It was a single complaint from a Toronto Star reporter that lead to a Saturday night purge of thousands of web pages from the national archives, says Blacklock’s Reporter..Access To Information records show chief archivist Leslie Weir within hours of reading a Saturday Star headline announced she wanted pages “modified or taken down ASAP” though staff were not assigned to work the weekend..“Library and Archives Canada is sincerely sorry some users were offended by content on its website,” wrote Weir..“Library and Archives Canada acknowledges some of its online presence may be offensive and continues to work on correcting these issues. We recognize there will always be more work to do in this area.”.The abrupt 2021 removal of web pages on John A. Macdonald, Fathers of Confederation, the War of 1812 and other Canadiana followed a June 4, 2021 e-mail from Jacques Gallant, a Star reporter who sought an apology for online content..Gallant e-mailed the archives to complain an “online biography of John A. Macdonald omitted anything about Residential Schools and the Chinese head tax..“Does Library and Archives Canada plan to modify the bio to include a more accurate depiction of his time as prime minister or does it intend to remove it entirely?” wrote Gallant..The following day on Saturday, June 5, 2021, the Star published Gallant’s article headlined: “Internal Emails Show Confusion And Dismay Over Ottawa’s Glowing Online Profile Of John A. Macdonald.”.The story went unnoticed by other media but managers quickly distributed the Saturday article by staff e-mail, and Weir within minutes of reading it ordered employees to spend their weekend purging web pages..“We have a web coder bringing down the pages now,” wrote Weir..“We need the Confederation page modified or taken down ASAP, not later next week or later in the month.”.By day’s end on June 5 webpages deemed most offensive were removed..“Laura is finding more pages on Macdonald and she is deleting them,” wrote one manager..Gallant the following Monday, June 7, 2021, again contacted the national archives..“I see the Macdonald bio has been removed and replaced with an error message,” he wrote..“That said, I see other pages remain online. The Laurier profile that mentions nothing about the Chinese head tax among other devastating policies is still accessible via Google..“Indigenous scholars have said the government should acknowledge it was wrong to keep the web pages up until this time and the government should apologize. Does Library and Archives Canada believe it was wrong to keep these pages up all this time and does Library and Archives Canada plan to apologize?”.“Does Library and Archives Canada plan to apologize?” Gallant e-mailed again June 8. .Weir apologized.
