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As I spoke of in "10 Awesome Things About Canada"  , Canadians have a lot to be proud of, even on a stripped down level, and we definitely take pride in our nation. However, Canadians, and the rest of the world, like to ignore the darker side of the past and present. We'd prefer to think Canada is flawless rather than admit to the shameful and problematic parts of our history or our current state of affairs. As I wrote about some great things about Canada for Canada Day, I thought it would be important to highlight some of the not so great things. While Canada Day is certainly a time to celebrate, it's also a time to remember our past, examine our present, and make steps towards a better future. 1. Residential Schools All across Canada, residential schools existed throughout the twentieth century for indigenous students. Children were taken from their homes and families, and forced to attend schools where they were physically, emotionally, psychologically, and sexually abused by staff. They were forced to abandon their native culture and language. The last federally run residential school did not close until 1996. Canada's government has offered official apologies for the atrocity that was the residential schools, but it certainly feels like too little too late when survivors still struggle with PTSD and the loss of their culture. 2. Slavery While slavery did not occur in Canada following confederation, or even in the few years leading up to it, slavery was a problem in Canada prior to slavery becoming illegal throughout the British Empire. When slavery was legal, many Canadians owned aboriginal and black slaves. There even existed a system for slaves to escape to northern states in the USA where slavery was already outlawed. While this did occur decades prior to confederation, it is a part of Canadian history that even many Canadians are not aware of. Canadians tend to focus on the later portion of Canadian history, when the Underground Railroad led slaves to freedom. Although slaves were freed in Canada, they did face racism and hardships that made their lives more difficult by far than that of white people. 3. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Indigenous women are nearly three times as likely as non-indigenous women to be victims of violent crime, not including spousal abuse. They are also nearly three times as likely to have a stranger attack them as a non-aboriginal woman would. There are 582 known cases of missing or murdered indigenous women that remain unsolved. The Highway of Tears refers to a highway through western Canada where approximately 19 aboriginal women have vanished or been murdered. The government launched a national inquiry into these murders and disappearings in 2016, but no news has come of this. 4. Indigenous Genocide In early Canadian history, many massacres were committed against the aboriginal populations of Canada. Bounties were placed upon the literal scalps of aboriginals. Treaties placed them on land that was poorer than the land that non-aboriginals were to receive, land that would make it more difficult for them to hunt and farm. Treaty lands also forced many First Nations tribes to abandon the nomadic lifestyle that was a part of their culture. First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples were not even considered to be citizens of the country they resided in. Residential schools ripped children from their families, and forces them to abandon their languages and cultural traditions, while committing horrible abuses on them. Even when the residential schools were closed, indigenous children were still ripped away from their families and put into foster care, with nearly half of the children in foster care in 2011 being aboriginal. 5. Disability Disabled Canadians were seen as burdens, and did not receive the same rights, freedoms, and protections as able-bodied Canadians until the end of the 1970s. For nearly fifty years in the twentieth century, disabled Canadians (typically with mental health disabilities) were often forcibly sterilised against their will, sometimes without knowledge of what was happening at all. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Employment Equity Act, and the Canadian Human Rights Act all help to protect Canadians with disabilities now, but this was not always the case. There is still no federal protections available for disabled people specifically; these regulations exist only on a provincial level. Employment inequality still exists for disabled Canadians, with a higher unemployment rate, and a lower average income, as well as the decreased percentage of university educated people. (I have committed to blogging daily with Give It 100. This is Day Sixty-One. Seven days of leave taken total.) |
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