I was looking up some biographical data on Thomas Robert McInnes, a Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia at the turn of the previous century, when I came across an extraordinary piece of Canadian legislation, one that tells us a lot about 19th Century Canada.
Whycocomagh, in Inverness County, Nova Scotia, Canada. It’s name is from the aboriginal Mi’kmaq language, but is locally known by a Gaelic rendering of Hogamagh. The village is in the heart a formerly Gaelic-speaking region. A small number of people still speak that language in a distinctly Canadian dialect.
McInnes was born in Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia, and lived an adventurous youth. He was one of the celebrated “Rush Doctors” trained in Chicago at the Rush Institute, and served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. But he returned to Canada and, along with a prominent medical practice, became Mayor of New Westminster, British Columbia, and then an independent national Member of Parliament. Subsequently, he served as a Senator, then Lieutenant Governor of BC. His career as Lieutenant Governor was stormy and eccentric, rather typical of BC politicians. He made many enemies. In 1890, Prime Minister Laurier asked him to tender his resignation in favour of the tamer Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière. He attempted to get back into Federal politics in 1903, but failed.
His most interesting deed was his attempt, in 1890, to make Gaelic the third official language of Canada. His proposed Act to provide for the use of Gaelic in Official proceedings would have made the Canadian version of the Gaelic language legally equal with English and French. The bill made it through first reading, but when the Orders of the Day were called, McInnes had not yet arrived in the Chamber. In his absence, the bill was dropped. When it was restored to the order paper, member R.B. Dickey of Nova Scotia moved an amendment that the reading be delayed for three months, after which it failed on final reading.
A bilingual traffic sign in Nova Scotia.
McInnes’ initiative had come too late. The glory days of the Gaelic language in Canada had long passed away, and the intellectual climate of the 1890’s was one in which intolerance, racism, and a fanatical movement to suppress cultural and linguistic minorities were on the rise.
Gaelic speakers had been arriving in Canada for more than a century. Most Hudson’s Bay Company factors had originated in the Scottish Highlands, the Outer Hebrides, or the Orkney Islands, and many of them were Gaelic-speakers. Gaelic was used as a “secret language” in the fur trade as far west as the Rockies and the Oregon territory, throughout the arctic regions of Canada, and as far south as the Canadian River in the southwestern United States. French Canadian fur traders were often familiar with the language, as were many Native Canadians. In Manitoba, a language called Bungay (or Bungee) evolved, which was a fusion of the Cree language with Gaelic. This was largely supplanted by French and Michif among the western Métis, but it is rumoured that there are still a few speakers of the language alive in remote reserves.
But the bulk of Gaelic speakers in Canada arrived, starting in the late eighteenth century, as refugees from the Jacobite uprisings and the Highland Clearances, which drove tens of thousands of Gaelic-speaking crofters into exile. By 1850, there were 200,000 Gaelic-speakers in the colonies which would, seventeen years later, become Canada. The cultural impact of the Scots and Irish on Canada in the 19th century was, of course, second only to that of French Canada, though they were divided between Catholics and Protestants, and between speakers of English and Gaelic. Even in 1890, when McInnes introduced his bill, there were still 32 members of the House of Commons, and 18 Senators who spoke Gaelic. There were regions of Gaelic-speaking settlement across the country. In Prince Edward Island two thirds of the population of P.E.I. were Scots, and half of them Gaels. In mainland Nova Scotia, and on Cape Breton Island, monolingual Gaelic communities survived well into the 20th Century. In Quebec, there was an urban elite of Scottish merchants, usually not Gaels, but in the Eastern Townships there was a pocket of Presbyterian Hebrideans from Lewis and Uist, fiercely determined to preserve their Gaelic speech and hymns. A large segment of eastern Ontario, centered on Glengarry county, was Gaelic speaking. So was the Bruce-Gray region of southwestern Ontario, which Gaels shared with Ojibway. The Selkirk settlement of Manitoba included many monolingual Gaels.
These Gaelic-speaking settlers brought a solid package of culture with them. Gaelic music, poetry, folktale and literature were not only brought to the new world, but were elaborated and expanded. Much of the written literature in Gaelic had been suppressed in Scotland, after the failure of the Jacobite uprising, but it was memorized by the fleeing Gaels in a manner reminiscent of the “walking books” in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. It was thus preserved for generations by village bards in Canada. One authority on the subject has remarked that many of these bards (the most famous was a woman) possessed a very sophisticated knowledge of the Classical Gaelic literature, history, and folklore. Gaelic in pre-Jacobite Scotland was no mere rural patois. There had been a vigorous professional and literary scene. Suppression of the language had resulted in a “re-oralizing” of a written literature. The works of the last two great writers of Classical Literary Gaelic, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald) and Iain Mac Laine, bard thighearna Colla (John MacLean), were preserved in this way. MacLean immigrated to Nova Scotia in 1819. Ethnologists recorded MacDonald’s poems still being sung, and his narrative prose still being recited, in Canada in the 1930’s.
Canadian Gaelic evolved into a distinct dialect, with features sometimes traceable to specific localisms in Scotland (for instance, the broad l pronounced as w , originating on the Isle of Eigg), and sometimes home-grown (n into m after a rounded vowel, annan to awnan in plural endings), and vocabulary peculiar to Canada (pàirc-coillidh- planted clearing, mogan — moccassin, fermeireachd — to farm freehold, as opposed to tenant crofting).
The survival of Gaelic musical traditions comes as a surprise to no one in Canada —- Canadian music, whether strictly folkloric or modern and popular, sung in English, French, or Native languages, is so overwhelmingly Celtic in structure and style that it dwarfs any other influence.
But, after reaching its peak of influence in the mid-nineteenth century, Gaelic began a dramatic decline in Canada. This was not the result of some kind of “natural” inadequacy or weakness in the language. Within two generations, the third-largest language of the country was virtually wiped off the map, and this event coincided with similar devastation in the aboriginal languages of Canada, and with attempts to limit the influence of the French language outside of Quebec. Much the same techniques were used to crush the Gaelic language as were used to crush Native languages: campaigns of contempt and ridicule, and the forcible conversion of children. As with Native Canadian languages, there were systematic efforts by public authorities to eliminate Gaelic speech, including the violent physical punishment of children for speaking the language. Constant references to the “backwardness”, “primitiveness”, and “barbarity” of Gaelic speech filled the reports of educators, clergymen and bureaucrats. These were identical to their remarks on Cree, Ojibway, Salishan, Micmac, Dene, or Blackfoot. Every effort was made to cultivate a disdain and contempt for the grandparents who might pass on traditional language and culture to another generation. In the 1840’s, when Dr. John Black was sent to preach to the Red River settlement in Manitoba, “his lack of the Gaelic was at first a grievous disappointment” to parishioners, and he found acceptance difficult. They had been promised Gaelic-speaking services. But a generation later, local children were being whipped and humiliated for speaking a single word of Gaelic (or Ojibway) on the grounds of school or church.
So, like many aborinal Canadian languages that were pushed to extinction, or near-extinction during the late 19thth century, Canadian Gaelic did not die of natural causes — it was murdered.
Now, this process did not take place in an intellectual vacuum. The driving force behind it was a new and expanding movement of interlocking ideas, which combined totalitarian politics, mystical doctrines of historical destiny, and the pseudo-scientific crankery of racism and “social Darwinism”. These ideas were generated in universities and adopted by ideological movements and cultural elites. From the ponderous, scholarly-sounding (though scientifically worthless) writings of men like Arthur de Gobineau, Johann Gottfried Herder, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, George FitzHugh and Karl Marx, a powerful trend emerged that radiated from institutions of higher learning into every corner of society. We are accustomed to thinking of racists as uneducated hoodlums, backwoods red-necks, brainless skinheads and other marginal dead-ends in society. But that is merely the scattered residue of something once more powerful. In the late 19th century, racism and its allied ideas were dynamic, “futuristic”, and appealed to the educated, the clever and the rising stars.
The “new thought” that swept the world in this era invoked all sorts of pseudo-scientific notions and plausible-sounding philosophical clap-trap, from “dialectic logic” to absurd misinterpretations of Darwin’s discoveries. But the essence of it was simple: the strong should humiliate the weak; some were destined to rule others; violence is cool; “enlightened”, “progressive” or “revolutionary” elites should dispose of the lives of whomever they please; human beings are mere objects, property, cogs, components, statistics, zeks; the individual human being is of no value or account — only the collective, the race, the class, the nation matter. The apotheoses of this sick intellectual garbage were, of course, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. For a period of fifty years, the ideas of individual human worth, of democracy, of liberty and of human rights almost disappeared from the face of the Earth. Ultimately, the only real motive behind any totalitarian movement is simple greed for wealth and power, but the self-justification, its mythology of explanation, is a sort of complex-looking posturing of philosophy, which gives crude greed and brutality a disguise of intellect. Most of the big totalitarian movements lost some of their political power when the world recoiled and reflected on the parade of genocide, death camps, torture, exploitation, famine and war that they generated. However, the core ideas that created them are still untouched, respected, and waiting for a comeback.
The impact of these ideas varied from place to place. The expansion of colonial empires, and the subsequent horrors of colonialism, constitute an example. In colonial imperialism, the homelands of the colonial powers were treated as the “revolutionary vanguard”, and some liberties and privileges retained in them, while the exploitation and violence were transferred to distant lands. However, the mythology of explanation employed the same components as national totalitarianism.
In the United States, the same ideas were used to push back the progress gained in the 19th century. Their principle influence was seen in the Jim Crow laws, which stifled and reversed any progress made by African Americans after the Civil War. Segregation in the South, and laws in the North that made it impossible for African Americans to operate businesses, where the chief instruments.
Compared to totalitarianism, colonialism, and segregation, the effects of these ideas in Canada were not on a large scale. This was not because Canadians were more intelligent or moral than people elsewhere. It was simply because Canada was out-of-the-way, overwhelmingly rural, and not much connected to the intellectual centers from which these ideas radiated their influence. In other words, Canada was an unfashionable, unimportant place, so it received intellectual fashions late, and in diluted forms. Most of its population lived in economic and cultural independence from any urban educated elite, and was unaffected by their fashions.
But the notions did have their effect, and they were most powerful wherever you had an educated, urban elite put in a position of relative power over people who were politically or economically vulnerable. One of the most widespread of the “modern” notions was that children should, wherever possible, be seized from the “corrupting” influence of “culturally inferior” parents and grandparents, and then regimented into conformity and obedience. Churches and government officials leaped on any excuse to grab children from their parents and put them into communistic institutions. There, they could be bullied and beaten into submission, molded in conformity with the “correct” culture, and wiped clean of all deviant cultural influences. This was always promoted with the clichés of charity and progress. Language, the key to any culture, was the principle focus of such campaigns, and linguistic minorities were the usual victims.
Thus, starting in the second half of the 19th century, and continuing all the way into the 1950’s, Canada saw a proliferation of little totalitarian institutions, most of which behaved in pretty much the same way. The most destructive were the residential schools for Native Canadian children, which could be easily imposed on scattered native communities which did not have the political sophistication or economic power to resist them. But the same techniques were used in homes for unwed girls who got pregnant (or where merely “wild”), when their parents were not wealthy enough to ignore the interference of public authorities. Orphans, juvenile offenders, the mentally afflicted or handicapped, and the elderly without family to protect them were all easy prey for institutionalization. In many cases, institutions would have been necessary and laudable, if they had been designed to respect the dignity and rights of the individual, but the existing ones were driven by entirely different motives. Whether run by churches or by the government, they invariably showed the same structural features.… drawn from Plato’s Republic. And they invariably committed the same crimes of exploitation, brutality, sexual abuse, humiliation and cultural suppression.
Up until the end of the nineteenth century, no observer of Canadian society would have concluded that Native Canadians were in any way socially inferior or economically or politically disadvantaged. Canada had been formed by a series of political alliances between different cultural groups, which had, on the whole, treated each other as equals. There had never been any “Indian Wars” in Canada, never any campaigns of extermination or conquest. The tradition of strategic alliance between native and newcomer, begun with the French Regime and continued in the British colonial era, remained the dynamic principle. The American invasion in 1812 was resisted and repelled by the co-ordinated efforts of aboriginal and settler armies. A Canadian of European origin felt himself perfectly comfortable serving under an Ojibway officer in an Ojibway regiment, or vice versa. In many places, such as south-central Ontario, Native Canadians enjoyed a higher standard of living than average, farmed the most prosperous farms, and formed part of the local elites. Native Canadians did not feel any need to suppress their culture or hide their ethnicity. It was typical that Canada’s only internationally-known poet of that time, Tekahionwake, was from a socially prominent Mohawk family, and vigorously celebrated her heritage in verse. By the middle of the century, the Mohawk, Seneca, and Ojibway languages were beginning to establish a printed literature.
It was in the late nineteenth century that the position of Native Canadians began to shift. Legal obstacles, social prejudices, pressures to submit to residential schooling, disrespect for native property rights, and a general contempt for native language and culture gradually worked their way into Canadian society, spearheaded by those who had been educated in Europe or the United States. The erosive effect of this transformation took a heavy toll. The development of native-language literature came to a halt. Once-prosperous communities became impoverished. In 1900, the average Native Canadian lived at the same standard of living as anyone else in the country. Fifty years later, they were significantly poorer. For most Native Canadians, the 1940s-1950’s was the most disastrous period, when the residential school system reached its peak of destructive power. At the same time, the once economically profitable fur trapping economy collapsed, the Ojibway-owned Great Lakes fisheries were destroyed by corporate pollution, and land titles, treaties, and civil liberties were trashed. Since that low point, it has been a long, slow, and painful struggle of recovery.
It is a matter of great pride and relief to me that that horrible phase appears to be over. Native cultures in Canada still have many problems, but they are much closer now to the strong position they held when this country was young. The new generation, even in very remote corners of the bush, is a new type: bold, ambitious, and self-confident.
What is interesting is that the same tragedy happened, in a sort of warm-up exercise, to the Gaelic speaking communities of Canada. Once the third language of Canada, Gaelic survives only in a handful of villages tucked away in one of the poorest corners of the country. Unlike the recovery and re-invigoration of Native Canadian cultures, it is unlikely that the Gaelic language can experience the same type of renaissance. The Celtic heritage is now celebrated in some parts of the country to the point of inducing nausea, but the language is not going to be revived except among a few hobbiests. Fortunately, the music never suffered any serious damage. Canadians may not speak Gaelic, but they certainly sing it, and it haunts every footstep, drumbeat and fiddle-bow-stroke that occurs in the country.
I point these parallel events out because I want people to understand that they did not happen in isolation from the intellectual history of the world. There is a reason why most of the Cree I know can’t speak Cree very well, except in the most remote communities, and why the epic adventures of Glooskap are not recounted in Cree verses in Cree books on shelves in Cree libraries. And there is a reason why the kids I knew from the previous generation were more preoccupied with glue sniffing, alcohol, and suicide than with turning themselves into doctors, lawyers, or nuclear physicists. Their fate was one of the myriad tragedies, large and small, that come from one intellectual source. The fruits of that intellectual origin include great crimes like the Holocaust and the Gulag and the Laogai, but also thousands of petty tyrannies and injustices practiced in every corner of the Earth. All of them, from Bush’s torture cells in Abu Graib, to Stalin’s Lubyanka, to the beatings and sexual abuse in residential schools, and down to the smallest little sneering arrogance of a Marxist professor, or a Neo-Conservative Think Tank snot-head, or an Islamist Mullah, or an American televangelist spewing hatred of gays, belong to one single problem.
It is identifying the intellectual roots of this problem, identifying its perpetrators and agents, and exposing their lies and deceits, that is the heart of my historical inquiry.
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