The First Canadian Nationalist and the Father of School Choice

Sunday (April 13th) will be the 200th birthday of “Canada’s First Nationalist” and the most important Father of Confederation you might not know!

Of course, it's relatively unlikely that Thomas D'Arcy McGee would have seen his 200th birthday, even if he hadn't been assassinated for his Canadian nationalism.

Why is this relevant to you as an Alberta Parents’ Union supporter today, though?

Well, D’Arcy McGee was also known as Canada’s Father of School Choice!

“Canada's First Nationalist”

His full name was Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee, but he went mostly by “D’Arcy” in his life, so we’ll call him D’Arcy McGee, or just McGee.

McGee was called “Canada's First Nationalist” because he had the vision of a unified Canadian identity and strong cooperation of the British North American colonies into a Confederation before any other “Father of Confederation”, including John A. Macdonald.

On this subject, he said:

“There is room enough in this country for one great free people; but there's not room enough, under the same flag and the same laws, for two or three angry, suspicious, obstructive ‘nationalities.’”

It’s important to note, however, that D’Arcy McGee did not see his nationalism as requiring centralism or unquestioning obedience to a central government.

He put it this way:

“The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency.”

Perhaps even more to the point, he said:

“We are loyal, because our equal civil, social, and religious rights are respected by this Government in theory and in practice. Were it otherwise, we would be otherwise.”

The Schools Question

D’Arcy McGee originally immigrated from Ireland to the United States (Boston and New York), having heard the United States was a place renowned for religious freedom.

He was disenchanted with this reputation when anti-Catholic riots broke out in Philadelphia as a backlash to Catholic concerns over their children being forced to read from the Protestant version of the Bible in school.

This convinced him that - far from adding to divisions in society - separate schools would actually promote harmony and make social cohesion stronger.

McGee was also convinced to leave the United States for Canada - despite the fact that “Canada” was a series of British colonies, and he originally fled British rule of Ireland.

He put down roots in Montreal and established a newspaper “The New Era” to advocate for religious liberty and civil rights for Irishmen and Catholics, against long-standing prejudices of the day.

Indeed, he saw himself very much as a double-minority - a Catholic within a majority Protestant nation, and an English-speaker within a majority Francophone religion.

He saw what we would call “school choice” as an essential minority right - regardless of the nature of the minority status.

In 1858, a bill was proposed to abolish the separate (Catholic) schools in Canada West (Ontario), in favour of a one-size-fits-all “common school” to impart common values.

D’Arcy McGee called this approach an “all-devouring uniformity”, and said it was pitting the desires of the state against those of families.

He grounded his arguments in parental rights and reasoned that it would always be a threat to any minority to have the majority decide what values were “common”:

“I, as a parent, am not willing to risk the experiment of exercising only a Sunday revision of the imbedded errors and false impressions of the week.”

For his trouble, even fellow Catholic newspaper writers derisively referred to him as “D’Arky McGee” and reviled him for bringing the “curse of division”, but he pressed on.

McGee himself wrote the first draft of a Constitutional protection of choice in education:

“… saving the rights and privileges which the Protestant or Catholic minority in both Canadas may possess as to their Denominational Schools, at the time when the Union goes into operation.”

Funding Must Follow the Child

The simple legality of schools of choice wasn’t enough for McGee.

More than once, it was proposed that Catholics could have their separate schools, but they would have to fund them themselves, while also paying taxes for the “common” schools.

Thus, parents would have to pay once for schools hostile to their family’s values, then again for the education they actually wanted for their children.

McGee was aware this was simply double-taxation of Catholics by another name.

It would not be the first time that an extra imposition of taxes, rather than direct legal force, would be used to slowly eliminate a religious, cultural, or linguistic minority.

Thus, religious liberty and civil rights in any society with minorities in it requires “educational pluralism” or what we call “school choice”.

Funding students, not systems, is an essential protection of minority rights.

In Alberta, we could stand to follow this principle more fully, but we should be proud to stand as a shining example of the First Canadian Nationalist’s vision of liberty!

Or to quote dear D’Arcy McGee:

"We Irishman, Protestant and Catholic, born and bred in a land of religious controversy should never forget that we now live and act in a land of the fullest religious and civil liberties."

Death and Legacy

McGee’s commitment to principled liberty, instead of domination of the majority by the minorities he was defending, made him deeply unpopular within some quarters of his own Irish Catholic minority.

The Fenian Brotherhood - Irish Republican revolutionaries - in particular, harboured malice towards D’Arcy McGee.

As parliamentary debate stretched beyond April 7th into April 8th, 1868, one of their sympathizers was waiting within Mrs. Trotter’s Boarding House, with a handgun, for McGee to come home.

Political assassination was so unthought-of in Canada at the time, that Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was one of the crowd who rushed over to see what had happened.

Struggling to repress extreme emotion, the Scottish immigrant and convert to McGee’s Canadian nationalism called him “a martyr to the cause of his country.”

His legacy of decentralism and school choice was necessary for Confederation and continues to be necessary for Canadian unity.

We're trying to carry on Thomas D'Arcy McGee's vision of Canadian Educational Pluralism!

Threats continue today to have either Ottawa or provincial legislatures dictate one “common” set of values, one “common” vision of what it means to be a Canadian.

Like D'Arcy McGee, we believe kitchen tables, not legislatures, are where those decisions are best made.

Help us fight for choice and against centralization in education!

If you join us today, you will be honouring Canada’s rich history of protecting the liberties of all people through decentralization and school choice.

Wishing a Happy 200th and Working Towards a Happy 400th,

-Jeff and the Alberta Parents’ Union Team