Removing Statues Fails to Address Underlying Injustice

Can we apply a similar rule in Canada? In Montreal, the Mohawk teacher and activist Michael Rice accepts the existence of plaques and statues that honour Governor Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve for his contributions to founding French Montreal in the 1640s.

But, he argues, they should be balanced by some acknowledgment that the Mohawk chiefs whom Maisonneuve killed in the process were honourably defending Rice’s ancestors and their homeland. That would be restoring history, not erasing it.

And John A. Macdonald? I’ve never been keen on the desire for a Canadian “father of his country” to mimic George Washington’s role in American legend. Confederation was a collective achievement, and Macdonald (and other prime ministers) are well represented among our statuary.

For new statues, I prefer ones like that of poet Al Purdy in Toronto, or musician Gordon Lightfoot in Orillia, Ontario, or the sculptures that honour First Nations history on the west coast. Macdonald’s flaws are part of his history. But the statues of him honour significant positive achievements on behalf of Canada.

Macdonald sometimes built better than he knew. He helped to draft Section 91.24 of the British North America Act, which binds Canada to a Treaty relationship with First Nations. His Indian Act and his role in the starvation and dispossession of First Nations dishonoured that commitment, but the commitment endures; we are all Treaty people. Respectful adherence to the Treaties can be our way forward to reconciliation.

In his failure to maintain Canada’s Treaty commitments, Macdonald actually resembles today’s Canadians. It is not shameful to respect John A. Macdonald’s contribution to the building of Canadian Confederation or his years as prime minister.

What would be shameful would be to remove Macdonald statues around the country — without addressing Canada’s responsibility for the poverty, dispossession, and alienation of Indigenous peoples that he helped to create and that we maintain.

Macdonald was a politician to his fingertips. In his time, and in defiance of the sharing agreements that were promised when the Treaties were negotiated, Canadian governments with broad popular support dispossessed First Nations of their territories and made it impossible for them to run their own affairs or to generate the revenues they required.

When he helped to make starvation into a tool of coercion on the prairies, he was pursuing policies that were accepted by the Canadian electorate of the times — by us, in effect.

The way to redress that situation is to address the underlying wrong. It would be the height of hypocrisy to hide the Macdonald statues while we still accept the Indigenous poverty and dispossession he allowed to develop.

When we do away with the injustices that keep First Nations dispossessed in their own land, we will be better positioned to recognize the enduring achievements of John A. Macdonald — and of Canada.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada made ninety-four “calls to action” that could lead toward reconciliation. None of the ninety-four involves removing statues — though they do call for more acknowledgment of Indigenous history. Mostly they affirm the need for “a nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal people and the Crown.”

Until we build that relationship, we have no grounds for thinking the meaningless removal of a few statues will have any positive consequences.