Coming after Sir John A. MacDonald

I originally wrote the following piece two years ago.

Given the events in the US, statues being torn down in a mob-like frenzy....it only was a matter of time before the mob came after one of the Father's of Confederation. (Not to worry...they will come after others soon)

Sir John A. MacDonald is once again in the news, as the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario demands that any school with his name, needs a formal name change, since Canada's first Prime Minister was a "...architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples".

It's only a matter of time, you realize, until they go after his statues as well.

But why end there?  As we seek to right the wrongs of the past, let's take it all a step further.  Hence, my call for a Cadaver Synod.

Here you go:

Interesting times we live in.

As hysterical and historical retro-activists seek to correct the wrongs of the past, it's just getting silly.

Now, I fully understand the disdain in which the Confederate flag is viewed.  I can almost understand Corporations like Amazon banning availability of the Confederate flag, while at the same time allowing Nazi and Communist memorabilia to be sold unabated....because, after all...the scourge of bigotry and slavery in American History was so much worse that the scourge of bigotry and slavery in Nazi Germany and the former USSR.  Heck....many of my family members were sent to the Gulag...but I also acknowledge that at this time in history, victims of communism are not popular....nor even seriously viewed as victims....perhaps in a 100 years?

No matter.

The next step in retro-justice is coming.

Last week the Mayor of Memphis, Tennesee, A.C. Wharton, stated it was time that the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife dug up from a City Park and moved to another location.

Digging up bodies of people we don't like? Ooooo. 

We could advocate for retro-trials.  After all, there is historical precedence... the Cadaver Synod (Synodus Horrenda) of 897, where the body of Pope Formosus was dug up and put on trial.

And found guilty.

His punishment? His body was interred in a grave for foreigners....then eventually dug up and thrown into the Tiber River.

Take that you evil Pope.

In the enlightenment we as a society now seem to possess, why not correct all the historical wrongs just like we did in the past? Why not dig up everyone in the past we have a problem with...put them on trial (Reality TV at its best) and judge them accordingly?

Even my own nation of Canada is struggling to find a way of dealing with the well-known drunkard and genocidal land-thief known as Sir John A. MacDonald...who also happened to be Canada's first Prime Minister.  

Why not just dig him up and put him on trial?

Britain passed judgement on Oliver Cromwell....and three years after his death Charles II ordered Cromwell's body to be dug up, hanged, drawn and quartered.  Cromwell's head was then removed from his body and placed on a spike at Westminister.  As a warning to all.

John Wycliffe was burned as a heretic 45 years after his death.

Vlad the Impaler (you know him as Dracula) was beheaded after his assassination.

Famous Russian mystic Rasputin was dug up by a mob and burned with gasoline.

Gebhard von Blücher was dug up by Soviet troops and his skull taken and used as a football.

There is no shortage of names, no shortage of those attempting to correct the crimes of the past.

Because as an amateur historian, I just think it's so cool that we insist on repeating history.

We've come so far in our enlightenment....so pass me a shovel and let the healing begin.

But first, I have a bone to pick, literally, with Josef Stalin.

Remembering a Victim of Communism

I never knew my great-grandmother.

She was born October 26, 1873 in the Volga German village of Semenovka.

She will go to work for the Dieser family, in the village of Josefstal, as a maid, and then marry one of their sons, Johannes Dieser, on Novermber 8, 1894.

They will have 9 children.  One of these children, Elisabeth, born August 19, 1902, will marry Paul Gerk on September 15, 1920.

My grandparents, Paul and Elisabeth, will live through the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war.

They will experience life under a Communist goverment.  Because of the Red Terror and the first famine along the Volga, Paul will escape Russia and flee to Canada as a refugee.  Paul will bring my grandmother out to Canada in 1925.

The plan was always to get the rest of the family out as well.

But the Iron Curtain will slam shut.

There will be letters.

The families will try desperately to keep in touch.

 Then, in 1933, a letter will arrive, written by my great-grandmother.  It will say in part:

Dear children, conditions are difficult here with respect to food. Times are tough dear children. Yes dear children we are having a hard time getting food.  Some people have had money sent to them. For one coin (taler) one pound of flour can be bought in Kamyshin.  If you could come to my aid could you send me 5 (taler) which would give us five pounds of flour.  Perhaps then I wouldn't starve to death, dear children.  Again I ask if you can help me so that I don't have to starve.  Now I will close this letter and greet you again and ask you to write quickly.

The letter was dated January 5, 1933.

My grandparents sent as much money as they could afford.  It would never arrive.  It would be stolen by Soviet postal officials.

On August 2, 1933, my great-grandmother, Marie Eva Dieser, will die from starvation.

A victim of the forced famine along the Volga and in the Ukraine.

There will be no acknowledgment of her death. My family will not discover her death until 1984...51 years after the fact.

When I traveled to Russia and spoke with archival officials, trying to track down her death record, I was told that even if I found it, it would probably only state that she died from "stomach disease". In the 1930's...as famine raged along the Volga....telling the truth...even on documentation of a death...would get you shot.

Such was life under Communism.

And so our family remembers our great-grandmother.  A kind and loving Mother and Grandmother.  We never got to know her....we knew only of the kindness and gentleness of her daughter, our grandmother.