Harris legacy can't be whitewashed
- Sons of Tecumseh
- Oct 2
- 4 min read
By Maurice Switzer
From the Anishinabek News,
September 6, 2025
“People who never apologize can be described using words like unapologetic, shameless, stubborn, arrogant, or unrepentant, but if this behaviour stems from a deep-seated unwillingness to take responsibility, it might indicate a narcissistic or other personality trait. The specific term depends on the underlying reasons for their refusal to say sorry, as the behaviour can be a sign of pride, denial, or a defence mechanism against shame or low self-esteem.” – anonymous
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the police killing of unarmed Stoney Point land defender Anthony Dudley George, a tragedy which a judicial inquiry found resulted from Mike Harris’s “narrow approach” and “…the Premier’s determination to seek a quick resolution…”
Commissioner Sidney Linden determined that the one-time North Bay ski and golf instructor likely influenced OPP response to a peaceful occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park by shouting “I want the f…ing Indians out of the park” at a meeting attended by cabinet members and senior police officers just hours before George was gunned down.
Amnesty International called George’s death “extrajudicial” – that is, politically-motivated – killing.
Non-Indigenous Ontarians cannot conceive of the shock that Dudley George’s death caused across Indian Country. Grief and anger felt by thousands of Indigenous peoples living in Nipissing First Nation’s traditional territory were exacerbated in 2010 when the university that bears the First Nation’s name awarded Harris an honorary doctorate and accepted a $1.5 million donation from the Schulich Foundation to name the campus library after him.
The inevitable “local-boy-makes-good” syndrome has rendered many North Bay residents oblivious to the reputational baggage that attends the Harris name. One North Bay businessman asked me why there was so much fuss about “only one person being killed” at Ipperwash!
But many non-Indigenous Ontarians were similarly outraged at any attempts to polish Harris’s legacy for his “Common Sense Revolution” that left a destructive swath in the name of cost-cutting, including:
* another public inquiry’s findings that Harris government decisions were a factor in the deaths of seven residents and serious illness of hundreds of other residents of the town of Walkerton;
* ruthlessly reducing Ontario welfare rolls by 500,000 people, which experts say continues to have profound and lasting impacts on levels of homelessness and poverty in the province;
* laying off hundreds of nurses and hospital staff, who Harris likened to workers in the hula-hoop industry losing their jobs because fads change.
What has added salt to the wounds is Harris’s steadfast refusal to demonstrate any remorse, even when impartial public inquiries connected his political management to deaths of provincial citizens.
Despite the Ipperwash Inquiry drawing a direct connection between his political demeanour and Dudley George’s death, Harris claimed the report’s findings and 100 recommendations “absolved” him of what he termed “malicious and petty political allegations.”
Earlier this year Harris was once again on the Nipissing University campus, again using someone else’s money to create a positive local legacy for himself, this time making a multi-million-dollar donation as a trustee of the Joyce Foundation.
When an Indigenous student confronted him about his notorious “I want the f…ing Indians out of the park” demand, she says that Harris, instead of just letting sleeping dogs lie, in fact doubled down, insisting “Well, they were in the park!”
At last report, university administration was investigating the student’s complaint about the incident, as well as continuing to vacillate about how to respond to insistent calls from many quarters for Harris’s name to be removed from the campus library.
The former premier may well want his political reputation to be positively recorded in textbooks being used by teachers like the 126,000 who participated in the largest teachers’ strike in North American history against his government in 1997.
Some North Bay diehards do their best to show their support, forking out donations for the privilege of golfing with the former Pinewoods pro at a North Bay tournament that raises money – almost none of it his – for the local hospital. A service club had his name carved into one of the sidewalk slabs in a downtown Walk of Fame.
But there is every sign that the Mike Harris name will always be tainted, any perceived accomplishments asterisked, perhaps like those of athletes who hit a record number of home runs, but did so under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs.
His questionable legacy is not just about decades-old actions.
“Today Harris serves as the chair of the board for Chartwell Retirement Residences,” says his Wikipedia entry. “During the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Chartwell and other for-profit facilities had ‘far-worse COVID-19 outcomes than public facilities’ after paying hundreds of millions to shareholders over the last decade. Since joining the board, Mike Harris has been compensated roughly $3.5 million for his services.”
Harris received the Order of Ontario in 2020, an honour reserved for citizens “whose career in any field has
had a major impact or influence on the province, Canada, and around the world.” Unfortunately, there can be little doubt that Mike Harris left quite a mark.
Former Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald said the appointment “opened up an unhealed wound for First Nations.” Former Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Glen Hare said at the time that the appointment was an “insult to First Nations people across Ontario.”
Even his most trusted advisors, a number of whom contributed to the 16-essay “The Harris Legacy” have trouble participating in a whitewash.
Alister Campbell, editor of the 460-page book and the self-proclaimed “message guy” for Harris’s Common Sense Revolution, himself wrote the chapter about Ipperwash.
“History will show,” he writes, that the newly-elected Premier Harris did not choose correctly in this tragic case.”
Maurice Switzer is chair of Nipissing University’s Indigenous Council on Education.
Comments