Did Global Affairs shrug away history?
A Carleton University professor says Canadian officials have missed a “golden opportunity” to preserve a link to Sir John A. Macdonald’s past in Glasgow, Scotland.
Randy Boswell said Global Affairs Canada should explain why it failed to digitally record what’s presumed to be Macdonald’s birthplace on Brunswick Street, or preserve some part of the building, before it was demolished in September 2017.
The developer of Glasgow’s Candleriggs project had invited Canadian officials to examine the site and salvage anything of value before it was razed, but they declined the offer.
“John A. Macdonald is a complex and controversial figure,” said Boswell, a journalism professor and former Citizen reporter with an abiding interest in Canadian history.
“But he was, undeniably, the key figure in the creation of a modern Canada. What kind of country would shrug at the demolition of its founding statesman’s possible birthplace?”
That sentiment was echoed Friday by Sen. Serge Joyal, a former Liberal cabinet minister, who denounced the federal government’s indifference at the loss of such a potentially important piece of cultural heritage.
“I’m appalled, and I’m ashamed that Canada is not more proud of its founders,” Joyal said. “Where are we going as a country if we’re not able to protect and respect the persons who made us the country we are today? I can’t believe this. ... We’re probably the only country among the G7 who treats their founders this way.”
A spokesman for Global Affairs Canada said the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom conducted “extensive research” into Macdonald’s likely birthplace in 2013. That inquiry found there was not enough evidence to support the theory that Macdonald had been born at 20 Brunswick St., in Glasgow’s Merchant City.
“Local historians and city officials felt strongly that the neighbourhood of his baptism could be confirmed with church records, not the place of birth,” said spokesman John Babcock.
As a result, he said, “there was no discussion about salvaging any elements of a specific property on Brunswick Street, given that the evidence was very inconclusive.”
Boswell, however, said the 2013 Canadian investigation failed to account for the most telling evidence on the question of Macdonald’s birthplace, which emerged in the two succeeding years.
While that evidence is inconclusive, Boswell said, it nonetheless establishes the Brunswick Street building as the likeliest birthplace of Canada’s founding prime minister.
Historians all agree that Macdonald was born in Glasgow to Hugh and Helen Macdonald in January 1815, but there’s disagreement about exactly where.
Some point to the recollection of Macdonald’s 86-year-old cousin, Maria Macpherson, who reported to an early biographer that the family was living on the south side of the Clyde River, across from downtown Glasgow, when John Alexander was born.
But evidence uncovered by Boswell in 2014 strengthened the case for Brunswick Street (formerly Brunswick Place) as Macdonald’s birthplace.
Among other things, he uncovered an 1891 investigative feature, published by The Empire newspaper in Toronto after Macdonald’s death, that identified his birthplace as Brunswick Place. The finding held additional weight because The Empire was founded in 1887 by Macdonald, and was published by his friend and fellow Glaswegian David Creighton.
What’s more, in 2015, University of Edinburgh researchers reported that Scottish church records show Macdonald was born in a parish north of the Clyde River — an area that includes Brunswick Street — and not south of the river as Macpherson suggested.
Canadian heritage officials also identified the same Brunswick Street address in the mid-1960s when they sought to locate Macdonald’s birthplace before the 150th anniversary of his birth. Macdonald’s great-grandson also told the CBC that he believed his famous forebear was born on Brunswick Street.
City records show that Macdonald’s father owned a textile business at the address in the early 1800s, and the family may have lived in the rooms above it.
Boswell said the record definitively establishes the importance of the now-demolished building. “At the very least,” he said, “the shabby old building was the last known place with a tangible link — through his father’s business — to Macdonald’s Glasgow origins.”
As such, he said, pieces of it should have been preserved for future museum exhibits and not left to the wrecker’s ball.
Joyal called it an irresponsible approach to Canadian heritage.
“I’m really very, very offended,” he said.
“How can you look at John A. Macdonald’s picture now, and tell him, ‘To hell with you. Wherever you’ve been, we don’t care’ ?”
The derelict two-storey structure had at various times been home to a pub, massage parlour and pet store.
The site will now be part of a condominium and retail development.