Wrong removal
Re: Victoria to remove ‘painful reminder of colonial violence’, Aug. 9 Victoria’s move to remove from City Hall a statue of Canada’s first prime minister because, as its dim-witted mayor blathers, it’s a “painful reminder of colonial violence,” is a painful reminder that our country may have become too stupid to deserve to survive.
If we have so toilet-flushed our civilizational confidence and grown so ashamed of our history, maybe it’s time to pack it all in, cede the land to the distant descendants of Aboriginal tribes and take to the high seas aboard leaky, overcrowded boats in search of refugee status on distant Pacific islands.
A few town hall twits, drunk on PC virtue-signalling, would dustbin a sculpture of the Founding Father most responsible for ensuring that their former far-west hinterland village would be in a province of the Dominion, rather than in a state of the Union. All because, to progressives, holding the non-PC opinions of your times is grounds for becoming unpersoned. This is the insanity that ensues when you grant them control over anything more than their personal affairs.
But stupid is as stupid resolves. And elects. It’s not Sir John A. that urgently needs to be removed from City Hall, Victoria. Gary McGregor, Ladner, B.C.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps has pushed political rectitude to the edges of idiocy. Macdonald was born 203 years ago in a Dickensian age far removed from ours in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, mores, compassion, etc., in an age when might made right and only the views of a chosen few received any consideration. Ordinary people of all races and colours were badly mistreated — the plight of the Irish and Jews is well-known because of the sheer magnitude, but is far from exceptional — my ancestors were forcibly evicted from Scotland and shipped overseas, where they were given a few miserable acres of undeveloped wilderness and left to sink or swim.
The concept of Residential Schools was good — an attempt to lift the Aboriginals into fully equipped, employable citizens. It failed because the concept was badly implemented at every turn, the Aboriginal psyche was misunderstood and too many teachers and administrators were poorly chosen.
Against this Macdonald, warts and all, was the father of Canada as we know it. Had he not pushed through the railway and brought B.C. into Canada there is a good chance B.C. would have joined with the U.S., possibly followed by other Northwest provinces-to-be, and Canada could have sunk into truncated irrelevance. Donald McKay, Calgary
I would like to remind Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps that there are no saints in politics and that sometimes imperfect men can and do achieve great things.
For the past 150 years, Sir John A. Macdonald, with all his imperfections, has been considered a Canadian icon. I respectfully suggest that Mayor Helps climb on her bicycle and pedal into the sunset. Michael Stevenson, Victoria