Hector Louis Langevin was a politician, lawyer, and Father of Confederation. Langevin played a big part in creating the original residential school system, which is why Joy, Seth, and Zack (students at Riverside) believed that he did not deserve to have a school named after him.
Born August 25th of 1826, Hector Louis Langevin was an administrator in John A. McDonald's government. Langevin had an important role in Confederation and helped create the residential school system in which Indigenous children were converted to Christianity and European culture. Langevin had many careers and studied multiple subjects including law, but decided to take up journalism in 1847. He was the editor of many papers and also was a political editor, he eventually also owned a paper company himself called Le Monde in 1884.
Langevin also had many political careers. He was elected to the city council in Quebec and later was mayor of Quebec City for 3 years. He was solicitor general in Canada east for two years then postmaster general for one year. Langevin was also the head of a Baptist society for three years and the head of Institute Canadian for one year.
In May of 1883, Hector Louis Langevin showed the House of Commons a plan to open three residential schools in the Northwest territory as the same idea of these schools had worked great in the United States. He suggested making these schools more effective the children should be separated from their parents/guardians. He was one of the main architects of the residential school system and because of him, around 150,000 children had their culture torn away from them. They were forcefully taken and put into residential schools for over 100 years causing severe long-lasting trauma that they and their families are still trying to recover from today.
This is why Reconciliation is so important and why we continue to learn and grow from our past mistakes, so nothing like this is repeated. By changing the name of our school we hope to spread a meaningful message of realizing our mistakes and working to change them.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-hector-louis-langevin