And the next in the Sir John A Fortnight,

Sir John A. Macdonald played a critically important role in founding Canada and in leading it as Prime Minister for almost 20 years. Over the past few years, however, he has fallen out of fashion. His legacy has come under sudden and severe revisionism as new interpretations of his role have emerged, and monuments in his honour have been defaced across the country. Has the new wave gone too far? In recognition of his 206th birthday on Jan. 11, the National Post will revisit the Macdonald record with pieces by notable Canadian thinkers, in a series curated by author/academic Patrice Dutil, who has written extensively on Macdonald.

At my university, I offer a course in the admittedly old-fashioned genre of historical biography and John A. Macdonald is among those figures we study. I find it gratifying that prominent people are often deeply flawed: it gives me hope that my own faults do not preclude some modest contribution. To commemorate is not to idealize. Just as people in our own lives sometimes disappoint us, so it is with historical figures, even those we admire.

Macdonald's approach echoes that of his exact contemporary Otto von Bismarck, who famously described politics as “the art of the possible.” Macdonald favoured a simple legislative union of all the British North American colonies, rather than a federation, but compromised. He also put aside a long-standing rivalry to work with Liberal George Brown. He and Quebec's George-Etienne Cartier were friends and partners, each recognizing the need for cultural co-operation. Unable to get a reciprocity deal with the U.S., Macdonald embraced the protectionist National Policy, although he continued to seek the elusive prize of free trade.

In the private correspondence of both British and Canadian politicians, I have seen identical descriptions of Macdonald's methods — “fast and loose” — although he inevitably won their grudging respect. His methods to incrementally increase Canadian autonomy are a case in point. In 1879, Britain still claimed authority over Canadian tariff policies, but Macdonald stalled over sharing details of Canada's protectionist new budget, relaying courteous excuses. When at last the details were released in Parliament, British statesmen, unwilling to risk an open clash, decided to leave things alone.

In an era before party fundraising and electioneering methods were tightly regulated, Macdonald's tactics veered into blatant corruption. Most of his dodgy devices were dedicated to party, and not personal gain, although that hardly excuses them.

By any standard, Macdonald's policies for First Nations failed those they were intended to help. That said, condemnations of Macdonald as the “architect” of the Indian Act are misleading. His views reflected ideas of the day about how to solve problems that we ourselves have failed to resolve. With Aboriginal nations across Canada in steep demographic decline — the nadir was probably reached in 1881, with a census count that year of under 110,000 — everyone “knew” traditional ways were doomed. The influential 1842 Bagot Commission, which predates Macdonald's political career, set down a policy that conformed to what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have called “cultural genocide.”

Cultural genocide (or attempted cultural genocide), it should be stressed, is a very different thing from actual genocide, a policy of systematic killing. Macdonald undertook what he paternalistically called “the onerous duty of the protection of the Indian inhabitants from white aggression, and the guardianship as of persons under age, incapable of the management of their own affairs.”

The tragic — and expensive — failures of residential schools and farming instruction programs followed. Macdonald's successors continued the basic philosophy of the 1869 Indian Act in later iterations. Some favoured injustice over paternalism. Pierre Trudeau in 1969 maintained that “we can't recognize Aboriginal rights because no society can be built on historical might-have-beens.”

Macdonald's pivotal role in bringing about Confederation merits a place of honour. Yet, ironically, it is also misleading to describe him as the architect of this plan. Most essentials of the plan had been put forth by Alexander Galt in 1858. While it wasn't ideal, Macdonald acknowledged it was “the only practicable plan.”

Theodore Roosevelt, himself a historian, reminded us that “credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena … who errs, who comes short again and again.”

If he fails, he “at least fails while daring greatly.” Only those who don't act can remain perfect.

Our history students are fast absorbing the lesson that it is better to adopt the prevailing mode of piously condemning those who adopted flawed strategies, doing nothing, lest we be criticized for doing wrong. Plenty of problems in our own time require bold solutions; let's not teach our students to take the way of caution.