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 Posté le: Jeu Oct 10, 2013 2:48 pm Sujet du message: a towering presence in Ottawa |
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{Op-Ed: In defence of Duncan Campbell Scott}
In his vilifying essay on Duncan Campbell Scott in the Citizen, Bernie M. Farber radically distorts the portrait of a great Canadian,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Cheap Toms[/url], a great writer, and a great Ottawan. In effect,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Outlet[/url], he draws horns on Scott’s accompanying photo. This sort of treatment should not pass without comment anywhere, but especially here in Ottawa, the home and society Scott graced for his entire life.The worst that can be said of Scott respecting aboriginal Canadians is that he was an “assimilationist.” That is,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Sale[/url], he believed the best future for aboriginal peoples was to be assimilated into the dominant Euro-Christian culture, which, yes,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Cheap Toms[/url], he believed to be superior to native culture. But the assimilation he envisioned was to occur over a much longer time than Farber suggests in his “cold and ruthless” characterization of Scott. Scott believed that assimilation was the only viable future,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Sale[/url], but he saw it occurring over centuries. Needless to say,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Outlet[/url], he was wrong in that thinking.But in vilifying Scott, Farber implicates the whole of our history and its prime actors. There were few in Scott’s time who did not think as he did, and many who thought cruelly (some even genocidally, though that is a ludicrous charge to level so recklessly at Scott and most). Former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Ovide Mercredi himself said in a TVOntario documentary on Scott that he did not blame the man but the culture and time he represented, which is fair. In castigating Scott and by implication the whole glorious past of Canada, Farber commits the present’s rampaging sin of asking the bad past always to bend the knee to our enlightened times.Perhaps one day a hundred years from now some socio-historian will castigate someone like Farber for blithely going about his business while animals were being butchered and rendered extinct. Or perhaps the future will charge Farber with some other crime that he (and we), in the necessarily blinkered present, cannot recognize.If Scott lived today, he would likely think differently about some issues. Farber focuses laser-like on but one aspect of the multi-faceted Scott’s long and incredibly productive career to the detriment not only of Scott’s image but also of our cultural legacy.Aboriginal Canadians are often in a bad state from a multitude of complex causes, and we must all — past and present Canadians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal — accept responsibility for that current condition. Otherwise, we go nowhere helpful and solve nothing.In much of his writing, Duncan Campbell Scott was sympathetic to the plight of natives, appreciative of their culture, regretful for the harm done and being done, and as baffled as we are today about what to do about it. Scott was also a great Canadian, a founder of Canadian literature, a towering presence in Ottawa, and a cultural ancestor in whom we should all take great pride.Gerald Lynch is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa.
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People watching the forthcoming beginning of the German half of the inhabitants of Berlin are no interested in co-optation |
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