New $10 bills feature some great Canadians

The 150 commemorative $10 bills are to be available this week, complete with a variety of depictions of Canada.

Among the most interesting are the people.

One is Agnes Macphail, who in 1921 became the first woman elected to Parliament. She represented the former riding of Grey Southeast, which included the municipality of Hanvoer, south of Owen Sound, Ont.

The early attention on Macphail was rarely positive but she refused to return, as one man claimed she would, “to the obscurity of a little school in the back concessions.”

A champion of equality and human rights she became an advocate of the working class and defender of marginalized groups such as women, miners, immigrants and prisoners.

Another portrait on the $10 bill is that of James Gladstone, who in 1958 became Canada’s first senator of First Nations heritage.

I got to know Gladstone during the late 1960s when I worked for the Lethbridge Herald.

Gladstone was a member of the Kainai First Nation, which in those days he referred to as the Blood Indian Tribe.

The common term back then was Indian “band,” but Gladstone’s son, also named James, told me his family was a member of a tribe, not some fife and drum corps.

Gladstone, whose Blackfoot name was Akay-na-muka, meaning “Many Guns,” committed himself to the betterment of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

After leaving school in 1905, Gladstone returned to his southern Alberta reserve where he worked as an interpreter and sometimes on ranches wrangling cattle.

In 1911, he found work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a scout.

Eventually, Gladstone established himself as a farmer and rancher and worked with his sons to assemble 400 head of cattle introducing modern farming practices to his people.

The reserve, one of the largest in North America, is near Cardston, in southern Alberta, the home of a temple constructed in the 1800s by members the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I have a clue about the relationship between the people of the reserve and the church today, but some 50 years ago, it wasn’t always cordial.

One night, Sen. Gladstone and I shared a few glasses in the beverage room of the Marquis Hotel. (They were 15 cents each so I could afford to buy my share.)

That night the topic turned to discrimination and the senator told me he suffered far more discrimination because he was not a member of the region’s dominant church, than he did because of the colour of his skin.

I quoted him in an article that created quite a stir.

To save himself from criticism, Gladstone could have denied the conversation and thrown a young reporter under the bus but, to his credit, he stood behind the story.

Around the same time, my boss, Cleo Mowers, an editor and publisher with an overflowing heart, asked me to consult on the Kainai Indian News being published by the Bloods.

Turns out Gladstone’s granddaughter was a senior member of the editorial team.

Although my relationship with the Gladstone family lasted only a few years — I moved on to bigger, but not always better, things — I am guided to this day by their courage, friendship and sense of self.

A biography of Sen. Gladstone refers to him as the “gentle persuader.”

Take my word for the fact he also was a gentleman.