Christmas Every Day

1863 The OTHER Gettysburg Address

The brief remarks at the Gettysburg battle site by Abraham Lincoln are rightly remembered as one of the greatest speeches in history. Almost forgotten is the address which preceded the President’s, given by Edward Everett, the politician and diplomat whose oratory was so fabled in his day that he was considered the featured speaker on this occasion. If you like two-hour lectures, rich in florid phrases, metaphor, and allusion, this is your baby. 

In the course of 13,000 words, Everett gave a minutely-detailed history of the war to that point, a microscopic analysis of the three days of battle, a salute to women,  and a lengthy constitutional analysis of why the Confederate cause could justly be called a rebellion, ending with a discussion of how a post-war reconciliation was possible. His second-last paragraph (longer than the entirety of Lincoln’s speech) will give you an idea of his style. If you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like:

But the hour is coming and now is, when the power of the leaders of the Rebellion to delude and inflame must cease. There is no bitterness on the part of the masses. The people of the South are not going to wage an eternal war for the wretched pretexts by which this rebellion is sought to be justified. The bonds that unite us as one People, – a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law (the four great ties that hold the societies of men together); common national and political interests; a common history; a common pride in a glorious ancestry; a common interest in this great heritage of blessings; the very geographical features of the country; the mighty rivers that cross the lines of climate, and thus facilitate the interchange of natural and industrial products, while the wonder-working arm of the engineer has levelled the mountain-walls which separate the East and West, compelling your own Alleghanies, my Maryland and Pennsylvania friends, to open wide their everlasting doors to the chariot-wheels of traffic and travel, – these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious, and transient. The heart of the People, North and South, is for the Union. Indications, too plain to be mistaken, announce the fact, both in the East and the West of the States in rebellion. In North Carolina and Arkansas the fatal charm at length is broken. At Raleigh and Little Rock the lips of honest and brave men are unsealed, and an independent press is unlimbering its artillery. When its rifled cannon shall begin to roar, the hosts of treasonable sophistry–the mad delusions of the day–will fly like the Rebel army through the passes of yonder mountain. The weary masses of the people are yearning to see the dear old flag again floating upon their capitols, and they sigh for the return of the peace, prosperity, and happiness which they enjoyed under a government whose power was felt only in its blessings.

1885 Execution of Louis Riel

Four years ago I penned the following op-ed.

How much of a hero do you have to be to warrant a statue? How much of a villain do you have to be to have your name stripped from streets, bridges, or schools? The brouhaha surrounding the memory of Edward Cornwallis and Egerton Ryerson means that Canadians and their governmental representatives need to seriously consider these questions.

At first glance, it would seem obvious that these two men are worthy of honour and praise. Cornwallis was, after all, the founder of Halifax. He arrived in Nova Scotia in 1749 with 2500 settlers, chose the site for a town, and worked to defend and expand his settlement, now the largest city in the Maritimes.

Ryerson had a splendid career in 19^th-century Ontario as a Methodist minister, newspaper editor, historian, opponent of oligarchy, founder of Victoria College, but above all, as the architect of the provincial educational system – universal, free, and government-supported — that became a model for every province and territory in Canada.

So why are some demanding that statues to these men be taken down and their names erased from community sites?

Both men, it is claimed, wrought harm on the indigenes of their day. In response to native attacks on his settlers, Cornwallis placed a bounty on Mi’kmac scalps – the same sort of inducement that his French and Mi’kmac enemies regularly placed on the hair of the British they killed. His bounty was ineffective (it may have yielded one scalp) and he quickly rescinded the order, but for the sin of using the same methods as his native opponents, today’s Mi’kmac demand the expunging of Corwallis’s public presence. Ryerson’s present shaming results from him being an architect of the Indian Residential School system, the same crime for which Hubert Langevin has recently and controversially paid a high price.

The problem is that we have two men who made important contributions to their country in the 18^th and 19^thcenturies, but who also performed deeds that upset some Canadians in the 21^st century. Which set of actions outweighs the other? Do we put a tarp over Corwallis’s statue on weekdays but remove it on weekends and Natal Day? Is it Ryerson University during term time, and Mid-Ranked Former Toronto Polytechnic the rest of the year? Or do we obliterate the memory of these fellows altogether?

“Use every man after his desert,” said Hamlet, “and who shall ‘scape whipping?”  No one, no historical figure, no matter how revered, ever lived without flaws. Louis Riel, rightly lauded for his role in the founding of Manitoba, ended his life as a false messiah who wanted to rename the North Star after his sister, and move the papacy to Montreal; a failed leader whose decisions brought ruin on the Métis of the Northwest. Yet we have erected two statues of Riel in Winnipeg and name a public holiday after him. By today’s standards, Winston Churchill was a racist, and made some very disobliging remarks about Islam, but who will deny that he is worthy of our gratitude for having helped save civilization from Hitler? Martin Luther King was a plagiarist and adulterer but he remains an idolized figure in the United States. Tommy Douglas, founder of Medicare, was once a proponent of eugenics and sterilizing and segregating the mentally handicapped, yet his fellow countrymen voted him the title of “The Greatest Canadian”.

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” That may have been a cunning piece of rhetoric for Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, but it is bad advice for a country to take. A nation must have heroes and we must honour the men and women who helped build Canada. An approach that recognizes in each historical figure an overall balance of benefits, of good deeds and bad attitudes, will save us from a ceaseless round of revisionism and endless moaning about the sins of our ancestors.

Sadly, the forces of wokedom prevailed. The names of Egerton and Ryerson were stripped from public buildings, statues were torn down, and a damnatio memoriae proclaimed on their reputation. My opinion remains unchanged.

1002 The St. Brice’s Day Massacre

For centuries Scandinavian warriors had been causing misery in England, carrying off slaves, levying vast amounts of tribute money (Danegeld), and occupying significant part of the country. At the turn of the millennium the raids became increasingly intense and damaging. Prayers and public fasting were directed against the pagan interlopers while a payment of 24,000 pounds was gathered to buy them off.

In 1002 Aethelred II (“the Unready”) decided on a policy of extermination, (iustissima exterminacio). Claiming to have heard of a plot to depose him, he ordered the death of all Danes in the country. Historians estimate that thousands were killed in the territories where Aethelred’s writ ran, possibly including Gunhilde, the sister of King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark. Aethelred defended this ethnic cleansing in a porclamation explaining why a church in Oxford had to be burned down in the affair.

For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God’s aid, it was renewed by me.

Rather than end the Danish problem, the massacre only prompted more warfare. Sweyn Forkbeard would invade England and depose Aethelred. By 1016 a Danish king, Canute, would rule England.

1970 A whale explodes

In November 1970 a 45-foot sperm whale corpse was found on a beach near Florence, Oregon. Officials were puzzled about how to dispose of 8 tons of decomposing flesh until one genius from the state’s Highway Division hit upon the idea of surrounding the dead cetacean with explosive material and blowing it to smithereens.

Despite the warning from a local demolition expert that a mere 20 sticks or 8.4 pounds of dynamite would suffice, officials settled on 20 cases (a half-ton). The result was spectacular. Pieces of the unfortunate mammal rained down on horrified spectators. Particularly unlucky was the fellow who had recommended the smaller amount — his brand-new car, just purchased from a dealership offering “A Whale of a Deal”, was flattened by a massive chunk of blubber.

This hilarious disaster might have been forgotten but for a piece by humorist Dave Barry 25 years later. A video of the explosion went viral and made the episode famous.

In 2020, residents of Florence voted to name a new recreational area “Exploding Whale Memorial Park” in honor of the incident.