My monthly book blog: A brief history of Canadian apartheid

Canadians are not as inclusive as we think.

I saw that 25 years ago, hitchhiking across the country for a newspaper series on Canadian identity. I had just moved back to Canada, after living abroad for eight years as a foreign correspondent, and wanted to capture our identity through fresh eyes. What struck me most? The amount of discrimination, especially in areas close to Indigenous communities.

To better understand that side of Canada, I convinced my editors at The Globe and Mail to let me criss-cross the country again, this time staying longer in (and returning to) some of the many Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities that live cheek-by-jowl. If anyone could understand and explain the fraught nature of Indigenous relations, it would be the people of places like The Pas and Opaskwayak, Manitoba; Moosonee and Moose Factory, Ontario; and Tofino and Ahousat, B.C.

In each place, I saw a Canadian house divided — so much so that we named the project “Canada’s Apartheid.”

I thought a lot about that project while reading the 2022 book, Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, A White Town and the Road to Reconciliation, by Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson.

The book examines the troubled history of Rossburn, Manitoba and neighbouring Waywayseecappo First Nation, which sits on the other side of the Birdtail River. There is nothing extraordinary about the two communities — and yet they illustrate the painfully extraordinary history of our splintered country.

Many Canadians bristle at the reference to “apartheid” in our own history, but it’s hard not to think of that word reading this book, which I did purposefully in June, National Indigenous History Month.

The history of Waywayseecappo goes back millennia but it was transformed in the first decade of Confederation, when the Cree and Ojibway of the Prairies came to terms with an expanding Canada through treaty negotiations, in their case Treaty Four.

The treaty, which local leaders couldn’t read, led to the creation of the Waywayseecappo reserve, just south of what is now Riding Mountain National Park. Soon, a new railroad brought tens of thousands of settlers, many new to Canada, to populate and then farm the Prairies. The threats of incursions from a westward-expanding United States led to a greater military presence, and more confinement. Then came the residential schools, in an effort to educate and immerse Indigenous kids that instead led to little education and nearly a century of abuse.The treaty, which was supposed to be a partnership, instead became a restrictive and repressive law. The people of Wayway soon needed passes to leave their reserve, and faced bans on Indians buying farm equipment, attending local schools or patronizing bars.

As Sniderman and Sanderson write, today's poverty in the community is not accidental. The forced divisions continued through the residential school era, and continued painfully into recent decades through a bizarre — reprehensible — dual school system that pretty much ensured Wayway kids would never be able to develop, academically, like Rossburn kids. Why? Until recently, the province gave the town school $10,500 per kid per year, while the federal government, which has responsibility for Indigenous affairs, gave the reserve school $7,300.

In my project, in 2001, I profiled a First Nation school in Manitoba’s Interlake region that was so decrepit few parents wanted their children to attend. Instead, many found relatives in a local town to accommodate their children, or sent them to Winnipeg. Not surprisingly, the grad rate was poor. The situation was worse in Wayway, where the handful of kids who did manage to make it to the town school found themselves completely ill-equipped and facing so much discrimination even the local mayor seemed uninhibited in deriding them.

It’s not all despair. Indeed, there’s less despair with each passing generation. Valley of the Birdtail tells the story of local residents — Indigenous and non — who are able to overcome some of these divisions, and work to change them. School funding is now on par, and Indigenous opportunities are greater than they were when I travelled the country.

It will take more than one generation to correct several generations of wrong. On this, our 157th Canada Day, we should pause to reflect on that, even while celebrating our collective achievement. Our past is flawed. Our present is fragile. But if we commit to it, our future can be more favourable for all.