Sir John A Macdonald: Scotland disowns Canada's first PM
OP note: For those who are not Canadian, a bit of context. Canada officially became a country in 1867 (unlike the U.S., we didn't have a revolution). Our first Prime Minister was John A. Macdonald: "Sir John Alexander Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada (1867-73, 1878-91), lawyer, businessman, politician, (born 10 or 11 Jan 1815 in Glasgow, Scotland; died 6 June 1891 in Ottawa)."
Sir John A Macdonald: Scotland disowns Canada's first PM
Statues of Sir John A Macdonald, like this one in Toronto, are being debated in Canada
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Canada's first prime minister has been scrubbed - at least for now - from government websites in Scotland due to his treatment of indigenous people.
References to Glasgow-born Sir John A Macdonald have recently been removed from Scotland.org sites.
The change comes amid an ongoing debate in Canada over his legacy and how he should be remembered.
In the late 19th Century, Macdonald's government initiated the creation of the residential school system.
For over a century, starting in the 1800s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to state-funded boarding schools, where children were forbidden to speak their language or practise their own culture. Some students died, many children experienced abuse.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Scottish National Party-led government confirmed it had removed articles on Sir John A Macdonald from the websites "following the legitimate concerns raised by Canadian indigenous communities about his legacy".
"While we want to celebrate the very positive contributions Scottish people have made across the world we also want to present a balanced assessment of their role and are reviewing the wording of these articles in that light."
References to the Sir John A Great Canadian Kilt Skate, an ice skating event in Canada funded in part by the Scottish government, have also been removed. The government is reconsidering future funding.
Sir John A Macdonald has long been celebrated in Canada as a nation builder - the father of Confederation who played a leading role in the effort to achieve a union of Britain's North American colonies.
A Scotland.org page with a feature on Sir John A Macdonald now simply shows an error message
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But in recent years there have been growing calls to recognise the darker side of his complex legacy, which includes establishing the residential school system. Its impact has been depicted as "cultural genocide".In his determination to connect the country from coast-to-coast with a transcontinental railway, his government also forced some First Nations from traditional territories, withholding food until they moved to areas designated as reserves.
Calls have grown to remove his statues and his name from buildings across the country.
Most recently, a statue of Macdonald was removed from the entrance of city hall in Victoria, British Columbia, taken down as a gesture towards reconciliation with indigenous people in Canada.
The Canadian Historical Association recently removed his name from one of their prizes.The debate around monuments recognising the first prime minister and other historic Canadian figures echoes the movement in the US to remove Confederate symbols from the 1861-65 American Civil War.
So far, the Canadian government has resisted calls to remove Macdonald's name from federal properties. Last week, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said she has asked bureaucrats overseeing historic sites to look at how to address concerns with monuments like those to Sir John A Macdonald, but she added that "you can't erase history".
SOURCE.
Some additional but really relevant information in order to avoid glossing over just how horrible Macdonald was (some of this is a bit of repetition of the above, but is there just to make clear the impact of what he did):
-He is guilty of genocide: "Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, deliberately starved thousands of aboriginal people to clear a path for the Canadian Pacific Railroad and open the prairies to white settlement. His “National Dream” cost them their health, their independence and - in many cases - their lives." (Reference is here. See also here.) "For years, government officials withheld food from aboriginal people until they moved to their appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases. Thousands died."
-He set up the atrocity that was the residential school program in Canada: "Over a period of roughly 100 years, about 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by the police, and sent to the residential schools that were administered by churches. The commission found that many of those children were sexually and physically abused at the schools and some died. The teachers and staff at many schools were incompetent or worse, the commission found, adding that “child neglect was institutionalized.” Macdonald said that an indigenous child educated where he or she lives “is simply a savage who can read and write,” whereas children sent to boarding schools “will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.” To assimilate students, the schools banned indigenous languages and prohibited, sometimes forcefully, indigenous cultural practices." (Reference is here.)
-He (unjustly) intervened to charge Louis Riel with high treason, in order to ensure he would be put to death: "Prime Minister John A. Macdonald decided to charge Riel with high treason, based on an obscure British law dating to the year 1342. This law carried the death the penalty whereas Canadas treason law did not." (Reference is here.) Louis Riel was a Métis leader (i.e. an indigenous people of Canada), founder of Manitoba (i.e. now one of Canada's western provinces), and a central figure in the Red River and North-West resistances.
Basically, the Red River resistance was a rebellion by the Métis against the Canadian government. This all stems from the fate of a huge part of the country, which was known as Rupert's Land (this includes a third of today's Canada). Rupert's Land was 'granted' to the Hudson's Bay Company by Charles II of England in 1670. (Of course, the issue there is that neither Charles nor England OWNED or had any right to the land in the first place.) "By today's standards, the charter was breathtaking in reach. It gave the HBC and its merchant governors exclusive rights to trade -and to colonize - all the lands containing rivers flowing into Hudson Bay, the entire Hudson Bay drainage system. This amounted to an enormous territory in the heart of the continent: what is today northern Québec and Labrador, northern and western Ontario, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, south and central Alberta, parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and small sections of the United States." (Reference is here.) In the 19th century much of this land was transferred to the control of the Canadian government: "During the negotiations between Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company over the transfer of Rupert's Land, no one had bothered to consult the native and mixed-blood people who inhabited the area. Before the official transfer had even taken place, surveyors began moving in to divide up the land into agricultural sections. This alarmed the Métis who saw their traditional hunting grounds being taken over. They rallied around a 25-year-old, Montreal-educated, bilingual leader, Louis Riel. (More about the first rebellion, where people were basically just defending their land, is here.) (There has been a lot of debate as to whether the trial of Louis Riel was fair as well as whether it was even legal in the first place. I can also provide references for that if anyone is interested.)
-Also, it is important to note that there are A LOT of lovely memorials to Madonald in Canada: among other things, he is still on our money and there is currently no plan to change this: he was until recently on our 10$ bill and will soon be removed from the 10$ bill and bumped up to a higher denomination.
-Some additional facts about John A. Macdonald:
(1) 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.
(2) John A. Macdonald may have named Canada a "confederation" in deference to the Southern Confederates with whom he sympathized.
(3) He also really hated Asian peoples: "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."
(4) Some have tried to defend Macdonald by saying that 'everyone was totes racist back then'. While I'm certainly not denying the truth of that then (or now) it isn't a good defense of his actions (it's actually a terrible argument). It also misses the point, which is that racism everywhere should be condemned. Also, some have argued that he was WORSE than his contemporaries. "For John A. Macdonald, Canada was to be the country that restored a pure Aryan race to its past glory. Lest it be thought that Macdonald was merely expressing the prejudices of the age, it should be noted that his were among the most extreme views of his era. According to Timothy J. Stanley's research, he was the only politician in the parliamentary debates to refer to Canada as "Aryan" and to justify legalized racism on the basis not of alleged cultural practices but on the grounds that "Chinese" and "Aryans" were separate species."
OP: tldr; Macdonald was racist as fuck and deserves to be consigned to oblivion with the rest of the racists. The end.
Sir John A Macdonald: Scotland disowns Canada's first PM
Statues of Sir John A Macdonald, like this one in Toronto, are being debated in Canada
----------------------
Canada's first prime minister has been scrubbed - at least for now - from government websites in Scotland due to his treatment of indigenous people.
References to Glasgow-born Sir John A Macdonald have recently been removed from Scotland.org sites.
The change comes amid an ongoing debate in Canada over his legacy and how he should be remembered.
In the late 19th Century, Macdonald's government initiated the creation of the residential school system.
For over a century, starting in the 1800s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to state-funded boarding schools, where children were forbidden to speak their language or practise their own culture. Some students died, many children experienced abuse.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Scottish National Party-led government confirmed it had removed articles on Sir John A Macdonald from the websites "following the legitimate concerns raised by Canadian indigenous communities about his legacy".
"While we want to celebrate the very positive contributions Scottish people have made across the world we also want to present a balanced assessment of their role and are reviewing the wording of these articles in that light."
References to the Sir John A Great Canadian Kilt Skate, an ice skating event in Canada funded in part by the Scottish government, have also been removed. The government is reconsidering future funding.
Sir John A Macdonald has long been celebrated in Canada as a nation builder - the father of Confederation who played a leading role in the effort to achieve a union of Britain's North American colonies.
A Scotland.org page with a feature on Sir John A Macdonald now simply shows an error message
-------------------
But in recent years there have been growing calls to recognise the darker side of his complex legacy, which includes establishing the residential school system. Its impact has been depicted as "cultural genocide".In his determination to connect the country from coast-to-coast with a transcontinental railway, his government also forced some First Nations from traditional territories, withholding food until they moved to areas designated as reserves.
Calls have grown to remove his statues and his name from buildings across the country.
Most recently, a statue of Macdonald was removed from the entrance of city hall in Victoria, British Columbia, taken down as a gesture towards reconciliation with indigenous people in Canada.
The Canadian Historical Association recently removed his name from one of their prizes.The debate around monuments recognising the first prime minister and other historic Canadian figures echoes the movement in the US to remove Confederate symbols from the 1861-65 American Civil War.
So far, the Canadian government has resisted calls to remove Macdonald's name from federal properties. Last week, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said she has asked bureaucrats overseeing historic sites to look at how to address concerns with monuments like those to Sir John A Macdonald, but she added that "you can't erase history".
SOURCE.
Some additional but really relevant information in order to avoid glossing over just how horrible Macdonald was (some of this is a bit of repetition of the above, but is there just to make clear the impact of what he did):
-He is guilty of genocide: "Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, deliberately starved thousands of aboriginal people to clear a path for the Canadian Pacific Railroad and open the prairies to white settlement. His “National Dream” cost them their health, their independence and - in many cases - their lives." (Reference is here. See also here.) "For years, government officials withheld food from aboriginal people until they moved to their appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases. Thousands died."
-He set up the atrocity that was the residential school program in Canada: "Over a period of roughly 100 years, about 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by the police, and sent to the residential schools that were administered by churches. The commission found that many of those children were sexually and physically abused at the schools and some died. The teachers and staff at many schools were incompetent or worse, the commission found, adding that “child neglect was institutionalized.” Macdonald said that an indigenous child educated where he or she lives “is simply a savage who can read and write,” whereas children sent to boarding schools “will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.” To assimilate students, the schools banned indigenous languages and prohibited, sometimes forcefully, indigenous cultural practices." (Reference is here.)
-He (unjustly) intervened to charge Louis Riel with high treason, in order to ensure he would be put to death: "Prime Minister John A. Macdonald decided to charge Riel with high treason, based on an obscure British law dating to the year 1342. This law carried the death the penalty whereas Canadas treason law did not." (Reference is here.) Louis Riel was a Métis leader (i.e. an indigenous people of Canada), founder of Manitoba (i.e. now one of Canada's western provinces), and a central figure in the Red River and North-West resistances.
Basically, the Red River resistance was a rebellion by the Métis against the Canadian government. This all stems from the fate of a huge part of the country, which was known as Rupert's Land (this includes a third of today's Canada). Rupert's Land was 'granted' to the Hudson's Bay Company by Charles II of England in 1670. (Of course, the issue there is that neither Charles nor England OWNED or had any right to the land in the first place.) "By today's standards, the charter was breathtaking in reach. It gave the HBC and its merchant governors exclusive rights to trade -and to colonize - all the lands containing rivers flowing into Hudson Bay, the entire Hudson Bay drainage system. This amounted to an enormous territory in the heart of the continent: what is today northern Québec and Labrador, northern and western Ontario, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, south and central Alberta, parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and small sections of the United States." (Reference is here.) In the 19th century much of this land was transferred to the control of the Canadian government: "During the negotiations between Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company over the transfer of Rupert's Land, no one had bothered to consult the native and mixed-blood people who inhabited the area. Before the official transfer had even taken place, surveyors began moving in to divide up the land into agricultural sections. This alarmed the Métis who saw their traditional hunting grounds being taken over. They rallied around a 25-year-old, Montreal-educated, bilingual leader, Louis Riel. (More about the first rebellion, where people were basically just defending their land, is here.) (There has been a lot of debate as to whether the trial of Louis Riel was fair as well as whether it was even legal in the first place. I can also provide references for that if anyone is interested.)
-Also, it is important to note that there are A LOT of lovely memorials to Madonald in Canada: among other things, he is still on our money and there is currently no plan to change this: he was until recently on our 10$ bill and will soon be removed from the 10$ bill and bumped up to a higher denomination.
-Some additional facts about John A. Macdonald:
(1) 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.
(2) John A. Macdonald may have named Canada a "confederation" in deference to the Southern Confederates with whom he sympathized.
(3) He also really hated Asian peoples: "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."
(4) Some have tried to defend Macdonald by saying that 'everyone was totes racist back then'. While I'm certainly not denying the truth of that then (or now) it isn't a good defense of his actions (it's actually a terrible argument). It also misses the point, which is that racism everywhere should be condemned. Also, some have argued that he was WORSE than his contemporaries. "For John A. Macdonald, Canada was to be the country that restored a pure Aryan race to its past glory. Lest it be thought that Macdonald was merely expressing the prejudices of the age, it should be noted that his were among the most extreme views of his era. According to Timothy J. Stanley's research, he was the only politician in the parliamentary debates to refer to Canada as "Aryan" and to justify legalized racism on the basis not of alleged cultural practices but on the grounds that "Chinese" and "Aryans" were separate species."
OP: tldr; Macdonald was racist as fuck and deserves to be consigned to oblivion with the rest of the racists. The end.