In 2021, an unknown person threw red paint on the plaque that stood outside Shingwauk Hall, the former residential school in Sault Ste. Marie. Erected in 1977, the plaque fails to mention the residential school’s aim of assimilation or the experiences of the Indigenous students who attended (at least 72 of whom died there). “The truth wasn’t told on that plaque,” says Jackie Fletcher, a survivor of Shingwauk residential school.
The act of vandalism was “a very honest expression of anger or frustration,” says Beth Hanna, CEO of Ontario Heritage Trust, which created and installed the plaque. After learning of the incident, Hanna says, the organization decided to leave the defaced plaque in place temporarily and post a sign beside it that apologized for “any harm or hurt caused by not telling this story accurately” and that explained the plaque would be updated.
The old Shingwauk Hall plaque was vandalized in 2021. (Courtesy Ontario Heritage Trust)
OHT is a provincial agency mandated to conserve, interpret, and promote “Ontario’s heritage in all it’s forms,” says Hanna. Started in 1955, the Provincial Plaque Program — OHT’s oldest initiative — is responsible for the 1,287 blue-and-gold plaques identifying landmarks throughout the province. “They raise awareness about the importance of a place,” Hanna says. “They connect that story to a place, and they spark interest in that.”
Until the 1980s, the program focused on such themes as nation building, the fur trade, exploration, settlement, transportation, and military history, explains Hanna, adding that “where it focused on the life and work of influential individuals, it focused predominately on men.” From 1980 to 2000, the focus shifted to education, arts and culture, architecture, science, and tech. Starting in 2000, OHT pivoted to underrepresented themes, such as women’s history, social justice, Black and Indigenous history, LGBTQ2+, and Franco-Ontarians, says Hanna.
In 2018, OHT set out to review every plaque in its program, specifically looking at outdated interpretations and terminology: “Whose story are we not telling?” says Hanna. Since the review, OHT has updated five provincial plaques, and more are on their way. TVO.org looks at three recently updated plaques and compares them with their older counterparts to see what’s changed — and why.
Solomon Moseby Affair — Niagara-on-the-Lake
Niagara Courthouse and Gaol plaque (left) was replaced with a plaque about Solomon Moseby (right).
The Solomon Moseby Affair plaque, which has yet to be installed, will replace a plaque that marked the Niagara courthouse and jail at its former location at Rye and Cottage streets in Niagara-on-the-Lake. “When we started talking about this plaque, we just accepted that it was the wrong story,” says Hanna. “The focus was not about the building; it was about Solomon Moseby.”
Left to right: Honourable Jean Augustine, John Ecker, Natasha Henry-Dixon and Adrienne Shadd. (Courtesy Ontario Heritage Trust)
To process for creating a plaque — which must meet certain criteria — involves working with historians who research the subject and write a background paper, which they then distill into a 170-190 word text for the plaque. For the Solomon Moseby Affair plaque, OHT reached out to Natasha Henry-Dixon, assistant professor of African Canadian History at York University. The process “involves a lot of archival research,” says Henry-Dixon. “And, really, for me, I take the approach of centring the experiences of the Black people who are said to be the subjects of the story.”
Henry-Dixon says she is excited to work with OHT to raise awareness about Black history and likes OHT’s approach: “This is what history should be about: always revisiting and revising, looking at new research, looking to new interpretations. Always trying to improve the way that we write history for the people who have often been written out of the mainstream, or the white-dominant historical narrative.”
The Buxton Settlement — Chatham-Kent
Text of the old (left) and new (right) Buxton Settlement plaques.
The Buxton Settlement plaque — which was installed on the grounds of St. Andrew’s Church at the intersection of Country Roads 6 and 8 in the former Buxton settlement in Chatham-Kent earlier this year — replaces a plaque on the same topic but updates outdated terminology and offers a “new telling of the story,” says Hanna.
Historian Adrienne Shadd was tasked with writing the new plaque based on a background paper she created about the settlement, which is available on OHT’s website. (OHT makes the background papers available for people who want to read more about a place.
Left to right: Anthony Ceccaci, Shannon Prince, and Darrin Canniff. (Courtesy Ontario Heritage Trust)
Hanna says that, in some cases, “particularly with Black history subjects … [the background papers] are the only research that’s available on some of these topics.”)
In addition to working with historians, OHT also partners with relevant community members and organizations. For the Buxton Settlement plaque, OHT reached out to Shannon Prince, curator of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum and a descendant of the Buxton Settlement, to ensure the plaque’s accuracy. Prince says the new plaque, which uses modern language and offers more details about community members’ efforts to establish the settlement and its industry instead of solely focusing on the founders, is “more inclusive.”
Prince applauds the OHT’s efforts to conserve Ontario’s history: “They’re very [involved] in preserving all that rich history and the legacy of many, many cultures. I think it’s important that, not just our Black history, but all the histories of everyone that has shaped the great Canadian mosaic are not lost.”
Shingwauk Hall — Sault Ste. Marie
Text of the old (left) and new (right) Shingwauk Hall plaques.
Unlike the Buxton Settlement and Solomon Moseby Affair plaques, which were updated because of OHT’s internal review, efforts to update the Shingwauk Hall plaque were initiated by the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre. “They contacted us and said there was an interest … to have the plaque revisited,” says Hanna, adding that OHT partnered with SRSC and the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association to review the plaque and ensure it was translated accurately.
The vandalized plaque, which stood outside the Bishop Fauquier Chapel on the grounds of Algoma University, was replaced in September with two double-sided Shingwauk Hall plaques featuring Anishinaabemowin, Swampy Cree, and French translations. “We were impressed that there were four languages,” says Fletcher, who is also a co-founder of CSAA.
Jackie Fletcher (left) and Shirley Horn are survivors of Shingwauk residential school. (Courtesy Ontario Heritage Trust)
The old plaque “didn’t tell the truth about the story of why residential schools were put in place,” says Shirley Horn, Fletcher’s sister, who is also a survivor of Shingwauk and co-founder of CSAA. Fletcher agrees: “I think the old plaque was romanticized to make it look like the school was there for our benefit, and we would be better people for it, rather than talking about all the abuses that went on and how they removed us from our families and separated us.”
Fletcher, who went to Shingwauk for two years, and Horn, who went for seven years, have made it their mission to raise awareness about the truth of the residential-school system, and they’re happy to see a new, accurate plaque. “It really affirmed for me that people are really understanding what was happening to us as a people, and they’re willing to open up their hearts to know the truth,” says Fletcher.
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