Join our open letter to the CBE board of trustees requesting a committee to rename Sir John A. MacDonald (SJAM) Middle School. 

Dear CBE Trustee Laura Hack and CBE Trustees,

My name is Makena Halvorsen, a grade 8 student at SJAM, and I am writing this letter with my parents Jeff Halvorsen and Kara Payne. I would like to start by acknowledging that I attend school in the CBE in Moh’kinsstis, and the traditional Treaty 7 territory and oral practices of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda, Tsuut’ina nations, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3. In school and with my family I have been learning about the history of residential schools which operated for over 150 years and created intergenerational harms. These ‘schools’ explicit reason for existing was for forced assimilation and colonization based on the racist belief of white supremacy.

Last summer, the media highlighted the unmarked graves of children my age found at the Kamloops Residential School. This was significant for my family because my Dad, who is white, was born in Kamloops and attended school on the traditional territory of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc. We took time to together as a family to talk about how different my Dad’s life was as a white settler than the lives of the children who attended the residential school. We also talked about the Residential School in High River, the damages these schools have wrought on the Indigenous nations, and the pride, beauty, and resurgence of Indigenous Nations today. Our family has talked about the TRC’s definition of reconciliation as “ongoing process of establishing and maintaining respectful relationships…mutual recognition, mutual respect, sharing, and mutual responsibility” (p. 16). My family and I all hope to live up to this call.

I have lived in Huntington Hills neighbourhood my whole life and am currently a student at Sir John A. Macdonald middle school. One of my assignments in Grade 7 was to understand the impact and legacy of Sir John A. MacDonald. In this assignment I started with his achievements of uniting Canada and building the railway, but then asked who bore the cost. The railway was built on Indigenous lands through broken treaty commitments and through a policy of starvation to force Indigenous peoples onto reservation lands. The construction of the railway resulted in the deaths of 600 Chinese labourers and was conducted under harsh working conditions for little pay. Sir John A. MacDonald’s government was responsible for the rapid expansion of residential schools. Even judging him by the standards of the day, he was not a good person. He was the lawyer and supporter of PRO-slavery activists. A recent National Post article reported that “over his career Macdonald would pursue an Indigenous policy so draconian that even his contemporaries would come to accuse him of going beyond the pale.” 

I value learning history and I believe we must be balanced and neutral in understanding history which does not only include the views and perspectives of white men. In learning about Sir John A. Macdonald, I do not believe he is a man who should be honoured or celebrated as a symbol of our national character. Instead, I hope to promote the values of reconciliation I was taught – “mutual recognition, mutual respect, sharing, and mutual responsibility.” I also think of the Indigenous, Chinese, and Black students who are reminded of the painful and white supremacist policies of John A. Macdonald every time they come to school. The name and symbol of Macdonald is not respectful or safe for these students or for myself and it is not the vision I have of Canada.

It is with a hope for action toward the principle of mutual respect that my family has been working with the Reconciliation Action Group of Calgary to request the CBE Board of Trustees establish a committee to rename the John A. Macdonald middle school.

Sincerely,

Makena Halvorsen, Jeff Halvorsen, & Kara Payne