Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition, a joint appointment at St. Michael’s College and the University of Toronto Department of Religion. His research and writing focus mainly on Hindu-Christian Studies and Catholic theologies of interreligious dialogue. He lives on the Rouge Tract of Williams Treaty Territory, which is the subject of a specific land claim submitted by the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
Re-Remembering the Land
I was hired to teach in St. Mike’s interdisciplinary Christianity and Culture programme in 2004. At least since that time, the story of the University has always been told in a fairly straightforward way:
St. Michael’s was founded in 1852 by Bishop Armande de Charbonnel, the second Bishop of Toronto, who entrusted the school to his childhood teachers—the Basilian Fathers of Annonay, France—in 1853. The University would continue to grow, becoming a leading centre of international scholarship within a century of its founding.
When asked about the particular tract of land—Clover Hill—on which the University sits, presidents and chancellors will push the story back one frame, praising the prominent Catholic convert, John Elmsley (1801–1863). Elmsley gifted Clover Hill to the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Basilians for the specific purpose of responding to de Charbonnel’s request. And there, at least in its usual telling, our story ends. In our collective memory, the University and the land it occupies more or less spring into being from the heart of the Church, aptly symbolised by Elmsley’s own heart, now lodged in the walls of our collegiate parish. It’s a beautiful, inspiring story for me, as a Catholic convert myself and as a member of the college faculty.
The story is also, regrettably, a pernicious lie.
I am being deliberately provocative here. I don’t actually doubt that Elmsley transferred a piece of paper he had acquired for these lands to our founding religious congregations in 1851. The lie is not in what our collective memory affirms; it is in what it presumes or, worse, deliberately hides from view. The lie is in the unspoken assumption that the land was Elmsley’s to give.
How might we remember our story more truthfully? A couple of years ago, as part of a larger project, I asked a talented Ph.D. student at the Department for the Study of Religion to research this question. She wrote a new history of the land, one that begins in the year 900, rather than 1851. Here is a selection from her executive summary:
People have lived on this land for thousands of years according to Anishinaabe oral traditions. First Nations such as the Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Anishinaabek, and Tionnontati, traveled and made homes in this part of Turtle Island for centuries. More recently the Mississaugas of the Credit have belonged here, when they migrated south via the Carrying Place trail in the late 17th century.
Europeans began arriving in Turtle Island in the 1600’s. In 1805 the British Crown illegally claimed the land north of Lake Ontario for the city of York—what is now Toronto—in order to establish a capital for Upper Canada . . . The first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, nonetheless established York in 1793, 12 years before the Crown deemed the Toronto Purchase official, and despite protests from the Mississaugas. He divided the land into Park Lots: long rectangular-shaped sections of land that ran between what are now Queen and Bloor streets.
The University of St. Michael’s College lies on what was originally Park Lots 9 & 10. These lots were owned by John Elmsley, a Chief Justice of Upper Canada. When his son—also John Elmsley—inherited the land, he donated two acres of Clover Hill to the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1851 and then four lots to the Basilian Fathers for a new St. Michael’s College site.
—Sarina Annis, “This Land.”
The full narrative is definitely worth your time. It includes references, archival images of relevant treaties and other legal documents, and links to First Nation and Canadian government web sources on the history of Tkoronto.
Now, I want to be clear that I do not think that this longer history is “the truth.” Haudenosaunee colleagues in particular might question some of its claims. But I have reason to believe such colleagues would also view it as a vast improvement over the story we have been telling ourselves so far—precisely because it draws attention to our collective lie about the land.
What significance might a new narrative have for St. Mike’s as a university community? We cannot undo the past. We can, however, choose to remember that past more truthfully and to begin taking real steps to (re)build relationships. Consider the financial settlement reached between the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Government of Canada in 2010. This settlement does not resolve all outstanding differences or redress most specific harms of the Toronto Purchase. It does mean that, a full six years after I settled into my new job and office in Odette Hall, the University’s claim to set that building on that land attained some degree of moral legitimacy. Beyond this, through a partnership with SHARE, the USMC administration is exploring ways to deploy its financial assets—a primary fruit of the illegitimate acquisition of land—to advance initiatives related to (Re)Conciliation.
We are an academic institution, of course, and the main fruit of re-remembering this land will be in our teaching and research. There are tentative signs of movement on this front. The Faculty of Theology and the College division have introduced new courses responsive to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Along with our academic partners in the wider University of Toronto community, we have begun to include a land acknowledgement at the beginning of major events and many of our classes—and also on our website. I was relieved to learn that, in the wake of the horrific discovery of 215 unmarked graves at Kamloops, St. Mike’s joined other members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada in calling for greater accountability on the part of the global Catholic Church and our own academic institutions. Some St. Mike’s staff, faculty, alumnae, administrators, board members and benefactors have also raised their own voices in grief and protest.
These are initial steps, of mainly symbolic value. In the coming months and years, we will learn whether and to what extent we are committed to translating them into substantive action. If we do make such a commitment, I believe, it will follow at least in part from our willingness to re-remember our own history, and the longer story of this land.
This post was amended on June 24, 2021 to note that the Kamloops discovery was of graves rather than bodies.
Read other InsightOut posts.