Leave Louis ALONE… where’s Chris Crocker when you need him?

By Liam Larsen

The Conservative MP for Edmonton East, Peter Goldring has raised the ire of colleagues, constituents and foes alike with his rambling tirade about Louis Riel.

The four-page newsletter, which Goldring used his government mailing privileges to send, vehemently attacks what he calls “Revisionist time travel,” that has dishonored the memory of Canadian soldiers and elevated Riel to undeserved levels of reverence. Paula Simons’ Feb. 23 article in the Edmonton Journal examines the controversy surrounding the newsletter and attempts to rationalize why Goldring has intentionally stirred up a hornet’s nest complete with allegations of racism and calls for disciplinary action.

Simons’ article offers some insight into the real history behind Riel, but at the same time acknowledges that Goldring is not entirely wrong. Revisionist history that strives to “Canonize Louis Riel as a secular saint or airbrush his manifold sins in the name of political correctness,” as Simons puts it, is something we could do without. This balanced approach manages to show that Goldring has indeed planted his foot firmly in his mouth without vilifying him too much.

In reading the article it became evident the short quotes from the now infamous newsletter could not give me a clear picture of what the fuss was all about. The rational and logical place to look was Goldring’s Website, but the newsletter is now absent (the newsletters go from issue 90 straight to issue 92) from the documents on the site. One quick search later and I had a copy of Goldring’s newsletter issue 91A and it was an indispensable research tool.

Gerhard Ens, professor of western Canadian history at the University of Alberta, and Rod Macleod, professor emeritus of western Canadian history at the same university were used as expert sources in the article. Both men also seem to be equally perplexed as to why Goldring has chosen to publicy air crude views on such a complex topic. The two men do a good job of illustrating the multi-faceted nature of one of Canada’s most colourful and controversial historical figures.

History, it is said, is written by the victorious and in Riel’s case this is painfully evident. Goldring’s rambling newsletter raises some valid points, but his core message is opinionated and deeply biased. News articles about the controversy mention the fact that Winnipeg NDP MP, Pat Martin, has been working on a private member’s bill to both pardon Riel and have a statue of him erected on Parliament Hill. But the newsletter mentions this bill surreptitiously, labeling it as an update in a special section after the main body of the documents text.

The document itself lambastes the efforts of the CBC and the governor-general to retry Riel and turn a man Goldring considers a mass murder into a Father of Confederation. The statements made are extreme, but more often than not vague and confusing. For instance, Goldring references an article and editorial from Canadian Lawyer magazine, but fails to mention the author or the issue it appeared in. Although, he does mention it fails to talk about the deaths that, in Goldring’s view, were directly caused by Riel.

The mind-boggling thing about this entire fiasco is that a duly-elected official has used taxpayers’ money to spread his own skewed perspective on an issue he does not fully understand. One of the professors brings up another valid point in mentioning that people are too often labeled racists when they choose to say something negative about Riel. Although Goldring does appear to have a great deal of hatred and disdain for Riel, anyone reading the newsletter will see he has even more hatred for revisionists. He colours his newsletter with the familiar Conservative tactic of using the military as a shield. Usually his party utilizes today’s soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, but Golding uses the refrain: “Those very first Canadian war veterans who fought against Riel and saved our country from disintegration, so long ago.”

Referencing Japanese textbooks and revisionism seemed, to me at least, to be the over the top even for a man like Goldring. The man has an uncanny ability to surpass any cockamamie thing he writes with another even barmier statement that makes the previous one seem tame by comparison. What is really telling is the fact that he has not made any statement regarding the newsletter, save for removing it from his Website, and his own party could not move fast enough to distance themselves from him and his statements.