But MacDonald was the founder of our country.

transhumanist-viking:

anxious-anthropologist:

allthecanadianpolitics:

Yes, and he was also a genocidal, white supremacist.

He does not deserve any monuments in Canada in my opinion. Put him in museums, but not glorified in statues. Let his full history be on display in Museums not monuments which are built to glorify an awful man.

He did this:

When Canada used hunger to clear the West

And this:

John A. Macdonald was the real architect of residential schools

And this:

John A. Macdonald’s Aryan Canada: Aboriginal Genocide and Chinese Exclusion

And this:

Commentary: John A. Macdonald’s white-supremacist views were shocking, even by the standards of his time

And this:

“During the American Civil War (1861 to 1865), Montreal served as refuge to Confederates — southern Americans who wanted to keep slavery and secede from the United States union. The Southern slavers found a friend in John A. Macdonald.”

And this:

“In 1885, PM Macdonald told the House of Commons that, if the Chinese were not excluded from Canada, “the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed.” This was the precise moment in the histories of Canada and the British dominions when Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state.“

“They were the first _____ of _____” is such a fallacious argument in the first place. Adolf Hitler was the first Führer of Nazi Germany. Pol Pot was the first General Secretary and Prime Minister of Khmer Rouge-led Cambodia. Kim Ill-sung was the first Supreme Leader of North Korea. Daniel Françis Malan was the first post-Independence Prime Minister of South Africa. Stop trying to silence criticism of historical figures by pointing out that they were the first of something. Their legacies often extend farther beyond when it was relevant to say such things and the fact that many are willing to overlook the legacies of white suoremacists, genocidaires, dictators, and ethnic cleansers speaks volumes.

@allthecanadianpolitics

Statues in public are for those we as a society honour and idealize.

If we honour and idealize Sir John A. MacDonald, something has gone terribly wrong with our goal of reconciliation, to say the very least.