Oshawa City Council will soon meet to change a downtown street name because of the namesake’s alleged connection to the establishment of residential schools in Canada. However, some historians doubt the accuracy of claims made by activists.
The City of Oshawa announced that its councillors will meet on Sept. 23 to discuss changing the name of Bagot Street in Oshawa, Ont. to “Debwewin Miikan,” an Anishinaabemowin word meaning “Truth Road.”
Bagot Street is named after Sir Charles Bagot, a British politician and diplomat who was appointed as the second Governor General of the Province of Canada in 1841.
Bagot served as governor general of the Province of Canada for two years before dying. During that time, he elected a commission to address “Indian Affairs,” the commission became known as the “Bagot Commission.” After Bagot died, the commission submitted what is now known as the “Bagot Report,” which suggested the government support the establishment of residential schools.
The city is planning to rename the street because of Bagot’s connection to the commission, which recommended the residential school system.
Tom Flanagan, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and a chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Research Group, thinks changing the street’s name is a “malicious” and “deliberately destructive” attack on Canada’s history, culture and heritage.
He said Bagot’s role in the residential school system was “extremely marginal” and the attempt to cancel him from Canadian history is unwarranted.
“He appointed a commission which made a recommendation which was not acted upon. How much more marginal can you get than that,” he said. “Even if you don’t like residential schools, Bagot had nothing to do with them. He appointed a commission whose members recommended Residential Schools. But he himself had no connection with founding residential schools.”
The Bagot Report was submitted on March 20, 1845. Bagot resigned as Governor General due to illness in January 1843 and died less than five months later at the age of 61.
Although there were residential schools set up around this time, the majority of the schools were established with government support after 1880.
“There were residential schools which had been established previously (around the time of the report) by church authorities, both Protestant and Catholic, but they weren’t supported by government,” Flanagan said. “The Bagot Commission wanted to offer some government support.”
He said the recommendations from the Bagot report were accepted but “only very gradually,” with the first large-scale government funding of residential schools occurring in 1883 under Sir John A. Macdonald the first Prime Minister of Canada.
Flanagan said the key reasons members of government gave for the establishment of the residential schools were to spread Christianity, educate the largely illiterate Indigenous population and integrate them into British society as self-supporting members of the Commonwealth.
“It was generally believed by everybody in government that it was necessary for Indians to acquire knowledge of English and useful skills and also one or another version of Christian religion, so that they could become self supporting British subjects,” Flanagan said.
He said that day schools were more prevalent at the time, and the government had received reports that attendance at those schools was “irregular.” With students not attending school regularly, Flanagan said members of the government believed something had to be done as students were not learning effectively.
The day schools had largely been administrated by church missionaries and, according to Flanagan, were community school systems that taught children on native reserves, like regional public schools today.
“It was a question of effectiveness in the minds of government administrators, ‘were the day schools doing the job or not?’,” Flanagan said. “It was generally believed by everybody in government that it was necessary for Indians to acquire knowledge of English and useful skills and also one or another version of Christian religion, so that they could become self supporting British subjects.”
Flanagan hopes the people of Oshawa fight back against the name change, arguing that the changing of names and removal of statues is an attempt to retroactively cancel Canada’s founding figures, which is based on a radical and malicious agenda.
“It’s deliberately destructive. It’s an attempt to eradicate our own cultural heritage,” he said. “Canada’s fundamentally a British colony which gradually attained independence, and all our institutions have origins in British government. Governor General is one of those institutions, and so trying to get rid of Bagot is a collateral attack on the fundamental institution of Canadian government.”
Flanagan believes the push to erase the names of Canada’s founding figures is due to flawed philosophy and progressivism, which claims that the world is oppressed by white males, and everything they’ve ever created has to be torn down.
“I think it should be resisted at every step,” he said. “I hope people at Oshawa will see how malicious it is. There is some hope but all these battles have to be fought locally.”
True North reached out to several of the Indigenous groups which consulted with the City of Oshawa over the proposed name change but did not receive a response before the deadline provided.
The Mississaugas of Scucog Island First Nation, the first-nation group that occupied Oshawa pre-English rule was not available for comment.
The Mayor of Oshawa Dan Carter also did not respond to True North’s request for comment.