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Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson highlighted Whitton’s fall from grace last Sunday when, amid a torrent of condemnation, he withdrew his proposal to name the new archives facility after her. Opposition to his proposal had been uproarious, even eliciting an online petition that gleaned more than 1,300 signatures.

“It is appalling in this day and age that someone who showed so much insensitivity and blatant ignorance (anti-semitic) should be rewarded in any manner,” the petition read.

But Whitton is not the only historic figure whose pedestal has been shaken, whose legacy wobbles between greatness and some measure of criticism as society reassesses them through a contemporary lens.

The names of these historic figures are inscribed on streets, parks and schools. They are honoured with monuments and remembered fondly in textbooks.

But what happens when we realize that the heroes of years gone by — Whitton, Thomas Jefferson, Nellie McClung, Stephen Leacock, Vincent Massey, William Lyon Mackenzie King — are no longer clear heroes by today’s standards? Should we then sanitize our cities of references to those who, by current moral conventions, would be considered anti-Semitic, racist or chauvinistic?

If we do, then we are embracing what historians call “Presentism” — the act of relying on current mores and sensibilities to render a judgment on those who lived before us, and who likely held unpalatable views characteristic of their time.