OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Internal emails show Canada’s head archivist ordered the removal of thousands of national archives she deemed “offensive.”
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Access to Information records show that Leslie Weir, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief archivist at Library and Archives Canada, ordered staff to scrub more than 7,000 pages of historical records from their online database, citing that the content “may offend people.”
“Much of the content on the Library and Archives Canada website reflects the time at which it was written. We understand much of this outdated historical content no longer reflects today’s context and may be offensive to many,” Weir said in a 2021 staff email.
“This is an enormous undertaking with over 7,000 web pages,” added the archivist, who was appointed by Trudeau’s cabinet in 2019.
Additional emails released by Blacklock’s show managers emailing one another saying they “are going to be doing a more thorough search of offensive content” on all of their “platforms,” adding that the only instruction by Weir was the broad request to remove anything that could be deemed “offensive” content.
“Do we have a definition [of what constitutes offensive content]?” one manager asked.
“This is not the way to do this,” a colleague retorted.
“Leslie [Weir] has asked for us to remove all ‘offensive’ content from the website,” explained Rebecca Giesbrecht, acting manager of public services, in another email. “We are scrambling today to identify what that might be with a rough set of criteria to work with.”
Included in the so-called offensive content that has since been deleted were essays “celebrating” Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, articles from French explorers who left out the “Indigenous perspective” of events, and Northwest Mounted Police content that lacked “diversity” or lacked “language to explain the diversity” of the time.
In addition to the deletion of historical records, the archivists also revised the historical record of the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, an unsuccessful uprising done by the native Metis tribe against the Canadian government, by renaming the event the “1885 Resistance.”
This is the second major instance of historical revisionism the Trudeau government has undertaken recently. In addition to the web pages of historical archives, Trudeau’s Cabinet previously requested the rewriting or purging of over 205 “designations and plaques” that pertain to “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.”
“The designations and plaques which require review have been assessed as relating to four issues: colonial legacy, absence or erasure of a significant layer of history, outdated or offensive terminology and controversial beliefs and behaviours,” said a briefing note Review Of Designations: National Program Of Historical Commemoration, reported Blacklock’s in late January.
“For example, offensive terminology includes the use of the terms ‘Indian’ or ‘Eskimo’ in existing plaque texts,” explained the staff, adding that any person “associated with Residential School history,” “people associated with the eugenics movement,” and “major political figures” are all to be subject to review.
According to the Historical Commemoration staff, the purging of the 205 blacklisted historical plaques will happen based on “public requests” and “public controversies,” or if the removal is considered “urgent” by “Indigenous consultants.”
The move to erase history by destroying historical records and monuments has become a central theme of left-wing political activism in recent years. Last year on Canada Day, protesters in Winnipeg knocked over statues of Queen Victoria and Canada’s reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
In response to the act of vandalism, Member of Parliament from the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP), Niki Ashton, celebrated the act as a positive step toward the “decolonization” of Canada.
Other statues, including those of explorer Captain Cook and educator Egerton Ryerson, have also been toppled and defaced, often with praise from left-wing activists online.