I am writing about the letter, "Chilcotin War apology deserved," in the April 5 Citizen.
Terry Burgess says that around 1864, in B.C., "all the work being done on roads and trails around that time was being done in preparation to joining Canada." I am sorry but I very much doubt that Burgess can provide any evidence for this laughable statement, that such a prophetic spirit existed among road builders in B.C. at this time that all road construction was being done to join a nation that didn't yet exist.
No one in authority like Britain, or the colony of Canada, had made any statement announcing that the country of Canada would be established in 1867 or another year in the future, and the establishment of Canada as a sovereign nation was, in 1864, no sure thing. If you read the book, Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation, you will see that the author, John Boyko, reports that in 1864, at the National Union Party convention in Baltimore, the New York Times founder Henry Raymond made a speech in which he declared that at the end of the Civil War, the colony of Canada should be attacked and made American.
Boyko also states that in the summer of 1865, Secretary of State William Seward believed that Canada should become part of the American Union and help the U.S. economy by expansion of influence and territory. The nation of Canada was no sure thing.
Was life in North America ideal before the white man? In Europe, there is no hankering back to the good old days of the stone age, when killing and lawlessness was in vogue.
I read a story of a European being with a group of aboriginals in the far north of what is now Canada when they came upon a small group of Inuit hunters. The aboriginals immediately attacked and killed the Inuit. A young girl flung herself near the feet of the European where she was killed by a spear by the aboriginals. The European was immediately given a lecture as to why the Inuit should not be allowed to live. This sort of genocidal attacks amongst the native population disappeared once the British came and European culture and law took over and that can only be considered a good thing, I believe.
As Mel Rothenburger said in his excellent editorial in the April 11 Citizen, the twisting of the facts of the so-called Chilcotin War for political purposes by people like Justin Trudeau does not help with true reconciliation for past wrongs.
Svend Serup
Prince George
