By Kaleigh Bradley
Source: Bank of Canada.
Last month, on International Women’s Day, Trudeau announced that by 2018, “an iconic Canadian woman” would appear on the next issue of bank notes. Up until April 18th, 2016, the Bank of Canada issued an open call for nominations of #bankNOTEable women. In order to quality, the woman in question had to be a Canadian citizen (by birth or naturalization), deceased for at least twenty-five years, and had to have demonstrated “outstanding leadership, achievement or distinction in any field.”
After the initial call, the Bank of Canada’s Advisory Council will review the crowed-sourced list of candidates to create a list of 10-12. The Canadian public will then be able to vote from this list on the Bank’s website and these votes will be used to ensure the nominees are a representative sample of our country. The list will be narrowed down to a few names, experts will be consulted, and according to custom, the Minister of Finance will make the final decision. It’s clear that officials are trying to ensure that the selection process is inclusive and representative of all Canadians. The Advisory Committee is comprised of experts and representatives from different interest groups. Public input is welcome and the list of candidates will be crowd-sourced. Despite these efforts, the process of commemoration is polarizing and the initial call has led to some important public discussions about commemoration and Canadian history.
Popular choices included artist Emily Carr, War of 1812 “heroine” Laura Secord, author Lucy Maud Montgomery, civil rights icon Viola Desmond, Indigenous poet E. Pauline Johnson, and Harriet Tubman, who helped 300 slaves enter Canada through the underground railway.
Discussions about who should be selected has me thinking about the importance of history and memory in our everyday lives. History is on our money, in the street or place names we use, the architecture we see, in the song lyrics we enjoy, and within and outside of the boundaries of the landscapes we build. The history we experience around us might not reflect our own memories, histories, and identities. Acts of remembering, boundary-making, erasure, naming, and commemoration are often political, contested, divisive, and sometimes deeply personal.
As H.V. Nelles argues in The Art of Nation Building, commemoration and myth-making are performances, acts of self-invention on the part of the nation state and the cultural elite. Myth-making and commemorations tell us more about the agenda of the state and our priorities as a society today, than they do about the events and people we seek to commemorate.
Commemoration serves to validate particular national myths and historical narratives. In Canada, there are so many conflilcting histories that it’s hard to tell one story about colonialism, our track record with immigration and multiculturalism, our relationship to the monarchy, our artistic history and cultural institutions, and Quebec nationalism, just to name a few. Is there really one history, or one woman who can be representative for all of us? Is there a history that we can all adhere to? And why does this even matter? What does it mean to elevate one individual to an iconic status? Continue reading
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