My first reaction to the news that the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald would be removed from Victoria’s city hall was fear. I knew it would bring out the residential-school defenders. The genocide deniers. The “get over it” crowd. I agreed that the statue should be moved, but I worried what the public’s reaction would be.
Some believe that history is being erased, but today I know more about Macdonald than ever before. I learned that, in addition to promoting the residential school system and purposefully starving Prairie Indigenous people to force treaty-making, Macdonald was an anti-abolitionist, and he thought disenfranchising Chinese immigrants was his “greatest triumph.”
Some insist that we should venerate Macdonald because he helped build Canada. The expansion of the CPR into B.C. is often used as an example of his contributions. But Macdonald didn’t respect the people who actually built that section of the CPR — Chinese immigrants.
Macdonald thanked the labourers of his pet project with dehumanization. He stated in Parliament that if more Chinese people immigrated here, “they might enforce those Asiatic principles, those immoralities, the eccentricities which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles, on this House.”
And no, he wasn’t “just a product of his time,” and that wasn’t “just how things were.” We have it on record that some of Macdonald’s colleagues in Parliament were disturbed by his racism. There was opposition to his anti-Chinese sentiments.
Radio-show hosts, editorial writers and people on social media are claiming that Victoria city council has hurt democracy because councillors didn’t consult the public on this issue. The “communism 1984” graffiti on the sign in front of city hall speaks to a fear that our society is becoming totalitarian. These claims are absurd, and they show a misunderstanding of how Canadian democracy and governance work.
Canadians do not vote or give input on every single decision made by government. Democracy at the municipal, provincial, territorial and federal levels is representative, meaning we elect officials to make decisions for us. Have you ever voted for a politician whose platform you completely agreed with?
Most people accept the lack of absolute democracy in Canada, except when it comes to a reconciliation effort by Victoria’s city council.
Some people are also upset that this process prioritized the voice of a minority group, and claim that’s undemocratic. But Canada has never been a country ruled solely by the majority. We have French on all our packaging because of minority protections afforded to Franco-phones. Treaties are foundational laws of Canada, and they are minority-protection agreements. Protecting minorities is a fundamental part of Canadian democracy and law, even though the country doesn’t always live up to those values.
Macdonald defenders claim to be concerned about preserving Canadian culture, but many of them have fundamental misunderstandings of this country’s history, governance system and laws.
Removing this statue has done the opposite of what people fear: It has unearthed more of Canada’s history for the world to know.
Zofia Rogowski is Ojibwe. She works in adult education and lives in Esquimalt.
