Halifax throws its founder under the bus: The fall of Edward Cornwallis
This is from a story about the scalping of British settlers and militia by Mi’kmaq warriors in what became known as the “Dartmouth Massacre” on May 13, 1751, from John Wilson’s eyewitness account: “These Indians chain the unfortunate prisoner to a large thick tree, and bind his hands and his feet, then beginning from the middle of the craneum, they cut quite round towards the neck; this being done, they then tear off the skin, leaving the skull bare; an inflammation quickly follows, the patient fevers, and dies in the most exquisite tortures.”
Wilson’s account is not the only record of Mi’kmaq attacks on settlers, nor even of the Dartmouth Massacre.
Another is from Thomas B. Akins, a lawyer, historian and archivist. In 1857 he was appointed Nova Scotia’s first Commissioner of Public Records and held that position until his death in 1891. He was held in such high regard that the government of Canada designated him a ‘Person of National Historic Significance.’ His History of the Settlement of Halifax was published in book form in 1895, four years after he died. But it had been published as a pamphlet half a century earlier, in 1847, and eight years prior to that he gave a formal reading from his notes about the attack on Dartmouth:
“The Indians were said to have destroyed several dwellings, sparing neither women nor children. The light of the torches and the discharge of musketry alarmed the inhabitants of Halifax, some of whom put off to their assistance, but did not arrive in any force till after the Indians had retired. The night was calm, and the cries of the settlers, and whoop of the Indians were distinctly heard on the western side of the harbour. On the following morning, several bodies were brought over – the Indians having carried off the scalps,” he said.
Enter Edward Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax, who had arrived on the shores of Nova Scotia on June 21, 1749, with 13 transports – boats or frigates – and 2,576 people. During that first winter more than one-third of those settlers died. Cornwallis, a major historical figure in Atlantic Canada, was a military man who had been named governor of Nova Scotia by King George II.
According to oral histories and archaeological evidence, the Mi’kmaq had been living in Nova Scotia for a long time. But with the coming of the Europeans things changed. Disease became widespread and by 1749 their numbers had dwindled. Between 1688 and 1763 there were seven wars in northeastern North America between the French and English with major impact on settlers and Indigenous people. But for the Mi’kmaq two were consequential – Father Le Loutre’s War from 1749 to 1755, and the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763.
Le Loutre was a Catholic priest and missionary for the French Foreign Missions Society, an ardent French nationalist who led the band of French resistance forces which consisted of Acadian fighters and Mi’kmaq warriors. Thus, the Mi’kmaq were allied with the French and remained so during all those years of warfare in Nova Scotia.
Mi’kmaq raids on settlements began on September 30, 1749, and there would be eight raids on Dartmouth alone. French authorities had been paying bounties to the Mi’kmaq for British prisoners and their scalps. And so, on October 2, 1749, Cornwallis issued a proclamation, offering a similar bounty for Mi’kmaq warriors. Women and children were not included, but to be taken prisoner following the norms of British policy in such conflicts.
Today, the statue of Cornwallis in the middle of Cornwallis Park is no longer there. The park has been renamed, too. Cornwallis has been cancelled in the same way John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas, Matthew Begbie, and other notable figures from Canada’s past have been cancelled by those with an axe to grind. And they don’t do it with history, but their own twisted take on history which is deep in ideology and involves something other than the truth.
Scalping is front and centre in this “controversy” which wasn’t a controversy for almost 250 years until a 1993 book by Mi’kmaq elder Daniel Paul. The book was We Were Not the Savages: a Micmac perspective on the collision of European and aboriginal civilizations. Paul passed away in 2023.
In his book he laid the charge of genocide perpetrated against the Mi’kmaq squarely at the feet of Cornwallis. He called the bounty proclamation an “extermination” order calling for “the scalps of men, women and children.” No sooner did he make this claim that other voices picked it up and built an anti-Cornwallis narrative in keeping with the story of the evil white man. Soon, the Daniel Paul story became the official party line and the rest, as the old saying goes, is history.
But it’s revisionist history.
After Paul’s death, this is what Global TV reported: “His research also helped persuade Nova Scotia politicians that statues, school names and even a coast guard ship should no longer bear the name of Edward Cornwallis, the province’s first governor, who offered rewards for Indigenous scalps.”
In 2020 the CBC ran a story about the Mi’kmaq wanting to rename a coast guard icebreaker. The icebreaker was called Edward Cornwallis. The headline was: “Founder of Halifax issued proclamation of bounty for killing Mi’kmag men, women and children.”
Leo J. Deveau – an author, newspaper columnist, and authority on Nova Scotia history – says this of Paul’s claims: “Paul’s analysis ignored the wider context of the imperial wars of the period and the close alliance between the Mi’kmaq and the French in the struggle of empires. The history of that alliance records regular bounties paid for the delivery of scalps belonging to British soldiers and settlers obtained by Mi’kmaq warriors during numerous raids.”
Deveau went on: “Adopting the familiar ‘good and evil’ interpretation of history, Paul lays the charge of ‘genocide’ against Cornwallis, feeling that the term genocide ‘aptly’ described the barbaric behaviour of the British in colonial Nova Scotia. This in turn is meant to justify his wild exaggeration that the statue of Cornwallis represented ‘white supremacist thinking.’ For the author and his acolytes it seems everything comes down to genocide and white supremacy. This is grossly oversimplified history.”
Not all media reports were sympathetic to Daniel Paul’s take on history. Paul Bennett, an author of Canadian history textbooks, wrote an article in The Chronicle-Herald with the title ‘How solid is the case against Cornwallis?’ He said this set a dangerous precedent and took aim directly at Daniel Paul.
“While Paul is often described as an historian, his work is mostly popular storytelling since it’s a fascinating mix of history, folklore, and personal testimony.”
I obtained a copy of the fourth edition of Daniel Paul’s book, published in 2022. In the Dedication it says: “To the memory of my ancestors, who managed to ensure the survival of the Mi’kmaw People by their awe-inspiring tenacity and valour in the face of virtually insurmountable odds! For more than four centuries these courageous, dignified and heroic people displayed a determination to survive the various hells on earth created for them by Europeans with a tenacity that equals any displayed in the history of mankind.”
Not to minimize the very real plight of the Mi’kmaq after the coming of Europeans, but such words do not lend themselves as an authoritative work on recorded history. There is no mention in Paul’s book, or from what I can find in anything he’s ever written, about the Dartmouth massacre.
Nevertheless, in 2014 protesters gathered in Cornwallis Park, demanding the park be renamed and the statue of Cornwallis removed. In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with its report and in Nova Scotia that would later lead to the cancellation of Cornwallis. In 2016 a municipal election was held and now there were new councillors who were swayed by a presentation delivered by the city’s first Mi’kmaw poet laureate who called Cornwallis a man “who prided himself on brutality” and who used Mi’kmaq scalps as “currency.” A vote to remove his name from all municipal properties passed 15-1.
Never mind that surveys showed most people in Halifax wanted the Cornwallis name to remain on public parks, buildings and street signs. And that the statue should stay.
It didn’t matter.
More protests came in 2017 and Halifax Regional Municipality council launched a Special Advisory Committee with “equal representation from Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds.” This is similar to task forces created at the Toronto university once known as Ryerson and the one set up at the City of Toronto to discuss the name Henry Dundas. Indeed, the modus operandi with historical revisionists tends to follow a playbook. Part of that playbook involves establishing an “expert” panel with equal parts Indigenous and non-Indigenous, provided the latter are academics who have a progressive bent.
Soon the Cornwallis statue was removed. Cornwallis Park was renamed Peace and Friendship Park, and Cornwallis Street was renamed Nora Bernard Street after a Mi’kmaw activist who had been murdered by her grandson back in 2007. In short, Edward Cornwallis and anything associated with his name was as good as dead.
The man who started all this – Daniel Paul – said in his book that Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, was an “unapologetic white supremacist.” He compared the plight of the Mi’kmaq to European Jews in the Holocaust. As for the Mi’kmaq and their way of life, he said: “Civility and generosity were so engrained in Mi’kmaw society that to be rude or mean was unthinkable.”
John E. Grenier, an American historian, wrote a book called The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710–1760. Published in 2008, it examines the wars in Nova Scotia during the 18th century. While Grenier readily admits that when it was all over the Mi’kmaq and their way of life would be no more, he also said the treaties the Mi’kmaq signed with the British in 1760 and 1761 were “far harsher” than previous ones, including the Articles of 1749 with Edward Cornwallis. Nowhere does Grenier say Cornwallis is an angel or saint. He calls him a British colonial official who used “brutal but effective measures” to “wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who were no less ruthless.”
Grenier was once interviewed by the National Post for an article about the renaming of Cornwallis high school. In the article he said: “It is complicated. But the PC [Political Correctness] crowd, if you will, prefers to remain ignorant of the historical record.” He added: “It is important to look at the context in which Cornwallis and the other Anglo-Americans made the decision to issue the scalp proclamation. The Mi’kmaqs certainly were not innocent, passive victims in that train of events.”
The upshot of all this? No historian worth their salt examines any period or place through a one-way lens. That is to sacrifice context and credibility. What’s more, when a region, never mind a country, bases public policy on commentary that is rife with speculation, conjecture – and lies – a nation begins to lose itself and there is only one inevitable result.
Its history is vanquished.
Excerpt from the book SLEEPWOKING, which is about historical revisionism in Canada, and now available on Amazon.
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