I last spoke on the subject of John A. Macdonald back in 2017. In that little essay, I made many statements on why Macdonald is a flawed man, and some of the mistakes he made. I also pointed out why it is important we remember him and what he accomplished for Canada. Also in that first article I made some mistakes when talking about his past actions and the legacy he left us. In light of recent events, I hope to make some corrections, but also stand comprehensively by the good and the bad of our first Prime Minister's legacy, and why I'm unwilling to forget either of those thing.
In my previous essay I did mention what I thought were the positives of Macdonald's legacy, and to begin this one I would like to point out many of his faults before I expound on why it is important he be remembered, and why our current historiography is perhaps not up to the task of doing it.
Firstly, yes, Macdonald was absolutely a racist and that's something that even if you subscribe to judging people by their time period, he was no paragon of tolerance and virtue. He dismissed the Indigenous peoples of Canada who would not settle to farm land and adopt Anglo-Saxon culture as savages. In his multiple dealings with the Métis people he referred to them as half-breeds, a slur on their Indigenous-European roots.
He was even extremely racist against the Chinese, exceptionally so for the time, wholeheartedly supporting the efforts of British Columbia to expel them from the province and desired to exclude them from the right to vote even in his aforementioned 1885 Franchise Act. He said "...if they came in great numbers and settled on the Pacific coast they might control the vote of that whole Province, and they would send Chinese representatives to sit here, who would represent Chinese eccentricities, Chinese immorality, Asiatic principles altogether opposite to our wishes; and, in the even balance of parties, they might enforce those Asiatic principles, those immoralities … the eccentricities which are abhorrent to the Aryan* race and Aryan principles, on this House." This shocked even his contemporaries, many of whom objected to denying those of Asian extraction the vote. In the end, Macdonald managed to exclude them however.
He also sanctioned the Davin Report in 1879 which was directly responsible for the creation of the Residential School System which would be used in Canada until the 1990s. I want to make clear here that the report specifically highlighted that taking children from their families to 'civilize' them was the best option, and this was supported by Macdonald.
As I said before, Macdonald was directly responsible for the Residential School System, which is a shameful stain on our history. To be clearer than I was in that original essay, the sanctioning of that system, and it's perpetuation by our government long after it was shown to be unhealthy and ineffective and also not even cost effective, was an act of cultural genocide. Though it did not, in sheer numeric terms, kill many people, it caused irreparable damage to Indigenous culture and communities wherever it was implemented and has lasting and terrible effects to this day.
To continue from my earlier comment on the Franchise Act of 1885, however, one could cynically examine the prospective Indigenous right to vote as an attempt to enshrine as a method of control over Indigenous polities. It would, in the language presented, effectively destroy the traditional structure of Indigenous self-government. It would take away their unique rights as tribal entities, and assimilate them into the broader Canadian society, effectively cutting up communally owned tribal land into individually owned properties. Though ostensibly they were allowed to keep their tribal affiliation, they would lose any special privileges under the Indian Act (another note on the Act below).
Despite this, does this itself make the attempt to at least grant the franchise to the Indigenous peoples, even with long strings attached, an ignoble thing? Some would say yes, and considering that relations with the government are fraught and full of federally exploited loopholes and are imposed in a top down style to this day, that would not be an incorrect view. However, considering almost no legislation was put forward to try and even engage Indigenous peoples in a discussion about voting again until the 1940s, and then not granted on their terms until the 1960s, some might say that as this bill was being pushed in 1885 after a full blown rebellion, it was still a progressive attempt for its day. Though let it be known that Macdonald did say "The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change." It must not be forgotten that even the most benevolent seeming actions by the government then (and arguably still) were about assimilation into the Canadian whole.
Even if you balk at Macdonald granting the right to vote to the Indigenous peoples, can it be ignored that this was also an attempt to grant women the right to vote? A cynic might say that Macdonald was just betting that women would vote for him, but if he was already courting even some women voting, while he could be reasonably sure of claiming a larger share of men's votes, why not instead be expanding the franchise to men alone? He had no special reason to try and extend the franchise to women, and he even originally hoped to extend it to all women who owned property and the wives of men who met property requirements. Considering that women would not receive the full right to vote until 1922 (and 1944 in Quebec) this was a rather unprecedented action.
It is also hard to ignore that Macdonald was one of the men who was actively building bridges between two of the main peoples of Canada, the French and the English. Casual bias towards, and distrust of French Catholics was practically a given for any English speaking Canadian in the period. Macdonald however, had many French friends, read French books, and allegedly, may have been able to speak the language himself. A not inconsiderable act for someone of Protestant heritage in the Victorian era in Canada.
Do these semi-progressive attitudes outweigh the harm done? No.
As an important aside, I want to emphasize a few issues Macdonald also takes the blame for. For all you can criticize Macdonald for the things he did do, one thing he didn't do was create the Indian Act which, with all it's flaws, remains the standard our government uses for imposing rules on the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The Act was brought into law by our second Prime Minister, Alexander Mackenzie in 1876, while Macdonald was out of office**. It should also be noted he was not responsible for the 1894 amendment to the Act which made it mandatory for children between the ages of 7 and 16 to attend the Residential Schools, seeing as he was dead at the time. The blame for all the many faults in the system cannot be lain solely at his feet. He certainly can't be blamed for the cumulative damage from the Schools, which were perpetuated for over a century after his death by a string of governments which seemed uninterested in addressing the issue.
Macdonald's accomplishments in creating modern Canada don't need much expansion from me here, and I merely repeat something from my original piece; It is an open question whether Canadian Confederation could have gotten off the ground without him. He spearheaded the Great Coalition which broke the political deadlock in Canada in 1864, he helmed the Confederation Debates from Charlottetown to London, and he knitted together a nation out of disparate colonies separated by a massive wilderness with a covetous neighbor to the south looking to gobble it up and tied that vastly separated nation together with a spine of steel. For better or for worse he effectively led this nation from 1864-1891, albeit with a brief intermission.
That he falls at the hurdle to our 21st century stands of morality should be no bar to celebrating his accomplishments in creating our country. He loved this country and there can be no doubt of that. Does this forgive his racism, his work in establishing the horrible Residential Schools? No, but do those acts alone outweigh the sum total of his accomplishments? I would emphatically argue no.
Even if we accept that Macdonald held some deeply racist views for the time, I think it still behooves modern readers to remember that even others whom we regard as greats in history, committed their fair share of atrocities. Take Ulysses S. Grant for instance. He was the president who did the most for the rights of Black Americans before Lyndon B. Johnston. He crushed the Confederacy, he crushed the first KKK and was instrumental in pushing forward legislation which would give Black Americans the franchise and equality under the law. He was also responsible for starting the Great Sioux War of 1876, violently depriving the Lakota peoples of their sovereignty and freedom, murdering them in great numbers and driving them onto reservations to seize their land. He had no legal reason for doing so, so he made one. Does that detract from his accomplishments?
Again, I would argue no. Like I said, people are complex. Failing to acknowledge that, and worse, attempting to rewrite history to only remember the negatives of people with very mixed legacies, is potentially dangerous for any society. With all his flaws, and they are many, his accomplishments still make him one of my heroes. I firmly believe it is better to learn of all his strengths and weaknesses, his triumphs and the tragedies he inflicted. Trying to sweep him under the rug, or rewrite his history to only highlight his flaws, does nothing for our understanding of history and how we got here. More information is better, the good and the bad. None of our historical heroes are going to be paragons of virtues, they all have their vile sides.
I firmly believe that our understanding of historiography has yet to fully master the act of balancing the virtues with the vices of historical figures. There is, in my opinion, too much of trying to declare people one thing or another. They either focus on their flaws or on their triumphs, when both need to be accurately relayed to students of history. Simply writing hagiographies or hit pieces on historical figures serves no one. How future historians will solve this problem remains to be seem.
I should note this does come as a general reaction to the discussions of pulling down statues of John A. Macdonald. In certain cases yes it should be done, especially if they are in places where it is indecent for them to be built. That being said, if you pulled down every statue of John A. Macdonald and remove his image from all over the country while renaming every building/road/monument/ect of him, this would accomplish nothing which would materially benefit Indigenous Canadian peoples whatsoever. My true feelings regarding the most recent acts of statue destruction are that it is a bit of vandalism to be in the 'zeitgeist' of the times which makes non-Indigenous Canadians feel better about themselves while doing nothing to hold our government to task over it's treatment of Indigenous peoples. Your statue toppling is unimpressive if you're going to make excuses for the modern governments crappy treatment of the Indigenous peoples of Canada.
To conclude however, I stand by my appraisal of John A. Macdonald as a Great Man. Like most great men, he did many great things, some of them terrible. It is important we acknowledge that, and better educate ourselves on our history, the good and the bad.
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*It should also be noted that this is, quite possibly, the first use of the term Aryan by a Canadian politician. In fact, there can be some argument made that Macdonald's more extreme anti-Chinese views are driven by some sort of early feeling of Yellow Peril, an issue which the smaller populations of Indigenous peoples or those of African descent would not have brought out and a belief they could be more easily assimilated into 'British' culture.
**I add it was built off legislation which Macdonald played a part in crafting in 1857 and 1869, though not exactly like it. I don't claim he would not have passed an act similar to the existing Indian Act, merely that giving him the blame for it as I so often see is unwarranted.
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