Nothing befitting honour of school name in Wolseley’s contemptible legacy

It should come as no surprise that Wolseley School is changing its name. In fact, it’s surprising it took this long.

The man for whom the Winnipeg neighbourhood — and by extension, the school — was named, wasn’t just some 19th-century British officer with the kind of outdated colonial attitudes we now view through a modern moral lens.

Garnet Wolseley didn’t merely hold racist views toward Louis Riel and the Métis people who lived in Red River. He helped unleash a wave of violence and intimidation against them — what became known historically as “The Reign of Terror.”

That campaign of brutality, carried out in part by the soldiers he led, set a lasting tone of fear and injustice that scarred the Métis community for generations.

Wolseley arrived in the Red River Settlement in August 1870, leading the Red River Expedition, a military force sent from Ontario under the banner of bringing “order” to the newly formed province of Manitoba.

Officially, the expedition was supposed to be one of peace. The federal government said Wolseley and his troops (regular British army and a Canadian militia) were sent to Red River to establish Canadian sovereignty following negotiations in Ottawa between representatives of Red River and the federal government. Those negotiations established the terms of Manitoba’s entry into Canada.

But Wolseley had his own agenda, one rooted in racism and hatred. He came for blood and spoke of hunting down Riel — who led the Red River Resistance in 1869 and 1870 that forced Ottawa to the negotiating table — and what he called the “cruel half-breed rebels.”

Wolseley later wrote that had he caught Riel, he would have killed him on the spot — no trial, no discussion, just summary execution. He used openly racist language to describe the Métis, dismissing them as inferior. It’s laid bare in my book Treaties, Lies & Promises: How the Métis and First Nations Shaped Canada, released a year ago this week.

These weren’t casual prejudices of the time. They were deeply ingrained, militarized beliefs that shaped how he commanded his troops and how they viewed the people they were supposedly sent to support.

What followed after Wolseley’s arrival is one of the darker, less openly discussed chapters in Canada’s early history.

Although Wolseley and his British troops left Red River within days of arriving (members of the Canadian militia remained), his job, at least on paper, was complete. But the conduct in the weeks and months that followed by some members of the Canadian militia and others who opposed Riel was nothing short of disgraceful.

The “Reign of Terror” wasn’t a metaphor. It was a campaign of assaults, intimidation and murder, targeting Métis people who had supported Riel’s provisional government. Homes were ransacked, men were beaten, women were threatened and some were killed. Many Métis families fled the Red River area, fearing for their lives.

Wolseley might not have personally ordered those atrocities, but he set the tone that made them possible. He brought a force to Red River that viewed the Métis not as fellow Canadians, but as enemies to be subdued and humiliated. His contempt for Riel and his followers gave moral licence to his men to act out their hatred with impunity.

So, when people argue that renaming Wolseley School is somehow “erasing history,” they’re missing the point entirely.

No one is erasing history. If anything, this decision (which has been followed by a series of public consultations to select a new name, the latest of which was held Tuesday) is part of finally telling it truthfully.

For too long, the story of Wolseley in Manitoba has been sanitized — presented as one of a British hero who brought order to the frontier. But order for whom? And at what cost?

The reality is, Wolseley’s legacy in this province is inseparable from the violence that followed his troops’ arrival. The Métis didn’t experience Wolseley as a liberator. They experienced him as the harbinger of a colonial occupation that robbed them of land, rights and security.

The movement to rename Wolseley School — and perhaps one day the neighbourhood itself — isn’t about applying 21st-century morals to 19th-century people. It’s about recognizing that some figures were not merely flawed by their era’s prejudices, but were active agents in oppression.

Wolseley wasn’t some reluctant soldier following orders from afar. He was a commanding officer who wrote with pride about his disdain for Métis people. That’s not someone we should be honouring with the name of a school where children learn about values such as respect, inclusion and reconciliation.

There’s an understandable discomfort for some when long-standing names are changed. People worry it’s the start of a slippery slope — that soon every historical figure will be judged and found wanting. But we have to distinguish between imperfect historical figures and those whose primary legacy is rooted in violence and racial hatred.

Renaming Wolseley School is not about rewriting history, it’s about aligning the symbols of our public institutions with the truth of our shared past. And the truth is that Wolseley, however lauded he may have been in the British Empire, brought with him a message of conquest, racism and contempt.

That’s not a legacy worthy of a school name, nor a neighbourhood.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca