding school experience to the Indian Residential Schools and for not knowing the reality of indigenous lives while he was the minister responsible for indigenous affairs.

Professor Dutil carefully and perceptively discusses why this was unfair to Chrétien and to the central argument he was trying to make, namely that public policy must be informed by truthful historical experience and knowledge.

What he doesn’t consider, unfortunately, is that the lack of reporting about harms and abuses at the schools until the late 1980s was likely because such harms and abuses were far and few between.