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Scotland has historically been rather lukewarm about celebrating Macdonald as a Scottish hero. There are only two monuments to Macdonald in his native land, one of them a plaque paid for by the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario. The other, a cairn dedicated by John Diefenbaker and built on the former site of the home of Macdonalds’ grandparents.

In all 19 years of the devolved Scottish Parliament, there does not appear to have been one mention of Macdonald’s name in debates.

Most notably, Macdonald’s Scottish birthplace was torn down just last year. The shuttered former pub, located in a particularly rundown section of Glasgow, was suspected to have once been a textiles shop owned by Macdonald’s father, with the family living in the apartments above. The two-storey structure was razed in September, 2017 to make way for mixed-use condos.

Photo by Photo courtesy of Paul Kane

Perhaps tellingly, the since-removed Scotland.org article on Macdonald repeatedly misspelled his Scottish last name as “MacDonald.”

In recent months, however, Canadian controversy surrounding the former Glaswegian has garnered the occasional mention in the Scottish press. Last year, the Bank of Canada announced that Macdonald’s portrait on the $10 bill would be replaced with that of civil rights activist Viola Desmond, although Macdonald will be bumped up to a higher denomination currency. Earlier this month, the City of Victoria removed a statue of Macdonald, calling the late Canadian leader a symbol of “colonial violence.”

A September 2017 article in The Scotsman wrote that “demands have been growing to scrap anything bearing (Macdonald’s) name because of the way he treated the Indigenous population.”

The Scottish government is currently run by the independence-minded Scottish National Party, which won a minority government in the country’s 2016 elections. Although Scotland is a part of the U.K. and recently rejected a referendum on full independence, it has certain powers of self-government similar to that of a Canadian province.

Photo by Iain Paterson

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