With Macdonald's statue taken down in his hometown, what of the Canadian project itself?

National Post, 18 June 2021

For too long the other side was unexamined, but the remedy is to shine light on the shadows.

KINGSTON — Sir John A. Macdonald’s statue was removed from City Park at first light on Friday morning. History — or at least historiography — is moving fast.

Six years ago the country’s great and good gathered in here in Kingston — Sir John A. Macdonald’s hometown — to mark the bicentennial of his birth. Not just on his birthday in 2015, but in the year leading up to it.

Some notable Canadians served as guest guides for Sir John A walks beginning at the statue, offering their own tributes to Canada’s first prime minister. Liberal prime ministers John Turner and Paul Martin did the honours, as did Macdonald biographer Richard Gwyn, journalists Lloyd Robertson and Steve Paikin, to say nothing of Bob Rae and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

The statue is not just a relic of a forgotten past; it is part of the living present in Kingston. But would any of them come today?

I have been at Sir John A’s statue many times for various civic commemorations; it was an astonishing sight to be there on Friday morning as the giant tow truck hoisted the statue off its pedestal to be transferred to Cataraqui Cemetery, where it will be placed near Sir John A’s mortal remains.

Last week, a group of protesters covered the statue with a blood-red shroud and kept vigil there in memory of Indigenous students at residential schools.

Six days later Kingston city council met and voted to remove the statue, which had been subjected to occasional acts of protest vandalism in recent years.

Thirty-six hours after that, the crane was on site.

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