With cultural and heritage tourism professionals gathered at historic Fort York to discuss how best to celebrate and promote the forthcoming bicentennial of the War of 1812, former Lt.-Governor of Ontario James Bartleman delicately suggested organizers should proceed cautiously and work to ensure the sacrifices of native aboriginals in that conflict is not overlooked.
The Sense of Place and Heritage Trails: Realizing the War of 1812 Bicentennial conference at the Cultural and Heritage Tourism Symposium 2009 was organized by Centennial College and presented in association with the City of Toronto at the historic site, Oct. 7 to 9.Bartleman, who served as Ontario's Lt.-Gov. from 2002 to 2007 and whose mother hails from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, was invited to speak on Oct. 9 at the symposium. He gave an enthralling hour long speech detailing his poor upbringing in Port Carling, Ontario in the Muskoka region, and a brief history of the aboriginal contribution to the historic two-year war that essentially helped establish Canada and the province of Ontario as we know it today."The popular view of this war is that...we preserved Canada from the worst of all possible fates: becoming part of the United States. I guess there's some truth to that, but as we're looking at the forthcoming bicentennial of the War of 1812, I imagine you'd want to avoid the fate of the 250th anniversary of Quebec City," he said, referring to the holding of a reenactment during the city's celebrations of what was effectively the defeat of the French on one of the most historic sites in French Canada. Needless to say, the event offended many French Canadians across Quebec."It's wonderful to look at the importance of this pivotal event in Canadian history...ensure this will increase national unity and bring tourist dollars to the City of Toronto."He provided an overview of racism in Canada during the 1960s; how its natural ugliness was shamelessly and publicly juxtaposed to the great disparity that was the hypocrisy of what was being preached in schools and churches at that time."We have this mythology that we were a type of light unto the nation: Canadians are better than those evil Americans. And that's the type of mythology we have to look at very carefully...we have this image of ourselves that does not accord with reality," he said. "The reality, as I saw it as someone with a native mother and a white father was one of marginalization and exclusion in those early years...I did not feel as though I was a part of Canadian society."And then in 1985 the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a law that stripped aboriginal women of their native Indian reserve status if they married a white man."This was a big epiphany. My mother got her status back. I became a member of the Rama Reserve and all of a sudden I felt I was a real Canadian because I was someone who was comfortable with being embraced by the native community," he said. "Once I became comfortable with my native roots, I became comfortable with my white roots."In light of this though, he admitted to being "very skeptical" about the value of historical interpretation."History is actually the perspective of the winners; of the dominant groups in society," Bartleman said. "What I discovered when I lived and worked all those years abroad (as a diplomat of more than 35 years in the Canadian foreign service), was history was more a force for bad or evil than it was for good."The history of Canada's treatment of its native population is what Bartleman called the greatest social justice issue facing Canada today and "it's going to get worse"."I would hope that in anything that is drawn up for the commemoration of the War of 1812 that it also looks at the failed hopes of the native people for whom the War of 1812 was the last time they were almost equal to the Europeans," he added.