Toppling Macdonald’s Statue Can’t Erase His Ugly History
Photo Credit: (ExBulletin / Google Images)
Written by: Tyler Shipley
The toppling of a statue of John A. Macdonald has unnerved certain sections of Canadian society. Fears of an “angry mob” that can “erase history” with such actions are overblown; history is recorded by means other than statues, so let’s review some of John A’s history (it still exists, wow!)
Two caveats. The first is the usual: that all of this is covered in more detail in the book linked here. The second is that this is actually covered more exhaustively by other scholars, in books, articles, twitter threads, etc, some linked in the thread. This history is *widely* known.
The population of the Americas before 1492 is estimated at 70-90 million and that figure was reduced to less than 10 million within a few centuries. All of the European powers arrived as conquerors and were explicit in their desire to remove and/or eliminate Indigenous people.
The French and English settlers who would eventually de-link from the British Crown as “Canada” were no different. Jacques Cartier called Indigenous people “savages” who “steal everything they can carry off.” Cartier kidnapped Chief Donnaconna and his nephews and took them to France.
As Loyalists flooded into Canada in the late 1700s, British authorities waged brutal wars against Indigenous people to steal land for the settlers, authorized to “take or destroy the savages called Micmacks [sic]” to earn bounties on “such savage taken or his scalp.” Yes, scalping was a settler tactic.
Through violence and a range of manipulative treaty processes, southern Ontario and Québec and the Maritime provinces were effectively conquered. The Mi’kmaw, Beothuk, Maliseet, Mohawk, Nipissing, Ojibwa, Mississauga and so many other nations lost most or all access to the land.
John A Macdonald grew up in this world, moving to Kingston, ON when he was five. His wealthy family and schooling made him a lock for law and politics. He began as a corporate lawyer, soon began buying property himself, and (per one historian) “saw no separation between interests of business and the state.”
Macdonald’s personal fortune was connected to the slave trade, as the family of his wife had been slaveowners in Jamaica, and John’s white supremacy was noted even by his peers at the time, which is really saying something, given the racism of his peers. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/sir-john-a-macdonald-had-family-ties-to-slave-trade/article9242022/
“The Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or Asiatics,” he proclaimed, comparing this to “the cross of the dog and the fox.” He insisted he would protect “the Aryan character of the future of British North America.”
As Macdonald got more deeply enmeshed in politics, he recognized that the fate of the emerging Canadian capitalist elite - esp its banks and railroad barons - depended on conquering the west, clearing out Indigenous people, and building a transcontinental state.
Thus, as most Canadian history texts emphasize, Macdonald’s signal legacy was Confederation, or the convincing of the squabbling rich people in the Canadian colonies to join forces in wiping out the Indigenous people of the west. That was, after all, it’s urgent goal.
1867 was all about conquering and settling the west. When Macdonald first purchased the Canadian prairies from the HBC, he was asked if there would be consultation with Indigenous people, to which he replied that “they were incapable of the management of their own affairs.”
Indeed, Macdonald assured a colleague that “in another year, the present [Indigenous] residents will be altogether swamped by the influx of strangers,” and Macdonald immediately set out to ensure that this would be the case, creating the NWMP (RCMP) to march west.
But Macdonald’s conquest met resistance. Contrary to his claims, Métis and Indigenous people were quite capable of managing their affairs and had little interest in Canadian interference. At Red River, Métis and white settlers refused to submit to his authority. So he sent the troops.
1200 soldiers marched to Red River, led by Garnet Wolseley, to rain hell upon the Métis. Fuelled by alcohol and rage, Macdonald’s force of British soldiers and Ontario Orangemen crushed the resistance and brought violence, sexual violence, and murder to the settlements’ inhabitants.
Macdonald then set his sights on sweeping the Indigenous people off the prairies, using force and manipulation to coerce people onto reserves. In many of the treaties, Canada had agreed to provide food and support for agriculture on the reserves, in exchange for the land it took.
Macdonald lied. Canada routinely refused to provide food, routinely breaking the terms of the treaties, and used a policy of forced starvation on the prairies to exact further and further concessions for the people who lived there. James Daschuk’s book is requires reading on this.
Indigenous people on the prairies had been among the world’s healthiest populations well into the 1850s. By the 1880s they were on the brink of collapse. This was *not* an accident, but a product of a concerted policy effort by Macdonald and his government.
The Canadian government had taken steps to reduce the bison population in order to disrupt Indigenous economic life (including encouraging settlers to graze cattle, reducing space for bison, and having NWMP officers drive the herds to the US where they were being slaughtered.)
As indigenous communities increasingly went hungry, Macdonald’s government pressed its advantage, making the terms of its treaties more and more punitive. Canada increasingly claimed all territory, permanently, and left only rocky, non-arable land for reserves.
In 1885, Métis and Indigenous people again rose up in defiance of Canadian conquest, and again Macdonald sent troops. This time a force of 8000 soldiers descended on Batoche where they again launched a merciless assault. Even the Toronto Mail newspaper blanched at the violence.
Homes were ransacked and set on fire. What could not be stolen, like beds and ovens, was smashed. A 93-year old woman was sprayed with bullets. Prisoners were executed and Macdonald gloated that this would “convince the Red Man that the White Man governs.”
The uprising at Batoche had in part been motivated by hunger. The Métis were dying and needed better land, seeds, equipment. Macdonald had refused. Instead he called them squatters and demanded payment for the land they could not farm. Was land at a premium?
No, in fact, immediately following the massacre at Batoche, Macdonald gave grants of land (double the size of what the Métis had requested) to the very soldiers who had just laid waste to the starving Métis. Macdonald did not want the Métis to survive.
Macdonald soon moved on to the Indigenous people of the west coast, whom he complained “feel yet that they are the lords of British Colombia.” He banned the potlatch and other Indigenous economic/religious practices and created the residential school system, with enormous consequence.
The school system and its cruelty and injustice is familiar to many. Macdonald explained that the schools were “designed to kill the Indian in the child” and indeed, some 75 per cent of Indigenous children went through the traumatic and often deadly system in the early 20th century.
This only captures a tiny piece of Macdonald’s colonial violence, arrogance, and cruelty. Entire books have been needed to document this and it’s impact. Macdonald himself was both product and producer of the Canada we know, which is a terrifying thought.
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