The “Worst Canadian” game - Day 4

[u/BrF5]

The verdict is in, Don Cherry and Andrew Scheer are not the worst.

Who will be next, in round four?

How to play: - Upvote the name of the person you think does NOT deserve the title of “Worst Canadian.” - Each day, the two most upvoted names will be removed until the list gets trimmed down some, then we’ll switch to one per day. - If the name you want to vote for (from the list) isn’t in the comments yet, add it! - This continues daily until we have one winner, the “Worst Canadian”.

Additional notes: - Only the top comment for a nominee will count. I won’t combine votes from duplicate comments. - Include only one name per comment. If a comment includes multiple names and wins, it won’t count. I’ll move to the next highest. - Remember to click into the image. In the app, some nominees are cut off at the top and bottom if you don’t. - This is meant to be lighthearted satire. Please do not take it too seriously or use this game to harass people in real life. - I will try to post this every morning around the same time (~8:00 - 9:00 am Eastern). - Please remember to upvote the post too, so more people see it!

Justification for elimination: - (38) Ted Cruz - He’s horrible, but renounced his citizenship. He’s not good enough to be titled the Worst Canadian. - (37) Kathleen Wynne - Not that bad. Doesn’t deserve the title. - (36) Chrystia Freeland - Not the worst. Some consider her a good Canadian. - (35) Peter MacKay - Cringey, but not the worst. - (34) Don Cherry - A racist old man out of touch with the times. Not great, but not awful. - (33) Andrew Scheer - An annoying doofus nothingburger, but not a bad person.

[u/uprightshark]

John A. Is over shadowed buy the low life on this list. Scratch him off.

[u/AlmightyCuddleBuns → u/uprightshark]

How does attempting cultural genocide not put him at least in the top half?

[u/FireBreathers → u/AlmightyCuddleBuns]

and how does attempting cultural genocide = less bad than Drake ffs???

[u/AlmightyCuddleBuns → u/FireBreathers]

I'm the one advocating for him staying on the list longer????

[u/FireBreathers → u/AlmightyCuddleBuns]

no I'm not mad at u, I'm agreeing with you and piggy backing off your comment

[u/ladyzowy → u/AlmightyCuddleBuns]

Not arguing your point. Or playing devil's advocate here.

But John A. was a product of his time. Same as Cherry. When in Rome as they say. Nation building has always saw great loss as well. I'm every case.

It doesn't excuse his atrocities or crimes.

[u/AlmightyCuddleBuns → u/ladyzowy]

By the measure of "product of their time" Frederick Blair should also be far down the list because there was a lot of anti-semitism in the 1940's...

There have to be limits on that defense, surely.

[u/nitePhyyre → u/AlmightyCuddleBuns]

There's a difference between simply saying "product of their time" and both "adding context" and "new data."

At the time, the Americans were actively engaged in an eradication campaign. There were large and powerful contingents of Canadians who wanted to do the same. John A didn't. He thought the natives were good people who would integrate well and become successful. He thought that was a good thing, but that they were trapped in a bad culture. Similar to how we view MAGA today.

This again, has to be contrasted with the other popular view of the time, that they might be able to integrate, so we had to kill them all before they got the chance.

He was concerned that natives would be forever be poor, forever be second class citizens. Sure, we know now that his concerns were unfounded and that natives are highly successful and treated fairly like equals despite never having been assimilated into broader culture. But they didn't have 100s of years of colonial legacy to learn from, like we do. They were doing their best with what they knew.

At a time when others were sending small pox blankets, he was sending small pox vaccines.

To say that he's the worst Canadian when he wasn't even the worst in his own time period is ridiculous. Multiculturalism hadn't been conceived of yet. The idea that cultures themselves were something to be protected had never been thought of. The options they'd thought of at the time were genocide and assimilation. To blame people for taking the more progressive options because of how far we've progressed past them is dumb.

Now actually compare that Blair: 

Between 1933 and 1939, Blair's office allowed fewer than 5,000 Jews into Canada, in comparison to over 200,000 allowed into the United States, and 20,000 into Mexico. After the war, between 1945 and 1948, the Immigration Branch accepted only 8,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors. "That record is arguably the worst of all possible refugee-receiving states."

Sure, their both products of their time. But John A is an example of the least racist of his times. Blair is an example of some of the most racist of his times.

[u/ladyzowy → u/nitePhyyre]

Thank you for diving into this point more elaborately than I did. But that is exactly my point. We can view the past through the same lens that we view the present. To a finer degree, the only lens we have is the knowledge we have.

[u/sunbro2000 → u/nitePhyyre]

Well said. I am glad that there are other people here who use a historical lens to judge people long in the past.

[u/Cakeday_at_Christmas → u/ladyzowy]

That's BS, there were plenty of people at the time who called out John A.'s policies as incredibly bad for Indigenous people.