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The Citizen, 2017-07-13, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views Does the bad outweigh the good? How do you measure the good versus the bad when you're looking at the worth of a figure from the past? Do you throw out the good things they accomplished when new, more unfavourable, information comes to light? Such is the debate about Egerton Ryerson these days since the Students' Union of Ryerson University issued a list of demands on Canada Day that included changing the university's name and tearing down the statue of Egerton Ryerson out front because of his connection to the residential school system that did so much damage to Indigenous peoples for more than 100 years. I must say I've learned more about Ryerson the man in the past few days than I did when I walked past that statue nearly every day for three years when I attended Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, the previous name for the university (or Rye High as it was often called). To a 20 -year-old, Eggie was just some old guy who had vaguely played a part in education in Ontario's past. Probably Eggie the Ram, the mascot for the school's sports teams, got a lot more attention. (I'm sure using a live ram mascot is also out of favour these days and, to be honest, that poor sheep was mistreated, having to represent the school's depressingly bad teams.) But Sarah Dennis, a member of Ryerson University's Indigenous Students' Association who is Anishinaabe and a member of the Nipissing First Nation, who was raised in Toronto and is studying sociology and social work at Ryerson says "The statue represents a source of a significant and negative representation of a painful part of our history that is still reflected in our current state." She describes Ryerson's social climate as "inherently racist". Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk The point of contention is an 1847 study Ryerson published on Native education, commissioned by the Assistant Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. He called for residential schools for Indigenous boys and some have linked this to the cruel system that was created nearly 40 years later. Ryerson died in 1882. The first residential schools opened in 1883. Historian Donald Smith has come to Ryerson's defense, citing The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to show that Ryerson's report advocated boarding schools for older First Nations male students where they could learn European -style agriculture as a key to improving their lives. No matter how closely Ryerson can be tied to the brutal residential school system, does it wipe out everything else he did in his 79 years on earth? At the age of 23 he was a Methodist minister, working among the Credit Mississauga (Ojibwa, or Anishinabeg) people of modern Mississauga. These days, of course, being a Christian missionary is problematic for both First Nations proponents and educated liberals, but Ryerson lived and worked with them and learned their language, and in December, 1826 a council of the tribe honoured him with the Ojibwe name of one of their deceased chiefs. Ryerson went on to be a thorn in the side of the Family Compact that ruled Upper Canada prior to the 1837 Rebellion, arguing against the privileged position of the Anglican Church to benefit from the clergy reserves, (a proportion of all lands opened for settlers that was set aside for the church), and against church -run schools. Though a major figure in the reform cause he opposed William Lyon Mackenzie's radical position that led to the rebellion. Ryerson was quoted in 1831 as declaring: "The first object of a wise government should be the education of the people ... Partial knowledge is better than total ignorance. If total ignorance be a bad and dangerous thing, every degree of knowledge lessens both the evil and the danger." In 1844 he was appointed superintendent of education for Canada West and created Ontario's public school system. He believed education should be universal and compulsory and built on a moral foundation if it was to improve the individual and help society. So how do we judge Ryerson — bury his achievements because of perceived misdeeds? How do we handle other giants of history? Are the soaring words of Thomas Jefferson worthless because he hypocritically talked about freedom when he owned 600 slaves? Does his magnificent memorial get demolished? Nelson Mandela belonged to an organization regarded as terrorist before he became a wise builder of bridges between the races. Do we forget the good and only remember the bad? Writers are always urged to create real characters with human flaws but we're not happy to find out historic figures had human failings. Can we not point out both the good and the bad of these people to illustrate how easily good people can do bad things? Child -proofing, a gateway activity 0 ver the weekend I spent a bit of time installing some of the remaining cupboard safety latches throughout the house as Mary Jane has taken to (assisted) walking around the house. For those a bit removed from the whole parental shtick, assisted walking means she's completely upright and mobile as long as she has furniture to hold on to or some kind of wheeled walker. Actually, that's not fair. Mary Jane has started pushing anything that will slide to get her from Point A to Point B, much to the chagrin of my wife and I since it's wreaking havoc on our relatively -new flooring. It's cute because she can walk and she can stand on her own, without leaning on anything, but she only does it when she doesn't realize she's doing it. She will stop making her way along the furniture and stand, entranced, when her favourite television commercial comes on (a recent Pepsi commercial, in case you're wondering). She will hold on to whatever she's carrying with both hands, and, as long as the song on the commercial lasts, not realize she's standing unaided. The song and the commercial end and she realizes she's standing, something she can't possibly do, and she then falls down on to her backside with a thump. It's cute, that's for sure, but it's indicative that I need to up my child -proofing because, soon, make -shift barricades won't be enough. Fortunately, around the time that Ashleigh and I found out we would have this little bundle of joy that changed our world, it caused within me a paradigm shift. You can ask my father to verify this but DIY house repairs and work have never really been something that have interested me. Sure, I've hung drywall, painted, fixed doors, and hung pictures, but I never had the urge to make or Denny - Scott Denny's Den build anything myself until I found out I was going to be a father. To those who know me best, I can only assume that fatherhood affected me the same way a full moon turns a werewolf. Suddenly I started amassing (and inheriting) tools, built myself a modest workshop and started putting plans together as to how I could keep Mary Jane safe. After turning a kitchen island into a set of cabinets and commencing baby -proofing, I realized woodworking wasn't exactly outside of my wheelhouse and, from there, the ideas started to swirl. After that wind filled my sails, I saw all sorts of projects around the house that I could tackle with my growing collection of power tools and ambition. For example, my wife and I were trying to find a picture board (like a frame, but for multiple pictures) to put up some of the cute shots we have of Mary Jane. Finding a frame we liked wasn't difficult. Finding a frame that I considered reasonably priced wasn't difficult either. Finding a frame that we liked that was reasonably priced, however, was a challenge. After some convincing, my wife took a chance on us being able to make what we wanted at home for a much lower price than what it cost to buy a mass-produced model. My next plan was to take some spare wood we had lying around, sand it to the smoothness of a baby's bottom and create a baby gate. After all, those things are not cheap. She doubted that I could make a functional gate, much less one safe enough that Mary Jane could safely be around it, but she put those doubts aside and had faith in me (just one of the many reasons I married her). The project was more or less a success and a huge learning experience. Actually, the gate I crafted is much taller than those that we bought, and, with a nice coat of paint on it, doesn't look half -bad if I do say so myself. I prefer it to the store-bought ones because the cats are too scared to try and jump over it, killing two birds with one stone. The next gate (yes, I convinced Ashleigh to let me refine the process) will be a little sturdier and a little prettier to look at thanks to a new power mitre saw (a gift I'm most thankful for). I've always been a hands-on kind of guy when it comes to getting work done — I can't stand waiting while people endlessly debate things that could get done quickly and simply, so the knowledge that I can build simple things (picture frames, picture boards, gates, book shelves, work benches, etc.) has been somewhat of a blessing for me. No longer do I need to wait for help before tackling simple home improvement projects, I can toss on a pair of safety glasses, a tool belt and start getting things done. There's a near -euphoria every 10th time or so I open the gate I made because I realize that I made that with my own two hands, and that feeling of accomplishment is addictive. The realization that I could get addicted to getting these projects done, however, fed directly into another fatherhood stereotype: the "dad" puns that I've talked about before. In case you haven't figured it out, that simple barricade between one room and the next was my gateway drug to DIY woodworking. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense The places you'll go Last week, The Citizen published its annual graduation issue. It's a salute to local students who worked hard and persevered to finish Grade 8 and moving on to high school — the gateway to college or university, which is the gateway to the rest of your life. We always publish the Valedictorians' speeches because if a student makes it to the head of his or her class, they deserve to have their words celebrated by the community. That is, except for F.E. Madill school, which eradicated awards and valedictorians in order not to alienate students who didn't win awards or who weren't named valedictorian. However, since those schools that still have awards and valedictorians haven't seen their structures cave in under the weight of the archaic concept of honouring success, let's focus on them, shall we? Back in the days before the Avon Maitland School Board closed the vast majority of the schools in northern Huron County, The Citizen used to cover five schools. And I remember there was one year where three of the five valedictorian speeches quoted Dr. Seuss and his book, Oh, the Places You'll Go! The phrase to which I refer is "You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose." It became a running conversation every year between Denny and I here at the office. How many speeches would we have this year with a Seuss quote? I don't say this to demean the students who saw fit to use the Seuss quote, oh course. If anything, how often it's used in Huron County, of all places, shows the quote to be universally applicable and enduring. Timeless would likely be the best word for it. This year we had one. It was from Seaforth Public School and the three valedictorians, Colin Campbell, Wendy Campbell and Liam Wilson who quoted the doctor in their collective valedictorian address. Due to the frequency of its use, and with the rise of the internet, Google, etc., I wondered if it was maybe the first result when you Googled "graduation quotes" and it isn't. I actually couldn't find it on most lists. One of the results I found, however, is that a copy of the book itself has endured as one of the most popular graduation gifts. While the book remains the best-selling Dr. Seuss book of all time, publisher Penguin Random House says that the book's sales quadruple when graduation season rolls around. So, I looked up a few things about the book. I, myself, was more of a Berenstain Bears and Robert Munsch kind of kid, so I didn't read a whole lot of Seuss in my younger years. The book celebrated its 25th anniversary of being published in 2015. Dr. Seuss, who is alternately known as Theodor Geisel, was battling cancer as he was putting the finishing touches on the book, which would eventually be published in 1990. Those close to him have said that he knew it would be his final book, so he wrote it thusly. "It was his swan song, and he knew it was his swan song," said Philip Nel, director of the children's literature program at Kansas State University, told CNN in 2015. "It's a career summation in a lot of ways, both visually and morally, in the messages and the images." While Geisel may have left a legacy for his storied career as one of the great storytellers of our time (albeit a bit repetitive, if I'm being critical), he's also left something behind for generations of graduates — inspiring the great minds of tomorrow forever more.