Systemic Erase-ism and Hate Speech Against the Dead

 In Canadian law hate speech against the living is a crime, so why is it acceptable to express hatred for the dead, in speech and writings? 

The minute you die, your obituary can legally be riddled with hateful innuendo, if not outright condemnation. Your obitus (death, in Latin), if you're from a white colonial background, is an occasion for legal abuse and character assassination. So be "obitu-wary", if you've ever stuck your neck out for a traditional cause: yesterday's hero is today's "racist", "eugenicist" or trans-phobic. 

The name of a former hero might be erased from schools, government buildings, theatres, streets and parks, by people who feel "triggered" or "hurt" by this person's existence. If that's not an expression of hate, what is it?

Take, in Victoria BC, the names on schools built in the early 20th century, such as Frank Hobbs, Margaret Jenkins, Elizabeth Buckley and Edward Milne. Probably most people in the third decade of the 21st century don't know who these figures were, but that won't stop their names being systemically erased from schools and streets. (They were educators, councillors, and humanitarians who had emigrated from England, Scotland and Wales respectively.)

The outgoing Council of Victoria BC has de-platformed Canada's first Prime Minister: Sir John A. Macdonald has been exiled-in-effigy, his statue shipped in a box right out of town because a group of aboriginals decided to hate him.

Name-blanking is one of history's time-honoured ways of hating figures who have fallen from fickle grace, and this Systemic Erase-ism is reaching epidemic proportions in Canada. Even the very plants in our gardens and the birds in our skies are threatened with scientific re-classification, if named after "colonial" specimen collectors. (The AUDUBAN movement?)

We do have to wonder why it's slander to hate-speak about the living but not the dead, who can no longer defend themselves. It's up to the fair-minded historian without a tribal identity-agenda to do it for them. And it's up to the ordinary citizen to resist the knee-jerk Systemic Erase-ism which is meant to re-arrange the past.

Change-of-Name Law Looming?

Forced Change of Names: First they came for the street names, and then they came for the surnames ...  

Apparently some folks with anti-European leanings consider BC's street names "colonialist", which for some reason to them means "unsafe". (History is dangerous, it seems, so they demand CHANGE. Street signs, addresses, maps … all must be changed, at vast public and private expense. Safety-ism First!

How soon before everyone who shares surnames with certain historical figures will be forced to change them? (New Government Directive produces Discredited Surname List …  If your name is on it you must change it in the name of equity, inclusion and diversity. Plus job prospects, university admission and access to food and housing.)

If you share a surname such as as Macdonald, Cook, Holmes, Pemberton, Dean, Robson, Seymour, Dunsmuir, McNeill, Helmcken, Blanshard, Wallace, Wark, Trutch -- and many others -- you will need to legally change yours, and will then be issued a Non-Colonial-Name Passport, which will allow you to travel, receive services, and possess personal stationery.

Please be advised that Canada Post has committed to a new standard of non-delivery of mail to "triggering" addressees.

The Government will begin this name-laundering reform with public education, but if propagandistic coercion fails to work, fines and social ostracism may be considered.

Some colonial-era explorers' street names will survive (such as Quadra, San Juan, and Gonzales) as they were named for "brown people". Some Anglo-citizens have responded with a nascent #mynametoo movement on Twitter.

Investors' tip: cancelled street signs will one day become valuable collectors' items, like once-censored books are today. Above is one such sign, for a Mr. McKenzie who was the manager of early Vancouver Island's colonial Craigflower Farm (another shady Scot then ...). 

Some obstreperous free-thinker citizens are not reconciled to this name-banning:

In an act of reconciliation, Victoria's Trutch Street gets a new name - Victoria Times Colonist

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-s-trutch-street-lekwungen-truth-1.6351665

Vancouver mayor looks to change street named after colonial B.C. politician Sir Joseph Trutch - BC | Globalnews.ca