My paternal grandmother was a member of the D.A.R., the Daughters of the American Revolution. To achieve this vaunted status, she had to spend an enormous amount of time researching her family tree, a task made somewhat easier owing to spinal surgery that left her bedridden for several months in the late 1940s; and made quite a bit harder because it was the late 1940s, when such research could only be done via postal correspondence sent to libraries and courthouses and churches across the country. Legend had it that she ran though a couple of dozen typewriter ribbons.
My father consequently qualified for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, which my grandmother enrolled him in and where he remained a member until he was old enough to understand what a load of crap it was—more or less his words—and quit. Both organizations were famously far-right, defenders of their imagined bedrock of the USA: white Christian nationalism, Jesus and George Washington breaking bread together, that sort of thing. (You would have been hard pressed to find a farther-right woman—genteel though she was—than my grandmother in the 1960s. Years later I learned that she was alarmed at my friendship, starting at age 11, with one of the few black kids in my Grade 6 class.)
History was inevitably part of our lives. For four generations we ran a family business out of a building built for it in 1886. It was an enormous warehouse, four storeys tall, built entirely from old-growth lumber, with its own railway siding running from the main tracks. As a kid I loved exploring those top floors, where decades of artifacts had piled up. It was a fascinating fire trap. Had it ever gone up it would have taken along a sizable chunk of the town.
Early on at university I realized that studying creative writing would ultimately teach me next to nothing of the world and switched to history instead, with a minor in philosophy. I reasoned that at least I’d learn a little something about how the world came to be as it is, and how successive generations perceived it. In the news one week there was a story about a local building that a historical society was bent on preserving, despite it being in derelict condition and of questionable historical relevance—at least according to those who were pointing out its derelict condition and questioning its historical relevance. This prompted one of the history professors to caution us. “Historical societies are to history as defense lawyers are to murder suspects,” he said. “Their goal isn’t to get to the truth but to defend their client—the position they’ve staked out—no matter what.”
He pointed at himself, then pointed at us acolytes with pens poised above ruled notebooks.
“We,” he said, “We’re the prosecutors.”
By this he meant a couple of things. Long story short, historical societies, whose memberships tend skew from conservative to reactionary, are in the business of revering the past and preserving its memory, often by promoting the “Great Man” theory of history. They need mythical figures of great stature, without whose greatness society as we know it could not have come to be. (This is of course nonsense, since it ignores things like the free labour provided by slaves, government policy that favoured certain infrastructure and exploration, and the complexities of the societies in which they lived.)
Actual historians, on the other hand, aren't advocates but detectives, drilling down for the truth, as best as it can be known, the good the bad and the fugly, in order to understand how a given event or era came to be. This research can take decades, sometimes generations. (Think of the JFK assassination and how much information remains classified 60 years later. How will history change when this information is finally revealed? Maybe a lot, maybe not at all.)
It’s said that journalism is the first rough draft of history. That what we know today—what’s reported as news—is the first version of the fuller understanding that will come later, sometimes much later. The point is that history is constantly evolving because our understanding and knowledge of the past is constantly being updated and reevaluated.
There’s another common saying that’s apropos in today’s amped-up climate of revisiting what many think of (and angrily defend as) the settled historical status quo: History will be the judge.
Indeed it will.
History hasn’t been kind to the realities of Joe McCarthy (or Uncle Joe Stalin), to Richard Nixon, to Mao, to George Bush and the Iraq invasion. History won’t be kind to Boris Johnson, to Donald Trump, to Elon Musk. And if humanity manages to survive long enough, the judgment of history upon the heads of those running fossil fuels industries and their enablers in government will be particularly harsh. Decades of denial as global warming continued until one summer when literally every part of the globe was on fire and the oceans were warmer than ever, and still it was a movie about a child’s doll named Barbie that took up the most room in mainstream corporate media.
Which brings us back to the Pelham Historical Society’s plaque commemorating Dexter D’Everardo, a proclaimed “founder” of Fonthill. This publication advocated for its removal from Town property due to its mention of Egerton Ryerson, whose educational recommendations were adopted, among others, by the Indian Affairs Department related to residential schooling of Indigenous children forcibly taken from their homes. The Historical Society did decide to remove the plaque, after hearing the Town’s case presented by Acting Clerk Bill Tigert, a decision that Ward 1 Councillor and Society member Wayne Olson found premature, for, in his view, the opinions of Indigenous people were not taken into account. (According to the 2021 census, out of our population of 18,200, there were 55 Pelham residents of First Nations ancestry, and 20 Pelham residents of Métis ancestry.)
In fact, in a comprehensive process extending over months, extensive consultations were undertaken with Indigenous groups by Ryerson University as it debated changing its name. When it comes to Egerton Ryerson, the university’s process became both the historian’s and the public policy maker's gold standard.
This week the fine folks over at Niagara This Week, bless their hearts, spent the resources to prove the obvious and reached out to various Niagara Indigenous figures for their comment on the Historical Society’s plaque, none of whom favoured retaining it with any mention of Ryerson. I appreciate that Councillor Olson’s intentions were sincere, and we are often on the same page about many issues. In this case, a step back to appreciate a wider perspective, to acknowledge the facts of history as researched by historians, not history buffs with a dogged interest in maintaining a comforting myth, would have been the better guide.
What’s in a name? You’ll recall that in this space last week I called for nominations to rename the generic August “Civic Holiday” to something more appropriate for Pelham, as some other municipalities have done across Ontario. At stake were gift cards to South Pelham Sobeys and Minor Bros. in Fonthill. Alas, our esteemed panel of three judges has concluded that none of the entries were of sufficient merit to warrant actually petitioning Pelham Town Council for the change.
That said, there was one standout in the creative department, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The submitted nominees were: Harvest Day (“We’ll never have to worry about some skeletons emerging from a closet in the future”), then Harvest Day rescinded (“Harvest is too much like a fall thing”) and replaced with Villages Day (“People can dig about a lot a dirt on our villages, but for the most part it will all be arable”); Joseph Brant Day; Billionaire Bastards Day; Incivility Day; Hooliganism Holiday; Paradise Lost Day; and Roll Over for Developers Day.
Lastly and most creatively: The Day Off that Dare Not Speak Its Name. (Also earns points for the meta historical reference.)
“I don’t think people took this very seriously,” said one judge with generous understatement.
So we’ll tuck those gift cards away for another Puzzler-slash-Challenge.
One ringy-dingy: The cellphone signal at our house is so bad that we’ve essentially been forced to use Skype or WhatsApp to ensure that connections aren’t lost. This wasn’t always the case—about four years ago a local cell tower must have fallen over or something because since then the service has been particularly bad. Well, good news, as you may have seen yesterday, with any luck a new cell tower is headed to south Fonthill. Given that it’s the Feds who grant permission for these things and not local councils, NIMBYism to whatever degree it may arise will likely have no effect on the fervently hoped-for approval. Aside from the inconvenience of dropped calls and poor reception, there’s an obvious necessity for reliable communications in emergencies…Radio silence has descended: Facebook and Instagram have nearly blocked all Canadians by now from seeing news on their platforms, something literally life-threatening in the case of NWT's current wildfire evacuations. To ensure that you're always seeing each day's stories, subscribe to our free afternoon email reminder...That was some downpour: Last night’s rain ought to do us for awhile. This summer has been damp enough as it is. And was that a touch of autumn in this morning's cool breeze? See you next time.
