A statue of Sir John A. MacDonald in Kingston in 2019.J.P. MOCZULSKI
J.D.M. Stewart is a historian and the author of The Prime Ministers.
In September, 2020, as a teacher of Canadian history at a Toronto school, I penned an essay for this newspaper on what I saw as egregious and ahistorical evaluations of Sir John A. Macdonald. It wasn’t the first time I had written about his reputation, but this time, it landed me in a senior administrator’s office. I was asked if I had thought about how my piece might have affected my (teenage) students: After all, wasn’t Canada’s first prime minister a racist, and responsible for all that has been harmful to Indigenous peoples?
That summer in Montreal, vandals had torn down and decapitated a statue of Macdonald, while other tributes in cities such as Charlottetown, Toronto, Hamilton and Victoria were moved into storage or covered in hoarding. Even in Kingston at Queen’s University, the law school removed the name of the city’s most famous son from its building in October, 2020. “The debate over statues in general, and Macdonald in particular, reveals the polarity of 2020 writ large,” I wrote at the time. “There are only extremes.”
Today, however, the landscape appears to have changed. On Sept. 8, Prime Minister Mark Carney issued another of his “Forward Guidance” videos to update Canadians on the status of a nasty trade war that threatens the sovereignty and soul of the nation. And to develop a narrative about nation-building, Canadian strength and resistance to American dangers both economic and existential, he put an unlikely figure on centre stage: our first prime minister.
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“Sir John A. Macdonald recognized the threat of an expansionist United States for what it was, and raced to unite this land,” the Prime Minister said. “He knew that agreements such as Confederation, as important as they were, only do so much, and that Canada needed an economic and military corridor that could connect our peoples from east to west.”
Mr. Carney spoke unapologetically of the “iron spine” of the Canadian Pacific Railway that “stitched the country together and made our presence undeniable and unbreakable,” while acknowledging that this great achievement came “at an incredible human and financial cost.” It sounded like 2015 all over again – the part before Justin Trudeau – when then-prime-minister Stephen Harper, celebrating the bicentennial of Old Tomorrow, wrote that only Macdonald knew “how to make the case for unity, how to rally common hopes and fears, how to overcome different perspectives and interests.”
Close observers of Mr. Carney’s premiership will note that this is not the first time he has used Canadian history to tell a story. In April’s “Forward Guidance” video, he referenced Sir Isaac Brock and Chief Tecumseh. In a January speech, he rattled off the legacies of seven former prime ministers and spoke about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in a Quebec City speech, though he attracted criticism in that province.
But no prime minister makes historical allusions without calculation, and invoking Sir John A.’s name was a bold move with a message beyond railways and the National Policy. Mr. Carney was telling Canadians that we are a country mature enough to be able to recognize that historical achievements have a role to play in the success of a nation, even if they happened a long time ago and were accomplished by leaders whose actions may not always have aligned with the values we hold today.
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By touting the leadership of Macdonald, a man who literally laid the foundation for a strong and proud country that would resist American aggression, Mr. Carney reminded Canadians that there is a vital connection between past and present. While he did not come out and say it, Mr. Carney reflected the truth of John A.’s modern biographer, Richard Gwyn, who famously said: “No Macdonald, No Canada.”
The Prime Minister’s comments are not the only evidence that Macdonald’s reputation may be changing. Last year, the Ontario Legislature removed the hoarding which had been covering its statue of him for five years. A provincially appointed Toronto District School Board supervisor stopped the renaming of Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute. And in Wilmot Township, just outside Kitchener, Ont., the Prime Ministers Path will reinstall a statue of Sir John A.
Of course, some voices on social media have accused Mr. Carney of whitewashing the unsavoury aspects of Macdonald’s legacy. But social media feeds on anger and division, which are in opposition to the goals of Mr. Carney’s consensus-seeking. His remarks are another strong signal that it is time to move beyond narrow focuses about the errors of the past, and beyond viewing Canadian history as just an exercise in collective guilt. Canada has leaders from the past who can inspire. As we find ourselves locked in existential battle against a foreign power, we need them today.