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.