The request is hardly excessive. Canadian history doesn't belong to one cabinet minister any more than it belongs to the English and French colonial gentry who populated our school textbooks for generations. Canadians of all backgrounds need an occasional reality check. If the descendants of Ukrainian detainees, or indentured Chinese railway workers, or Japanese-Canadian fishermen, or aboriginal people still fighting for lost land, together force this country to abandon the blinders of a Road to Avonlea view of Canadian history, well, so much the better. That said, the Ukrainian Canadians pushing Charest for a change in policy should not pin too much hope on 25 markers in the wilderness.
Historic plaques are slabs of metal, nothing more.
They can't change history, settle old scores or even teach people very much about the past. Even the most perceptive scholars will never completely fathom the decisions of the dead. It would take more than a few words on a roadside marker to explain why a wartime government interned 5,000 Ukrainian Canadians and other immigrants. And no government in 1993 can erase the pain of the detainees' experience even with a state apology. We have to live with history.