{"id":68641,"date":"2020-09-17T01:07:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T22:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/a-statue-of-john-a-macdonald-rests-in-purgatory\/"},"modified":"2020-09-17T01:07:39","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T22:07:39","slug":"a-statue-of-john-a-macdonald-rests-in-purgatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/a-statue-of-john-a-macdonald-rests-in-purgatory\/","title":{"rendered":"#A statue of John A. Macdonald rests in purgatory"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#A statue of John A. Macdonald rests in purgatory<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n A project featuring a statue of every Canadian PM has become a politically charged minefield as the legacies of the nation\u2019s early leaders are reapp<\/a>raised according to contemporary standards\n <\/div>\n
\n
\"Red<\/p>\n

Close up of the sculpture of Macdonald at the entrance of The Prime Ministers Path in Wilmot, Ont. (Photograph by Yader Guzman)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There are remnants of red paint in John A. Macdonald\u2019s hair and more by his feet. As far as statues go, this one located in Wilmot, Ont., a rural township outside of Waterloo, got off relatively unscathed. What was once a well-meaning project to create a \u201cPrime Ministers Path\u201d featuring life-sized bronze sculptures of every Canadian prime minister\u201423 and counting\u2014has become a politically charged minefield as the legacies of the nation\u2019s early leaders are reappraised according to contemporary standards.<\/p>\n

The primary target is Sir John A., who is remembered not simply as Canada\u2019s first prime minister, but also as one of the architects of Canada\u2019s shameful residential school system, which forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families. On a late August day in downtown Montreal, the fate of another Macdonald statue was more dire, after protesters toppled and decapitated it in the process. By then, Wilmot\u2019s town council had voted to put theirs into storage, perhaps saving the statue a similar fate, but the township is now engaged in a great soul-searching in order to come up with a way forward for the project.<\/p>\n

If racism is a disqualifier, it\u2019s not a long walk on what has already been built along the Prime Ministers Path until one stands before another prime minister that shouldn\u2019t make the cut. There\u2019s the statue of Canada\u2019s prime minister during the First World War, Sir Robert Borden\u2014with a news<\/a>paper in one hand and his cane in the other\u2014who won the 1911 election using the slogan \u201cA White Canada\u201d in B.C., appealing to anti-Asian xenophobic sentiment. And it\u2019s only a few steps from there to the statue of William Lyon Mackenzie King, who is remembered for leading Canada through the Second World War\u2014and less remembered for turning away a boat of Jews fleeing the Holocaust and sending them back to Europe, as well as the internment of Japanese Canadians.<\/p>\n

Jim Rodger, one of the co-founders of the Prime Ministers Path, was once the principal of a high school in Kitchener, Ont., that William Lyon Mackenzie King attended in the late 1800s. For the school\u2019s 150th anniversary in 2005, it commissioned a sculpture of King as a student for its front lawn.<\/p>\n

Come 2012, Rodger and Kitchener businessman Dave Caputo came up with the idea to make something even grander\u2014a path of statues featuring every prime minister since Confederation. \u201cThe project will demonstrate our recognition of a rich and not always perfect story on Canada\u2019s 150th anniversary,\u201d Rodger wrote in a Waterloo Region Record <\/em>op-ed in 2013. First they approached the city of Kitchener with hopes to erect the statues in Victoria Park. The duo said they would solicit donations, commission the sculptures and then gift the statues back to the city. But their offer was ultimately rejected, in part because of the auxiliary costs of maintaining the statues, but also because critics said the city shouldn\u2019t be commemorating former leaders who were \u201cracists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undeterred, Rodger found a new home for the project at Wilfrid Laurier University\u2014the only university named after a prime minister. Only after the first statue was erected on campus\u2014that of Sir John A. Macdonald holding two empty chairs, titled A Canadian Conversation<\/em>\u2014was the university swiftly criticized both by its students as well as some professors, one of whom started a petition to stop the statue project.<\/p>\n

\"Ralph<\/p>\n

Ralph (left) and Chris Bieber wanted to see the Prime Ministers Path before it was removed (Photograph by Yader Guzman)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem acknowledging the unseemly side of some of our leaders,\u201d Rodger says in an interview. But he adds that you can\u2019t tell the story of Canada\u2019s prime ministers without Macdonald. When Wilfrid Laurier University abandoned the project, the township of Wilmot (population: 21,000) came forward with a plan to become a permanent home to the Prime Ministers Path.<\/p>\n

Rodger made sure the first five statues commissioned represented leaders from different eras in Canada\u2019s history, including Lester B. Pearson and Kim Campbell. Earlier this year, Rodger announced the forthcoming unveiling of the path\u2019s next four statues\u2014Sir John Abbott, Sir John Thompson, Sir Mackenzie Bowell and Sir Charles Tupper (dubbed the \u201cUnfortunate Four\u201d by Rodger for their brief tenure in office emning 1891-96)\u2014only for the pandemic to delay the event.<\/p>\n

Then, in June, the statue of Macdonald was doused in red paint three times in the same week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are an Indigenous person in Wilmot, you must cross the path of Sir John A. Macdonald to get a building permit to put up a shed, get a dog tag or participate in municipal politics,\u201d says local councillor Angie Hallman. \u201cYou don\u2019t have a choice but to face the person who caused the genocide of your people and eliminated part of your family tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilmot\u2019s town council voted to put their John A. Macdonald into storage\u2014and delayed the project altogether pending public consultation, notably with Indigenous leaders.<\/p>\n

Relegating Sir John A. to a repository has polarized locals, from a \u201cSave our Statues\u201d grassroots organization\u2014which maintains that tearing down statues will deprive people of the debate about Canada\u2019s history\u2014to others who insist there\u2019s been enough consultation already (from when the project was rejected by the city of Kitchener and again by Wilfrid Laurier University).<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Statues of limitations: Why the present shouldn\u2019t attack the past<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who is left to consult? \u201cIt should not be the responsibility of Indigenous peoples to continuously provide free education while council gets up to speed,\u201d explains Lori Campbell, adjunct faculty member at the University of Waterloo and director of Shatitsir\u00f3tha\u2019, the University of Waterloo\u2019s Indigenous student centre. \u201cWith commemorative statues in a public park, what it does is exclude me from going there. I would not go there to have a picnic on the lawn in front of the man who caused the death of tens of thousands of my ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if the project is about education, Campbell continues, why has no one added signage to mention Macdonald\u2019s ties to residential schools?<\/p>\n

The township of Wilmot\u2019s pamphlet of the Prime Ministers Path makes no mention of his racist past. \u201cThis isn\u2019t a big town. There isn\u2019t tons of money. And that\u2019s a horrible excuse,\u201d admits Rodger. \u201cThe development of those resources lags behind what\u2019s here.\u201d He\u2019d certainly like to see more signs and educational materials to address those leaders\u2019 cruel policies, he adds.<\/p>\n

The ex-principal still speaks about the project\u2019s potential; he hopes to be able to relocate the statue of Sir John A. so that it\u2019s not so prominent, but maintains they should remain outside in a public area where anyone can interact with them as they see fit.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t talk about things that aren\u2019t there\u201d Rodger says. \u201cIf red paint gets left on Macdonald and that\u2019s the cue that gets people talking about Indigenous issues, that\u2019s not a bad thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This article appears in print in the October 2020 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s magazine with the headline, \u201cStatue of limitations.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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“#A statue of John A. Macdonald rests in purgatory” A project featuring a statue of every Canadian PM has become a politically charged minefield as the legacies of the nation\u2019s early leaders are reappraised according to contemporary standards Close up of the sculpture of Macdonald at the entrance of The Prime Ministers Path in Wilmot,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/PM-PATH-WATERLOO-HUTCHINS-SEPT01-02-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22974,67806,70596,4937,70597,27933,21406,70598],"class_list":["post-68641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-canada","tag-editors-picks","tag-prime-ministers","tag-racism","tag-sir-john-a-macdonald","tag-statues","tag-systemic-racism","tag-wilfred-laurier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}