The “Dundas Street Renaming Project” is being guided by a historian who manipulated data and misrepresented the historical record.
by Jennifer Dundas, BAA SF LLB, chairperson, Henry Dundas Committee of Ontario
INTRODUCTION
The City of Toronto has relied on substandard and misleading research, while rejecting peer-reviewed publications, as it moves forward with renaming properties bearing the Dundas name.
Recent events have revealed that behind the scenes, city staff quietly promoted the views of a controversial historian from the University of Toronto, gave her privileged access to decision makers in the mayor’s office and on Council, and promoted her negative and poorly researched views on Henry Dundas.
Dr. Melanie Newton was the first out the gate with a publication that supported the petition to rename Dundas Street in the summer of 2020. Her commentary painted him as a cruel despot intent on promoting slavery. As shown below, her article was riddled with serious errors, a false reading of historical data and a misrepresentation of parliamentary records. It was also published on a radical left-wing journalism website supported by George Soros.
Dr. Newton’s commentary should have been inconsequential. It had no citations and was published on the opinion pages of a website that promoted left wing activism.
This flawed commentary launched Dr. Newton into the role of an influential advisor on the renaming of Dundas Street and other city properties, a role that helped to keep the renaming project alive for the last four years — despite overwhelming opposition among historians and Torontonians.
Part I of this article examines Toronto’s surprising and persistent reliance on Dr Newton, and concludes by exposing the wide-ranging errors in her one and only publication on Henry Dundas.
Part II will examine some of Dr. Newton’s public statements in the media and on podcasts, which also show a disturbing disregard for historical accuracy along with a heavy dose of “ethnocentric bias.”
PART I
In July 2020, Dr Newton published her perspective on Henry Dundas on the media platform “openDemocracy.” The website receives financial support from George Soros’s “Open Society Foundations.”
The “main site editor” at the time was Adam Ramsey, who, in 2016, launched the anti-Dundas campaign in Scotland when he super-glued a plaque denouncing Henry Dundas onto the base of the Melville Monument in Edinburgh.[1] [2]
City Staff adopt Dr. Newton’s editorial as fact
Upon publication of “Henry Dundas, empire and genocide,” Dr. Newton became the favoured historian of City of Toronto staff. In August 2020, they posted a link to her commentary on the city website. They also cited her name at the top of the list of experts they were consulting, and posted a link to a webinar at which she spoke.[3] Echoes of her analysis could later be seen in the staff reports to Council in September 2020 and June 2021.
After Council voted to rename Dundas Street in July 2021, city staff invited Dr. Newton to co-chair the community advisory committee (CAC) that would choose a shortlist of possible names. Since then, numerous historians have denounced the version of history promoted by Dr. Newton. Nonetheless, three years later, she is more powerful than ever as the city moves forward with renaming civic properties.
Dr. Newton’s privileged access to decision-makers
Dr. Newton’s overriding influence became apparent in December 2023, when Mayor Olivia Chow officially praised her work and called attention to her presence in the visitors’ gallery during debate the motion to rename Yonge-Dundas Square.
Mayor Chow, who appears to have been briefed by Dr Newton, went on to make bizarrely incorrect claims about Henry Dundas, accusing him of planning to import Black children to Europe to breed them and sell the offspring to European countries— an appalling misreading of the Parliamentary record.
It appears that Dr. Newton briefed others as well, including Cllr Mike Colle. He accused Dundas, who never left Britain, of being the prime minister’s “hit man,” and personally travelling to Haiti to slaughter and enslave Haitians. He also accused Dundas of forcing Haitians to pay reparations for their own emancipation — even though that was an act of France in 1825, 14 years after Henry Dundas’s death.
One might suggest it’s not fair to blame Dr. Newton for the mayor’s and Mr. Colle’s ignorance of historical facts. I might have thought so myself, until I heard Councillor Moise make the same accusation about Dundas forcing Haitians to pay reparations. While speaking at a board meeting of the Toronto Transit Commission, Cllr Moise also cited just one historian – Dr Newton.
In February of 2024, Dr. Newton appeared personally before the TTC as part of the staff delegation from the City. This was a breach of protocol in itself, as Dr Newton cannot be considered staff. But, there were advantages to this breach. As a purported “staff” representative, Dr. Newton had more freedom to address the board than members of the public. Also, as “staff,” her name was kept off the agenda, which meant the public and other presenters had no notice that she would be making a presentation.
TTC Commissioners were considering whether to rename a couple of subway stations. Dr. Newton advised the commissioners, who included Cllr Moise and six other councillors, that they should disregard recently-published peer-reviewed research that exonerated Henry Dundas.
The three peer-reviewed articles of concern prove that Toronto has falsely accused Dundas, and reveal new evidence that he was an abolitionist. Dr. Newton questioned the legitimacy of the articles because they were published in Scottish Affairs, a refereed journal of the University of Edinburgh, which she said had no record of publishing historical research. She had no substantive criticism of the articles.
Councillor Chris Moise, the driving force behind renaming Yonge-Dundas Square as “Sankofa Square,” told the board he strongly endorsed Dr. Newton’s research. He also said that anyone who rejected her analysis was demonstrating anti-Black racism.[3a]
Chairperson Jamaal Myers demanded that Cllr Moise withdraw his statement, which appeared to be aimed at rival councillor Stephen Holyday in particular, but applied to anyone at the meeting who challenged Dr. Newton’s analysis, including members of the Henry Dundas Committee of Ontario. Cllr Moise refused. Unfortunately, a record of this dramatic exchange is unavailable, as the video was mysteriously removed from YouTube before being archived.
In a further example of her growing influence, Dr. Newton also appeared before the city’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism committee on February 9, 2024, to explain the rationale for names being proposed to replace Dundas.
Exposing the errors in Dr. Newton’s commentary
Dr. Newton’s commentary, which forms the basis of her purported expertise on Henry Dundas, is marred by serious inaccuracies, analytical deficiencies, and breaches of research integrity. The eight excerpts below show why her influence in decisions about removing the Dundas name is undeserved.
Excerpt #1: “In response to criticisms in Parliament and claims that the Maroons had not, contrary to the claims of Jamaican slave owners, violated the terms of the treaty, Dundas defended these actions, stating that ‘The Maroons had been treated with humanity and attention.’”
Dr. Newton misquoted Henry Dundas in the statement above, attributing a meaning that is the opposite of what he said. Records of parliamentary debates reveal that Dundas was quoting the earlier comments of an MP back to him. He was exposing the hypocrisy of the opposing MP’s argument, not adopting those views as his own.[5]
Dr. Newton’s amateurish misreading of Parliamentary records reveals unacceptable carelessness and inappropriate eagerness to condemn Henry Dundas.
Excerpt #2: “Dundas’s ‘gradual abolition’ resulted in an immediate, devastating and unprecedented escalation of transatlantic human trafficking. The period from 1793–1807, after Parliament agreed to ‘gradual’ abolition’, witnessed the most consistently high volume of Africans transported to the British Caribbean in the entire history of the slave trade (574,370, or an average of 38,391 per year).”
Dr. Newton’s claim concerning Henry Dundas’s impact on the levels of trafficking after 1792 is patently false, and constitutes a stark misrepresentation of data from the world’s most authoritative database on levels of slave trading in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The “Slave Voyages” database shows that trafficking levels had been increasing steadily since 1780, and a sustained increase began around the same time the abolition movement started to gain popular support. William Wilberforce took up the cause, and by 1784 he was drawing large crowds.[6] West Indian planters became wary, and the movement grew into a national controversy that reached Parliament in the late 1780s.[7] In 1788, the Jamaican assembly, fearing that abolition was on the horizon, encouraged the importation of more enslaved women from Africa.[8]
In no way could any of this be attributed to Henry Dundas, who never spoke publicly about the abolition of the slave trade until April of 1792.
The database also shows that trafficking to British West Indian colonies steadily increased through the 1780s, peaked in 1792 and 1793 at the height of the controversy over the slave trade, and then declined, never again reaching the 1792–93 levels.[9]
There was no “immediate, devastating and unprecedented escalation” in trafficking after 1792. Dr. Newton misrepresented the data.
This misuse of statistics to support a false accusation is a serious breach of research integrity. [10]
Excerpt #3: “The weight of the evidence — that Dundas was a man dedicated to a vision of empire built on the mass enslavement of Black people and the mass slaughter of Indigenous Americans — is overwhelming.”
This use of the term “overwhelming” to describe Henry Dundas’s “vision,” constitutes a breach of the historian’s duty of accuracy and honesty.
Dr. Newton refers to “the weight of the evidence,” suggesting she considered evidence contrary to her position, but it is apparent that she failed to “weigh” any such evidence. Her analysis ignores the most important facts that contradict her thesis. As numerous historians have noted, the greatest obstacles to abolition in the 1790s concerned opposition from the King and the House of Lords, who had the power to veto any legislation Dundas might propose, and the powerful economic interests that profited from slavery in the West Indian and controlled a substantial contingent of MPs. Opposition deepened further in 1793, when France declared war on Britain and the nation was plunged into a world war that threatened its survival. No examination of Dundas’s position is credible if it fails to grapple with the limited options open to him as a result of those factors, which Dr. Newton failed to do in a serious way.
Further, had Dr. Newton looked for sources concerning Dundas’s vision and intentions, she would have found that he was unaware of the worst excesses of British forces in the West Indies until the news reached Britain weeks later. Her reference to the incident regarding the Maroons, for example, occurred after Dundas refused to approve the purchase of hounds from Cuban suppliers to track down the Maroons in the hills where they were hiding. The Jamaican Assembly defied the decision, and authorized the purchase of the hounds on its own.[11] After news of the resulting savagery of the hounds reached London, it was the Jamaican governor, not Dundas, who was held responsible. [12]
Excerpt #4: “These men were celebrated not in spite of the fact that they were white supremacists and, in some cases, mass murderers… but because of it.”
Dr. Newton’s allegation that the military road was named after Henry Dundas to celebrate him as a white supremacist and mass murderer is ludicrous. It was John Graves Simcoe, an ardent abolitionist and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, who named the street. One of Simcoe’s first acts as LG was to oversee passage of the British Empire’s first anti-slavery legislation. He strongly believed in equality among races, and before he left for Canada, famously wrote:
The moment that I assume the government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates, by dishonest policy, between the natives of Africa, America, or Europe.[13]
Given Simcoe’s stance on race and abolition, it was historically illiterate to suggest that he named the street after Henry Dundas as a celebration of white supremacist views. Dr. Newton’s claim bore the hallmarks of unacceptable ethnocentrism — making unfair generalizations and assumptions about those belonging to a particular ethnic group or culture out of personal bias and without reasonable grounds.
Dr. Newton erred further when she failed to accord any weight to Henry Dundas’s anti-slavery record, which started with the Knight v. Wedderburn case, in which he successfully fought for the freedom of a Black slave (discussed below).[15] She also ignored (a) evidence from Henry Dundas’s statements in Parliament about his opposition to slavery and the slave trade, (b) the assistance that he offered to abolitionists behind closed doors, and (c) the statements of abolitionists in the 1820’s, who finally admitted that Henry Dundas’s approach to abolition was the right one.
By disregarding the anti-slavery record of both Simcoe and Dundas, Dr. Newton engaged in unjustified character assassination. She denounced Simcoe and Dundas as white supremacists and mass murderers on the basis of their office and their race, while ignoring their anti-slavery track record. This constituted a serious departure from the historian’s duty of rigour, impartiality and sound judgment free of ethnocentric prejudice.
Excerpt #5: “Apologists for Dundas point to his role as an advocate representing an Afro-Jamaican man, Joseph Knight, in his freedom suit in Scotland in the 1770s, as evidence of Dundas’ abolitionism. The case led to a 1778 ruling, similar to the more famous decision in the 1772 case of enslaved man James Somersett [sic], in which an English judge ruled that there was no positive law in England that could empower a slave owner to force an enslaved person back to a slaveholding jurisdiction.”
In the passage above, Dr. Newton misrepresented and diminished Henry Dundas’s role in ending slavery in Scotland.
In the case of Knight v Wedderburn, Dundas represented an escaped slave who had been brought to Scotland from Jamaica, and was arrested while attempting to flee. Dundas not only won Knight his freedom, he convinced Scotland’s highest court to declare that no one could be a slave on Scottish soil. Even anti-Dundas historian Dr. Stephen Mullen, with whom Dr. Newton corresponded about the case,[16] has acknowledged that Knight was “one of the most celebrated court cases in Scottish legal history.”[17]
Dr. Newton, however, resorted to a tactic otherwise used only by anti-Dundas activists – deliberately misrepresenting the Knight decision in order to minimize its impact. She described it as “similar” to an English decision in Somerset v. Stewart, creating the impression that it was England that led the way. The Somerset case, however, while cautiously finding that no one in England could force a slave to return to a slaveholding country, did not free a single slave. The decision in Knight, by contrast, freed every slave in Scotland, immediately and all at once. It also set the stage for the later abolition of indentured servitude.[18] By relying on the false pretence of “similarity” with Somerset, Dr. Newton illegitimately diminished Dundas’s accomplishment.
Professor John Cairns wrote at some length about the differences between the two cases,[19] which could not have been lost on Dr. Newton, who cited his article in an earlier version of her commentary.[20] This puts her duty of honesty and impartiality at issue.
Dr. Newton’s skewed analysis of the Knight case then continued:
Excerpt #6: “It is entirely possible to oppose holding people in slavery in Great Britain while supporting both slave trafficking and slavery elsewhere in the Empire.”
Dr. Newton provided no foundation on which to speculate that Dundas supported enslavement of Afro-Jamaicans in the West Indies while opposing the enslavement of Afro-Jamaicans in Scotland. Her invitation to consider this proposition ignored evidence to the contrary.
When Henry Dundas represented Joseph Knight, he did so on a pro bono basis, in his private capacity as a lawyer[21] long before the abolition movement was underway. These circumstances indicate strong anti-slavery values. As well, Dundas expanded the arguments beyond strict legal principles, and engaged principles of religion and morality in the spirit of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, to which he belonged.[22] He has been widely quoted as saying: “Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.”[23] Dundas’s passion for his cause was obvious, as indicated by James Boswell’s praise:
I do declare, that upon this memorable question he impressed me, and I believe all his audience, with such feelings as were produced by some of the most eminent orations of antiquity.[24]
Dundas also proposed a comprehensive plan for British colonies in the West Indies to end slavery and the slave trade together – a plan abolitionists later wished they had adopted.
Dr. Newton’s comment thus invited the reader to draw a conclusion that was contrary to the evidence. She engaged in unfounded speculation that had the capacity to mislead.
The Knight case is the most difficult hurdle for anti-Dundas scholars to confront. It presents persuasive evidence of Dundas’s pro-abolition values, his grounding in the anti-slavery perspective of the Presbyterian Church, and his passion for the anti-slavery cause. His achievement was historic. Addressing Henry Dundas’s involvement in Knight required accurate and persuasive historical references. Dr. Newton, however, inaccurately characterized the case, misrepresented the issues it decided, and engaged in misleading speculation about Dundas’s motives. She breached her duties of fairness, impartiality, and honesty.
Excerpt #7: “[M]y first ancestor in this hemisphere probably came over in the hold of a slave ship, likely to Barbados, where I was born. I am a historian by profession. I have spent countless hours in the archives of the British Empire. Even with all of my training, I could go through the cargo lists of a thousand slave ships and see the name of my own first ancestor in the Americas… and I would never know I had read it. I can never find that name, it is lost to history, it is lost to me. I have men like Dundas to thank for that.”
In this unambiguously personal statement, Dr. Newton revealed that she blames “men like Dundas,” whom she views as white supremacists and mass murderers, for the fact that she cannot identify her ancestors. Dr. Newton is therefore a stakeholder in this debate, motivated by circumstances of birth and personal experience, with a deep sense of personal grievance. She is not impartial.
Dr. Newton’s personal investment in these issues does not, on its own, negate her position. What it does, though, is make it important for her to “show her work,” i.e. cite the evidence and authorities on which she has built her case. Publishing a commentary without any citations on an activist website, and expecting others to defer to her judgment as an academic historian, is simply not reasonable.
Excerpt #8: The commentary is entitled “Henry Dundas, empire and genocide,” and has the subheading: “Dundas’s genocides.”
“Genocide” has a specific meaning reserved for the worst atrocities against humanity. Under the relevant United Nations convention, it requires proof of “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”[26] “Genocide” does not apply to all excesses of war. It requires a specific intention to destroy an identified group in whole or in part. It is not a term to be used loosely.
Dr. Newton had no evidence that Henry Dundas held a specific intention to “destroy” an identified group, except that he was the War Secretary when acts of savagery were carried out by the military without his knowledge or authorization.
The historical record contains copious records of communication between Dundas and British generals during the Revolutionary Wars. If Dr. Newton is familiar with those records, then she should describe how they reveal that he held a specific intention to “destroy” an identified group. If she is not familiar with these records, then she made claims for which she had no proof, and breached her duty to be accurate and honest.
While activists and others frequently deploy the term ‘genocide’ for rhetorical effect, and to score political points, such carelessness is unacceptable in scholarly work. It trivializes the true horrors of genocide, which encompass not just the facts of the atrocities, but also the evil intentions of the people behind them. By resorting to such tactics, Dr. Newton has produced propaganda, not legitimate scholarship.
[1] https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/great-tyrant-henry-dundas-record-exposed-campaigner-619849 ˜Great Tyrant’ Henry Dundas’ record exposed by campaigner”
[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/instrumental-in-deferring-the-abolition-of-the-slave-trade-controversial-edinburgh-statue-to-be-given-new-plaque/
[3] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/henry-dundas-empire-and-genocide/
Staff ignored a commentary from Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine, who criticized the perspective held by Dr. Newton and others: “Sir Tom Devine: Scapegoating of Henry Dundas on the issue of Scottish slavery is wrong — and BBC documentary was a miserable failure,” The Herald, 24th October 2020.
[4] Neil Mackay, “The big read: Historic debate: Academics go head-to-head over Scotland’s ugly legacy of slavery,” The Herald Scotland, 31 January 2021.
[5] History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Vol 6, 1798 https://books.google.ca/books?id=1sUwAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA88&ots=72-RQ5CT-a&dq=%22The%20Maroons%20had%20been%20treated%20with%20humanity%20and%20attention%22&pg=PA88#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Maroons%20had%20been%20treated%20with%20humanity%20and%20attention%22&f=false
[6] R.I. Wilberforce et al, The Life of William Wilberforce, Seeley Burnside and Seeley, 1843, London, p. 26 (In 1784, Dundas informed Wilberforce that a recent speech against the slave trade had been well-received.)
[7] Stephen Mullen, The Scottish Historical Review, Volume C, 2: №253: August 2021, 218–248, at 220
[8] Mullen, pp 228–9 [emphasis added]; John Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade, 1787–1807 (London, 1998); D. B. Ryden, West India Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807 (Cambridge, 2009),
[9] Estimates (slavevoyages.org) The database will illustrate other ways of examining the trends by setting different inputs, but framing the query differently does not impeach the validity of the numbers shown here.
[10] “Framework to Address Allegations of Research Misconduct,” University of Toronto
[11] Kup, A. P, Author, and Taylor, Frank, 1910–2000, Editor. “Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica 1794–1801.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester 57, no.2 (1975): 327–65 at 327. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28212031.
[12] Johnson, Sara E. “‘You Should Give Them Blacks to Eat:’ Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror.” American Quarterly 61, no. 1 (2009): 65–92, at 79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734976
[13] “The Simcoe Papers,” i. p. 497, cited at: (1) https://electriccanadian.com/makers/simcoe/chapter06.htm , (2) “The Slave in Canada,” Archives of New Brunswick: https://archives.gnb.ca/exhibits/forthavoc/html/Slave-in-Canada.aspx?culture=en-CA , (3) Black Refugees in Canada: Accounts of Escape During the Era of Slavery.
[15] Commission to John Graves Simcoe as Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, September 12, 1791, (per Henry Dundas) Document 55, Dominion of Canada, “Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1791–1818”, Sessional Papers [№29c] (1914) https://primarydocuments.ca/documents-relating-to-the-constitutional-history-of-canada-1791-1818/
[16] The Last King, fn 5
[17] Mullen, S., Joseph Knight: (c. 1753–?), Jamaican slave, runaway, litigant, and eventual freeman in Scotland: The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. (“Mullen/Joseph Knight”)
[18] Michael Fry, “Henry Dundas stood against the slave trade, this proves it,” The National, 24th August 2020
[19] John W, Cairns, “After Somerset: The Scottish Experience,” The Journal of Legal History, Vol. 33, №3, December 2012, pp. 291–312, at 312.
[20]“The Last King of Scotland: Henry Dundas and the Empire Beneath our Feet,” June 25, 2020 (The Last King) https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:6fe8347e-b9c8-436f-bc3b-3f06a9d26f6e . The paper appears to be an early version of the commentary on openDemocracy.net.
[21] As James Boswell confirmed in Boswelliana: the commonplace book of James Boswell, at 279. https://archive.org/details/boswellianacommo00bosw/page/278/mode/2up? ref=ol
[22]Mullen/Joseph Knight, supra
[23] Caledonian Mercury — Wednesday 21 February 1776, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000045/17760221/003/0002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dundas,_1st_Viscount_Melville
[24] Boswell, James, The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: comprising a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons . Routledge, 1867. at p. 319
[25] Responding to the Dundas Street Renaming Petition (toronto.ca), Report for Action Ex 16.3, Sept 8 2020
[26] http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm, “’genocide’ defined in international law”