Statue a political object, not a historic one

Re. “Give the Macdonald statue a good home as soon as possible,” July 31.

In his commentary on the Sir John A. Macdonald statue saga, Donald Roughley has not argued a case — he has stated a political priority, namely to mount the statue of our first prime minister in a “prominent place.”

He does not even name the grounds for this priority — he assumes that doing so would be a public good without providing any actual reasons. He then criticizes the elected mayor for enacting her election platform and for taking the pain and humiliation of Indigenous Victorians seriously.

The statue was a gift from a Conservative-affiliated organization to the city in 1982. It is not a historic object: It is a recent political object.

Macdonald never even set foot in Victoria. He was a classic parachute candidate. The City of Victoria, as a city, owes his memory precisely nothing.

The federal government can do whatever it wants on its own property, of course. Yet — interestingly — no federal government has so far seen fit to erect a statue of any Canadian prime minister in Victoria.

If the Conservative Party or the Sir John A. Macdonald Society would like to buy a piece of land on which to display the statue “prominently,” they should do so.

Otherwise, it belongs in the Royal B.C. Museum’s modern history galleries as an example of 20th-century political propaganda.

Andrew Gow, PhD Professor emeritus of history University of Alberta Victoria