In the ’90s, John Tory, now the mayor of Toronto, stated “For the past five years the United Nations has declared Canada as the best country in the world in which to live, but as Canadians we’re demanding a recount.”
Nowhere on earth is there a nation as adept as self-flagellation as Canada. We’re especially fond of beating ourselves up. So consumed with guilt and self-loathing are we that we are now dismantling monuments to the man without whom we would not have this country, to which millions have come and millions more wish to come.
Nevertheless, we are engaged in an exercise of perpetual shaming. You can bet Americans aren’t taking down George Washington statues because he owned slaves. Why? Well, that was the way of the world at the time. It doesn’t make it right, but we need to be cautious about imposing our 2018 sense of morality on historical figures.
Tommy Douglas and Nellie McClung were both fans of eugenics, yet we honour them. Every Prime Minister from Macdonald onward and up to Brian Mulroney must accept a measure of responsibility for the perpetuation of residential schools, including the father of the current PM.
Do we erase their images as well? If so, perhaps it’s time to rename the Pierre Eliot Trudeau Airport.
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It could be this is the reason no past Prime Minister has spoken out about the removal of Sir John A’s statue. There’s plenty of blood on history’s hands.
The statue of Sir John A. Macdonald has been removed from the City of Victoria and his monument in Regina has been vandalized twice already this year. The reason? Macdonald was responsible for the ill-conceived residential schools, which have led our First Nations to so much misery and dysfunction.
There is no denying the misguided thinking which drove Canada’s first Prime Minister and others at the time, to embrace the idea of these schools. Whether or not one argues that the intention was noble (and that’s not an easy claim to make) they tuned out badly.
So, for that reason, it is now fashionable for Canadians to want to disown the man whose brilliance and political adroitness formed our nation. It might be pointed out to the fine people of Victoria that without Macdonald’s efforts, they might well be living in a land governed by Donald Trump.
The British seem to have things in perspective. They have a statue in London of King Charles I and only metres away, a statue of Oliver Cromwell, the man who had Charles beheaded.
We tread on dangerous ground when we begin to exact contemporary justice on people who have been dead for a hundred years or more, but such is the arrogance of contemporary Canadian culture. Because it’s 2018, you know.
Sadly, all most Canadians know about Sir John A. is that he drank and helped create residential schools. A study of real Canadian history might provide a better understanding of the complexities of the man and the times in which he lived.
John Boyko’s “Sir John’s Echo” is well worth the time and effort. Our badly flawed school systems have failed generations of Canadians by refusing to teach them about themselves in any significant way. No wonder we think Macdonald was Mephistopheles incarnate. We know only that Canadian history of something of which we all must feel deeply ashamed and never proud.
Boyko doesn’t make any attempt to whitewash Macdonald’s flaws, but neither should we, as contemporary Canadians, make the grave mistake of ignoring his mighty accomplishment, the creation of Canada.
That is, unless we’re still insisting that this is a dreadful, sinful, unjust country and we must once again demand a recount.
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