KINGSTON, Ontario — It is impossible to escape the presence of Sir John A. Macdonald in Kingston, Ontario.

His name is on the highway into town, a main boulevard through the city and buildings across the educational spectrum, from a new elementary school in a suburb to the law school of the prestigious Queen’s University.

Macdonald, whose visage adorns the Canadian $10 bill, was Canada’s first prime minister and the chief broker of the political deal that created the country 150 years ago.

He was also a man who, even many of his admirers acknowledge, was crassly racist toward Canada’s indigenous population, and whose policies included a forced schooling program for more than 100,000 children that a national commission recently declared “cultural genocide.”