[GGG]

Originally Posted by 81MC

I don’t know if someone who is opposed to gay rights in 2021 is a fair comparison for one who opposed sexual equality in 1850.

Also, wasn’t Ryerson long dead before any residential school was actually commissioned? And from by (very brief, probably whitewashed and Eurocentric) memory of that name, I don’t think Ryerson was some evil Indian-hating murderer? Misguided as ####, but the vilification of him specifically seems misplaced.

https://indigenousresurgence.blog.ryerson.ca/

Have a read through Ryerson’s own words and decide. He quite literally wrote the plan for residential schools. I don’t think I believe in the moral lens of the day excluding certain acts when those acts cause generational harm.

the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connect with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings. Even in ordinary civilized life, the mass of the labouring classes are controlled by their feelings and almost the only rule of action, in proportion to the absence or partial character of their intellectual development. The theory of a certain kind of education philosophy is falsified in respect to the Indian: with him nothing can be done to improve or elevate his character and condition without the aid of religious feeling. This influence must be superadded to all others to make the Indian a sober and industrious man. Even a knowledge of the doctrines and moral precepts of orthodox [c]hristianity, with all the appliances of prudential example and moral instruction, is inadequate to produce in the heart and life of the Indian, the spirit and habits of an industrial civilization, without the additional energy and impulsive activity of religious feeling.”