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By Jonathan Kay

In 2015, a group called Friends of Sir John A. Macdonald staged a party in downtown Toronto to celebrate the 200th birthday of Canada’s first prime minister. Tickets were $130. The dress code was “Victorian top hats & long dresses – or your own national dress.”

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This was just two years ago. But it feels longer than that. In the current political climate, with its relentless emphasis on Canada’s history of residential schools and colonialist crimes, celebrating Macdonald’s birthday in 19th-century formal wear is a risky move.

If a white painter inspired by an Anishinaabe artist can get her vernissage shut down for engaging in “cultural genocide,” who’s to say a Macdonald bash in period costume won’t be likened to Holocaust remembrance in SS cosplay.

Speaking at that 2015 event, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor made glancing allusion to the fact that Macdonald was “on occasion perceived to be insensitive and flawed.” But the main thrust was that our first PM was a progressive – “the first government leader in the world to attempt female franchise.” Such a speech now seems unimaginable. Last week, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) advanced a motion demanding the removal of Macdonald’s name from schools, to “recognize his central role as an architect of genocide against Indigenous peoples.” Activists in Regina, likewise, are seeking to remove a statue of Macdonald from a park. And councillors in Victoria are mulling the fate of a Macdonald statue outside city hall.