Lynn McDonald: Email To Hayden King, TMU, sent 29 July 2024
Dear Hayden, if I may, as fellow sociologists, both with a McMaster connection (my first teaching job was there).
You have made a number of accusations against Egerton Ryerson, and his supposed advocacy of the harmful residential school system, but on the basis of what? Please provide some evidence.
I have done a considerable amount of reading on and by him. His 1847 handwritten letter, 5 pages, is hardly the “smoking gun” that condemns him. It was not even printed until 1898, but lay hidden away somewhere in an office. The significant document for the residential school system, as you know, was Davin’s report, 1879, and he never mentioned Ryerson. Ryerson’s appointment was in the regular school system—we would say “provincial,” while residential schools were federal. Ryerson had no “authority” at Indian Affairs, as Dube quoted you as saying in his article. Ryerson only did that 1847 letter when George Vardon asked for his advice, and he had been pushed by Indigenous Methodist leaders.
His letter gave suggestions, for “industrial schools” for those Indigenous youth who wanted to learn farming. They would “reside together” on a farm, where else? There were no school buses! Nothing compulsory, nothing about English-only. They would be an option for pupils’ last years of schooling, for four to eight years, after attending a day school and living at home. Joe Friesen quoted you as saying “His work has been linked with an 1879 report by Nicholas Flood Davin that laid the foundation for the residential school system.” Yes, Davin’s report was key, but Davin never cited Ryerson! Nor did anyone cite him in debate on the Indian Act amendments that established the schools. If you have any evidence, please say what! If he was “linked” to the Davin Report, who linked him? And, If the link is wrong, why cite it? Better still, why not expose it as false “information.”
Jacob Dubé cited you: ““His report was used to implement and refine the residential school system that operated in Canada for over 100 years.” Also that he continuously advocated for Indigenous children to be educated separately from white children at boarding schools away from their families.” Any evidence? There were people who advocated taking Indigenous children from their families, but I have never seen Ryerson advocate that, let alone advocate it “continuously.”
The conversion issue is complex. Ryerson was a minister and missionary, but indeed all Christians are supposed to preach the Gospel, to bring news of salvation and aSaviour to others. The Mississaugas who converted found that they benefited enormously and many became missionaries to their own people. Ryerson published their accounts in the Christian Guardian, but he himself did not do that preaching. You have the timing wrong: when Ryerson arrived at the Credit, they had all earlier converted. He assisted them with learning farming and carpentry, useful skills he had, and he gave pastoral care. Please say, if you have found something I missed, where he denounced any Indigenous people and said they needed to be “managed.”
I have looked, but Ryerson never mentioned “residential schools” in his Memoir (easily searchable as it is on Project Gutenberg), nor do the words appear in the two-volume Life and Letters or the three bios on him, nor the book (Putman) on his educational work.
Sincerely, Lynn McDonald, CM, PhD, LLD (hon), professor emerita, FRHistS