Barack Obama alternately enthralled and infuriated African-Americans with a quotation by Martin Luther King that he made the leitmotif of his presidency. The former U.S. president even had it woven into a rug in the Oval Office to remind everyone who walked on it what he was all about.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," Mr. Obama said repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that would end with his election as the first black U.S. president.
Just what does that mean, anyway? For some, like Mr. Obama, it implies that goodness always wins out in the end. If everyone were as patient and clear-eyed as him, they would see that progress had indeed been made in "[expunging] America's original sin," as John McCain's former campaign manager once said in describing Mr. Obama's election.
For others, for whom history is not a series of Hollywood endings, Dr. King's quote smacks of complacency. The struggle for justice is just that – a struggle. For them, the election of Donald Trump is proof that Mr. Obama's patient optimism was misplaced, or, at the very least, premature.
We, in Canada, are not so different in how we confront our own original sin. Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples has become a vast national project that will consume this generation of leaders and several more to come before the arc of the moral universe bends to achieve justice for First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Not everyone, it seems, is on board. Senator Lynn Beyak, who thinks some good came out of residential schools, has become a heroine for those who argue that the collective self-flagellation over the treatment of Indigenous Canadians is nothing more than political correctness on steroids. You don't have to be an apologist for that point of view to worry about certain politicians appropriating the reconciliation cause.
Take former mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre, who announced while seeking re-election that the city would change the name of an artery dedicated to General Jeffrey Amherst, the first British-appointed governor of Quebec following the fall of New France. The 18th-century British general's crime involved having once inquired whether blankets covered in the smallpox virus could be distributed among Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley with whom the British were at war. For that, Mr. Coderre decreed, his name must now be expunged.
Such attempts to erase our history in the name of reconciliation are plain dishonest. If we truly want to reach the goal, our collective memory cannot be a selective one.
"Fighting native people was part of [Amherst's] job, when necessary," historian Desmond Morton told The Globe and Mail's Ingrid Peritz. "He shared, like most people in the military, the values and attitudes of people in his lifetime. How do you polish that away?"
Now comes along Hochelaga, film director François Girard's 750-year epic journey through the history of Montreal, a city built by European colonists on what is "unceded" Iroquois territory. Or so we are told by Mr. Girard, Mr. Coderre and others who have presented the film as a step forward in the reconciliation process. That is an awful burden for any work of art to bear and Hochelaga suffers as a film for it.
Suffice it to say that, for a movie that carries the subtitle Land of Souls, Hochelaga seems to lack a soul of its own, having sacrificed it at the altar of political correctness. With its stunning cinematography and compelling story line – the unexpected discovery of the site of the original Iroquois settlement of Hochelaga at the foot of Montreal's Mount Royal – Hochelaga has much to recommend it. But it does feel an awful lot like what Journal de Montréal columnist Sophie Durocher called "one long Heritage Minute."
Telefilm Canada put up $4-million of Hochelaga's estimated $15-million budget, while the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec contributed $2-million. The organization overseeing Montreal's 375th anniversary celebrations also invested in the film. While Hochelaga won't win many non-technical awards – it was Canada's entry for a foreign-language Oscar but did not make the short list – it should outlive its theatrical run to serve as a teaching tool in Canadian high schools, albeit an imperfect one.
Hochelaga fits neatly into earnest "arc of justice" narrative to which our better angels want to subscribe. Whether that moves us closer to, or further from, reconciliation is another matter altogether.
Konrad Yakabuski