Hundreds of people will gather at the conference centre Monday night for a discussion about Sir John A. Macdonald, nearly two years after Victoria council’s decision to remove a statue of Canada’s first prime minister from a City Hall entrance sparked protests.
The fourth in a series of six dialogues on reconciliation, the event will look at the historical context in which Macdonald held office, and ask participants to consider how to approach monuments to controversial historical figures. It is not meant to decide the future of the statue.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said she hopes the session will give people a deeper understanding of history and the many perspectives on Macdonald’s legacy.
“This whole series came from, really, the removal of the statue and we had to find a way to talk about that,” she said.
The statue was removed in August 2018, just four days after the issue was placed on the council agenda, because it was seen as a barrier to Indigenous people coming to City Hall. It was a move that was widely criticized for lacking in public consultation. Helps later apologized for limiting public debate but maintained removing the statue was the right call.
As Canada’s first prime minister and an MP for Victoria from 1878 to 1882, Macdonald shaped the country’s democracy, but was also an architect of the residential-schools system that removed Indigenous children from their families and sent them to church-run boarding schools where they lost their culture and language.
Previous dialogues in the series have been popular, with about 200 people in attendance. Around 400 people have pre-registered for Monday’s session, which might bring some new faces who want to talk about the statue and wouldn’t otherwise have shown interest in reconciliation discussions, Helps said.
“And I think that that has a lot of potential.”
The event, which Helps called “part dialogue, part ceremony,” will open with Lekwungen dancers, followed by a dramatic presentation to introduce the life and work of Macdonald.
Helps will guide the session with Cindy Blackstock, a renowned voice on reconciliation and First Nations child welfare. Blackstock is a member of the Gitxsan First Nation and has been appointed to the Order of Canada.
Helps said it’s an honour to have Blackstock travel to Victoria for the event.
The two will facilitate small-group discussions, asking participants to imagine themselves from different points of view.
The event takes place a week after a group of young, Indigenous people started their second occupation of the legislature steps in solidarity with five Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose a natural gas pipeline being built through their territory.
Arrests by RCMP of people blocking a critical roadway for construction have sparked nationwide protests.
Helps said some of the discussion taking place Monday night will be relevant to what’s happening across the country.
“I think people will certainly, hopefully, gain a more complex understanding of the history and the stories that we tell that have led us to this current historical moment,” Helps said.
The goal of the dialogue series is to provide opportunities to discuss how the community can make the culture, history and lived reality of local Indigenous peoples more visible and valued in the city. The sessions build on each other and are designed to be attended as a series.
The city received $10,000 in funding for the series from a Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation pilot program.
Although pre-registration is full, last-minute cancellations will likely free up space for anyone who wants to attend but has not registered.
The event begins at 6 p.m. at the Victoria Conference Centre at 720 Douglas St. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
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— With a file from Cindy E. Harnett
