EDITORIAL: 'Serious’ nations don’t rewrite their history

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Smug Canadians like to look south and berate U.S. President Donald Trump for his threats to annex us as the 51st state and for his oft-expressed view that Canada is “not a real country.”

Instead of blaming Washington for our woes, perhaps we should look at those who persist in tearing down Canada from within, with sloppy research and half-baked misinterpretations of history. Some of those people are in government.

As Blacklock’s Reporter revealed recently, a federal Parks Canada board has deemed Canada’s first and third prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, “too polarizing and too controversial” to celebrate any further with historical plaques.

According to minutes of a Parks Canada Historic Sites and Monuments board meeting from December 2023, obtained by Blacklock’s through freedom of information, “The board recommended that Sir John A. Macdonald be commemorated by means of information to be made available on the Parks Canada website and that no plaque be erected.”

This is an outrageous cancellation of a man whose vision of nationhood created this country. He was not, as some claim, responsible for abuse in residential schools. He had a vision that all children, including Indigenous ones, should be educated. The abuses that occurred did not happen on his watch.

Instead of reading rational commentary by serious historians such as Professor Patrice Dutil of Toronto Metropolitan University, who has researched Macdonald’s life extensively, these detractors take history out of context. In his recent biography, Dutil points out that Macdonald saved thousands of Indigenous lives with a smallpox vaccine program.

“It’s very simple: No Macdonald, no Canada,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre posted on X. “Sir John A. Macdonald deserves to be clearly recognized for his role in the foundation of the wonderful country we get to call home.”

Trendy statements about “elbows up” are just hot air when we allow dilettantes to destroy our country from within with a false narrative.  Why would we expect Trump to take us seriously when we’re our own chief detractors? Canada needs to grow up and get over its collective inferiority complex. We must stop this pointless navel-gazing and collective self-flagellation. If we insist on tearing down those who built this nation, it’s easy to see why outsiders might mistake us for a weak and flawed nation.