Rename Langevin block, but prepare for history's other ghosts, Bob Rae warns

Former politician Bob Rae says he's not against changing the name of Ottawa's landmark Langevin block, but he's advisingthe government to come up with a more consistent renaming policy when it's suddenly faced with the prickly pasts of some of Canada's historicfigures.

Indigenous leaders are calling on the government to change the name of thebuilding, which sits across Wellington Street from the ParliamentBuildingsandhouses the Prime Minister's Office, because it is named after Hector-Louis Langevin,a strong proponent of the residential school system.

• Indigenous leaders want to strip name of residential school proponent from Langevin block
• Langevin Block name represents 'legacy of colonization,' argues Inuit leader

Langevinwas a father of Confederation and a prominent member of Sir John A. Macdonald's cabinet. Heproposed the creation of theschools as the most expeditious way to assimilate First Nations children.

Rae, a former MP, federal Liberal party leaderand Ontario premier, acknowledged on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning Friday thatLangevin"was one of the architects" of the residential school system.

We need to understand that if you fixate on one individual, you're missing the point.- Bob Rae

"He was present, certainly, during the debates around the residential schools and the Indian Act in 1876, and was very much a man of his time in the sense that he strongly supported the Indian Act, which was extremely discriminatory; even more discriminatory then than it is now," Rae said.

"I think we need to look at a building like theLangevinblock and say, 'Is there not some other way of saying who we are today as Canadians?' Hector's had a good run he had his name on the building for a good while but it doesn't mean the names can't be changed."

Listen to the interview with Rae here.

Praised separating families

On Thursday, MP Hunter Tootoo pointed to a speech Langevin made in Parliament in 1883, when he spoke to the virtues of residentialschools, as reason enough to strike his name from the building.

"The fact is that if you wish to educate the children you must separate them from their parents during the time they are being taught," Langevinsaid in thespeech to Parliament.

"If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they will remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes of civilized people."

Rae said there should be a debate onrenaming the building, but that it would be 'unwise' to start renaming government buildings en masse.

"I don't disagree with the fact that we need to have a strong debate about renaming buildings and how we commemorate them, but we do need to have some appreciation that the passage that Hunter read could well have been said by a great many other people at the time, including Sir John A. Macdonald," he said.

"I don't think there's any question that this is a situation that needs to be fully discussed, but we also need to understand and appreciate that as a country, it would be unwise for us to start taking down official portraits of people and pretending people didn't play a role in our national life when in fact they did.

"That's all I'm saying. ... Hector Langevin was not, if I can borrow a current phrase, ... a lone wolf," Rae said.

"We need to understand that if you fixate on one individual, you're missing the point."