A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald stands high in front of Queen's Park. Macdonald was prime minister during the time the government approved the first residential schools in the country and the union says his name should be removed from schools in the province. Vince Talotta / Toronto Star ) Order this photo

OTTAWA—Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was an architect of Indigenous genocide whose name has no place on public schools in Ontario, according to an attention-grabbing motion passed last week by the province’s elementary teachers union. It’s a strong accusation at a time of heated debate over the memorializing of controversial figures in the United States and Canada — that a man whose statue stands outside Parliament and the Ontario legislature, whose name is on major roads and the airport of the country’s capital, and whose face is on the $10 bill, is unworthy of being associated with children’s schools. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario issued the call at its annual meeting on Aug. 14, after a motion written by teachers from Peel Region and Grand Erie was passed. It asks school districts across the province to drop Macdonald’s name from schools and buildings “to recognize his central role as an architect of genocide against Indigenous peoples, the impact that this has had on the relationship between Indigenous students and non-Indigenous students, parents, educators, and the ways in which his namesake buildings can contribute to an unsafe space to learn and to work.” Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, told the Star that he “totally” supports the call. He said he’s encouraged to see a group of teachers pushing for more awareness of Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous peoples.

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In Macdonald’s case, he said this includes the creation of residential schools and other policies of control and assimilation under the Indian Act — including restrictions on movement and voting rights that lasted until the 1950s and 1960s — that he considers “genocide of a people.” “This is not about revising the history of Canada, it’s about being honest and telling the truth,” Bellegarde said, adding that he also welcomes discussion on the appropriateness of other tributes to Macdonald. “We have a shared history, but we have more importantly a shared future, so let’s build a country on truth and honesty.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said in a statement Thursday that even though Macdonald was “far from perfect” and his decision to open residential schools is “one of the most problematic in our history,” she doesn’t think his name should be removed from schools. Patrice Dutil, president of the Champlain Society and professor at Ryerson University, said the contention of genocide against Macdonald “makes no historical sense.” He acknowledged that the first prime minister wanted to see Indigenous peoples assimilated into the colonial society of Canada, but said that it’s unfair to discredit the man of the 19th century — when such views were pervasive and unchallenged — based on the ethics and social views of the present. “You just simply cannot level that kind of accusation against a man of the stature of Sir John A. Macdonald and at the same time ignore his accomplishments,” Dutil said. Similar debates have been rattling around the United States with regard to Christopher Columbus and Confederate generals. The issue recently exploded in racist violence in Virginia, where a purported white nationalist was filmed plowing his car into a crowd, leaving one woman dead. The protests occurred over the suggestion that statues glorifying men who fought to preserve the slave trade in the American South — such as Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee —should be taken down. In Canada, the discussion has centred on the country’s colonial history. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to longstanding demands from Indigenous groups in June by renaming the Langevin Block, which houses the nerve centre of the federal bureaucracy and the Prime Minister’s Office, and was named for a Macdonald-era cabinet minister widely credited with helping to create the residential school system. The student union at Ryerson University has also called for the school to be renamed because its namesake Egerton Ryerson is said to have influenced the creation of residential schools. These schools were part of a system that existed for more than a century, where Indigenous children were taken from their parents and forbidden from speaking their mother languages or practising the religions they grew up with. As many as 6,000 children died in the schools, though the true number is not known because the government stopped counting around 1920, according to the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Protests have also been held in Halifax, where some have called for a statue of the city’s founder, Edward Cornwallis, to be taken down. Cornwallis offered a bounty in 1749 to anyone who killed a Mi’kmaq adult or child, in a bid to push them out of the colony of Nova Scotia.

Sir. John A. MacDonald Collegiate in the Pharmacy and Sheppard area is one of the schools that would be affected by a possible name change. ( Richard Lautens )

Felipe Pareja, a middle school French teacher in Mississauga who co-wrote the ETFO motion on Macdonald, said the call to purge his name is part of a wider conversation on reconciliation between settler and Indigenous peoples in Canada. He said Macdonald’s public legacy should include residential schools and the dislocation and mistreatment of First Nations on the Prairies when the railroad was built — a topic outlined in historian James Daschuk’s 2013 book, Clearing the Prairies. “This is very much about teaching, and teaching history from all perspectives,” Pareja said. Daschuk said blaming Macdonald for genocide depends on how the term is defined, but there is no doubt he was the creator of a system that “put the boot” to Indigenous peoples for decades, especially during his time as both prime minister and Indigenous affairs minister for nine years after the 1878 election.

During this time, he established residential schools, broke treaties by refusing to supply food to starving First Nations on the Prairies and created a pass system that lasted until the 1950s, in which a status Indian living on reserve could not leave the territory without government permission, Daschuk said. “I’ve used the analogy: George Washington was a slave owner, and we can criticize him for that, but George Washington didn’t create slavery,” he said. “Macdonald created the system.” .