Parks Canada staffers annoyed over activists pushing for CPR commemoration changes

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OTTAWA — Persistent emails from activists pestering Parks Canada to rewrite a commemoration of Canada’s transcontinental railway through a revisionist lens spurned annoyance among agency staffers.

In a report published by Blacklock’s Reporter, Parks Canada staffers complained in emails about the revisionists, demanding changes to a commemoration of the Canadian Pacific Railway, taking exception to descriptions of the transcontinental railway’s last spike driven on Nov. 7, 1885 at Craigellachie, B.C. — about 40 km west of Revelstoke — as being “the moment when national unity was realized.”

In a Sept. 2023 email, a Parks Canada director-general said the agency was looking to review designations and plaques that no longer reflect contemporary values, targeting those “missing a significant layer of history, contain outdated or offensive language, celebrate figures associated with controversial beliefs or glorify themes of colonialism or settlement without giving the perspectives of those impacted or involved.”

One manager described them as “persistent emails from an archivist and activist calling for the addition of the Chinese,” while others were seeking greater recognition of Japanese labourers and inclusion of First Nations hunting and trapping references.

While Chinese-Canadian activists pushed for mention of Chinese labourers put to work in constructing the railway’s western portions, a Parks Canada manager noted in an email that they weren’t the only foreign labour pressed into laying rails.

“There were 32 Japanese railway workers killed in Rogers Pass in 1910,” they wrote.

Another staffer expressed similar concerns.

“Is the work of Parks Canada and this project limited to reviewing the wording of designations or is it taking the opportunity to review the entire system of designations to attempt to address systemic issues around its presentation of Canadian heritage which continues to be deeply colonial?” they wrote in a different email.

“In regards to Chinese Canadian contributions, wherever the Canadian Pacific Railway is mentioned within a designation the Chinese need to be mentioned.”