Article content continued

That’s close enough to vilification for me.

Macdonald was responsible for Aboriginal policy, certainly, including the development of the residential school system, but does that make him a “leader of violence”?

The plaque lasted only a matter of hours, anyway, before it was defaced.

Victoria has bravely decided (and told Global News) it will keep on replacing the plaque no matter how many times it’s vandalized. O! the heroism!

Macdonald also wanted to extend the federal vote to Aboriginal men, so long as they met the same qualifications as other British subjects. The compromise that passed was repealed a few years later.

Photo by Chad Hipolito/National Post

The modern euphemism for men like Macdonald and Langevin is that they had “complicated” legacies or personal stories.

What that means is that they were men of their time and place, subject to the common failings (that is, racism or misogyny) of their era, plus burdened with personal weaknesses. Of course they were. Who isn’t?

Except for the appalling current fashion of describing the newly murdered as “always smiling” paragons of virtue, which is but a fad, no sensible adult is likely to buy a one-dimensional portrait of his fellow man.

Yet the University of Victoria has temporarily removed the name of Joseph Trutch (B.C.’s first lieutenant-governor but also someone who had antipathy to Indigenous people) from one of its dorms; it’s now glamorously called Lansdowne Residence #1.

The Law Society of British Columbia last year removed from its foyer a statue of the province’s first chief justice, Matthew Begbie. He was nicknamed the “hanging judge,” his great failing that he presided over four trials in which six of nine Tsilhqot’in chiefs were convicted by juries for murdering white road-builders.