EDITORIAL: Time to stop war on our history

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Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has stepped in to restore sanity to out-of-control school boards that have wreaked havoc in schools. 

Under sweeping legislation introduced this week, any plan to change the names of schools must get provincial approval. The new law will be retroactive to Jan. 1. That means three schools named for Sir John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson and Henry Dundas could retain those titles and not be rebranded, as the Toronto District School Board decided earlier this year.  

At the same time, an all-party decision by a legislative board has voted to unbox a statue of Macdonald that was crated up and left as an eyesore on the grounds of the legislature. 

This is all welcome news. For far too long, leftist politicians have listened to uninformed activists and maligned the history of this great nation. More than a dozen statues across the country have been defaced or destroyed. Vandals have taken words and deeds out of context to sully the names of the people who built this land. 

At a time when our neighbour to the south is threatening our very existence, we cannot allow the very heart of this nation to be destroyed from within. 

In Ottawa, the National Capital Commission (NCC) arbitrarily renamed the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to Kichi Zibi Mikan, an Algonquin name. 

The NCC is a Crown corporation that manages most government-owned lands and infrastructure in Ottawa. It’s time for the commission to revisit that decision and restore Macdonald’s name to the parkway. 

In his recent biography of Macdonald, history professor Patrice Dutil outlines how Canada’s first prime minister was responsible for getting a railroad built across this land and unifying a fragile country. 

While he had little to do with residential schools, Macdonald saved thousands of Indigenous lives with vaccination efforts during a smallpox epidemic. His Franchise Act of 1885 gave Indigenous people a vote. It was repealed by his Liberal successor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. 

There are fears the statue will be attacked again once it’s unveiled. 

We urge politicians and police to step in to prevent such lawlessness. 

It’s time to restore and respect those who built this country and not allow hooligans to take a wrecking ball to our history.