Commentary
The giant Buddhas of Bamiyan were built in the fifth century. Those revered statues were blown up in 2001. Afghanistan’s Ministry of Virtue and Vice was instructed to destroy the Buddha statues “by any means available” and so they used dynamite. That destruction order spread out to hundreds of relics across the country. More than 2,700
artworks were destroyed at the National Museum.
Afghanistan’s religious leaders stated that the Buddhist objects had to be “
smashed“ because they were ”contrary to Islam.“ One official explained that right-thinking Afghan people ”do not need these statues.”
Canadian leaders spoke out in 2001. The Department of Foreign Affairs issued a strong condemnation against the Taliban government and urged “tolerance.” At the same time The Globe and Mail called the Afghan events “cultural vandalism.” The Edmonton Journal called them “barbarism against history and culture.” And The Ottawa Citizen lamented that Afghanistan was “ruled by savages and religious apes and fanatics.” Any approval of the Taliban wreckage was unthinkable.
But that was then. In recent years, Canada has been walking through its own story of destruction.
In February 2024, Regina’s Blessed Sacrament Church became, since 2021, the hundredth vandalized church in Canada. A gas-carrying arsonist
was captured on video and his masked face made headlines around the world. The
100 church attacks were country-wide. Fourteen churches served congregations on First Nations reserves. Eleven Calgary churches were hit on a single day. And at least 13 churches were burned to the ground. These were altogether unparalleled and tragic events.
Meanwhile, about 100 metres from the Blessed Sacrament Church sits an empty corner in Regina’s Victoria Park. In 2021, the city council voted to remove the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. The statue had been defaced and the object of protest for weeks previous. Regina city council was only one of many to remove a Macdonald statue. Other city councils did the same in Charlottetown in P.E.I., Victoria in B.C., and Baden, Kingston, and Picton in Ontario.
Aside from those city council removals, though, angry mobs destroyed other Macdonald statues. This happened in Montreal, Toronto, and Hamilton. At about the same time, multiple schools across Canada named after Macdonald changed their names. And in Saskatoon, John A. Macdonald Road was erased and replaced with Miyo-wâhkôhtowin Road. One by one, remembrances of the first prime minister vanished across the country.
Compared to the Afghan destruction, though, there was a short supply of Canadian outrage over these events. Regarding the church fires, the then-executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association tweeted “burn it all down.” Former Trudeau adviser Gerald Butts went on social media to jeer, “It’s understandable.” And at least three resolutions by Ottawa MP’s seeking to condemn the church attacks were voted down.
Meanwhile, the media site Kingstonist.com reports there was “music and dancing” when the Macdonald statue was removed in Kingston. In Montreal, YouTube videos show the
crowd cheering as a mob pulls down the Macdonald statue and its head comes off. Then-opposition leader Andrew Scheer held an outdoor rally defending the Macdonald statues and, in response, the Regina Leader Post called him
“tone-deaf” and “comical.”Canada’s seismic shift happened in May 2021. That was when the Kamloops Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation made the shocking claim that
215 “missing children” were buried on the grounds of the local former residential school. That claim unleashed an alarming force in Canada. The church and statue attacks appeared to be unstoppable. Writing in the National Post, Conrad Black described the force as “unwarranted self hate” and “a whirlpool of self-defamation.” Or as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, those who suffer will seek out “the sweet honey of revenge.”
In later months though, the Kamloops grave claim was greatly disputed. The New York Post proclaimed it the “
Biggest fake news story in Canada.“ And a similar repudiation is laid out in ”
Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools),” a
bestselling book published last December. But many people reject these publications. So today there are two sides standing apart almost like night and day.
It may be years before the nation can calmly talk about what has happened since 2021. A cascade of passion still covers the present. In the meantime, the road to truth and reconciliation is a troubled one.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
