Singling out Macdonald or Dewdney creates scapegoats and ignores history. They were supported by the institutions and churches of the day.
Edgar Dewdney was a British immigrant who came from Devonshire, England. He was raised in a wealthy family and studied engineering. His plan was to go to Canada, become wealthy and return to England. This was the dream of many upper-class people at the time.
He joined the Royal Engineers and worked on the Dewdney Trunk Road that went from Vancouver, B.C. to the interior. In 1872 he was elected to the House of Commons as the member from Yale, B.C.
In 1878 he was appointed to the newly created position of Indian Commissioner. Prime Minister Macdonald was determined to clear the Plains of the original inhabitants and build the transcontinental railway as promised in the negotiations to bring British Columbia into Confederation.
Dewdney didn’t like living on the Prairies and his wife detested it. He begged the prime minister for a Senate appointment but instead MacDonald sweetened the pot and made him lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Territories.
The original Fathers of Confederation were all white men from Eastern Canada and their vision was to build a model of the British Empire with the outlying colonies feeding resources to the centre, Toronto and Montreal being the centre. Montreal was the eastern seaport and British families lived in splendid isolation from the French.
The country was a vast hinterland ruled by a few rich families in the Toronto–Montreal area. Canada was created by an incestuous group of British elites. They shared the dream and promoted each other. It was not nation building as much as it was empire building.
The Indigenous inhabitants simply didn’t matter, and as Indian Commissioner, Dewdney’s job was to quell any discontent and move the people to their reserves. The plan was to teach the people agriculture and put an end to the need for rations as well as making the people self-sufficient. It looked like a win-win, but it failed on all counts.
The government provided farm instructors for reserves who turned out to be incompetent patronage appointments. They say that those who can’t do, teach, and this was a case in point.
As the lieutenant-governor, Dewdney chose the site of the new capital called Regina. He bought up much of the land around his home and declared it the site of the new city.
The CPR built the railway, but it placed the train station five miles to the east. Back then, the train station was the centre of a community, so Regina grew up five miles away from Dewdney’s land. The CPR made money, but Dewdney didn’t. The road that led from his land to the new city became known as Dewdney Avenue.
Today, Dewdney has been defined as another overrated colonial administrator whose name should be removed from street signs. But this would be an easy, feel-good fix.
Canadians must come to understand their racist and colonial past. Dewdney was a product of the times. The upper classes proudly declared their allegiance to the empire and imperialist policies. The population either agreed with or turned a blind eye to the suffering of the original people of the country that they were remaking.
Doug Cuthand is the Indigenous affairs columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. He is a member of the Little Pine First Nation.
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