‘Macdonald made us’
Re: Sir John A. chose to act, Barbara Messamore, Dec. 31.
Knowing that the deep well of academia has been polluted by political correctness, I am not surprised by Prof. Barbara Messamore’s disappointing assessment of our first prime minister.
I speak as a Métis man whose ancestors helped to shape this country. James Bird was a fur trade stalwart; his son Dr. Curtis James Bird helped to write the list of rights for Louis Riel in 1869; his half- brother Jimmy- Jock was a Blackfoot war chief who served as translator at the 1877 treaty.
In both his private and public lives, John A. Macdonald was remarkable in his faithfulness and dedication to service: to call him “deeply flawed” in the second sentence is disingenuous and a wink to the woke.
Secondly, his approach did not “echo” that of Bismarck, who believed in, and used, “blood and iron.” Macdonald set the tone for Canadian compromise and civility that later earned Lester Pearson such plaudits.
Thirdly, Macdonald’s policies for Aboriginal people did not “fail by any standard.” His provision of emergency food supplies to starving Prairie tribes and his granting of Riel’s demand for provincial status for Manitoba were successes. His dispatch of the North-west Mounted Police in 1874 to quash the illegal whiskey trade near the U. S. border saved many lives, as Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot acknowledged: “The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of a bird protect it from the frosts of winter.”
Transitioning from the wild and free tribal life of hunting and gathering over vast areas to sedentary modern industrial society took European cultures thousands of years. To expect North America’s early inhabitants to accomplish the same feat in a generation or two is hardly realistic (I still escape to fish, hunt and trap: ask my wife).
If Prof. Messamore is inclined to cite the work of Alexander Galt, then she should also mention Thomas D’arcy Mcgee, Macdonald’s colleague and drinking buddy whose exhortations to unite the disparate colonies were also important. Still, Macdonald is the man, more than anyone else, who made us, to quote Richard Gwynn. As Gwynn also notes, he tried to give Indigenous men the vote in 1885, but the Liberals shouted it down. In the same decade he attempted to give women the vote, the first national leader in the world to do so.
I do concur with the professor on one point — that we should teach our students the merits of bold initiatives, as modelled by our country’s founder.