Never try to compare the mausoleums and monuments of Washington to the pathetic honours of Ottawa. Today might or might not be the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth in Scotland. (The records are confused.) He deserves our remembrance, our thanks and our criticisms. Creating our wonderful country is no minor credit on the plus side.
Sure the old bugger was a drunk and a scoundrel and a racist but probably no more or less than others of his time. He was no saint. How was he to know better? We are suffused with knowing and politically correct blue-stockings today—something he never had to suffer, sober.
Many years ago, we took the family on a pilgrimage to where Sir John was buried and it was a shock and a sorrow. Back then, it was not even in Kingston where he once practiced law. The gravesite was in Cataraqui, Ontario before it was swallowed up by Kingston so that town could claim Sir John.
At the time, the family burial plot was tiny, weed infested and barely marked. Where it not for a local burgher walking his dog, we would likely have missed it. The small wrought iron fence was ramshackle and was about to fall, still a perfect height for a small dog to pee on. The stones were at odd angles. The footstone for Sir John was pathetic.
And this visit was long after the declaration of the gravesite as a national heritage site in 1938. Since our visit, Parks Canada has put a new, higher wrought iron fence around a greatly expanded area and someone has been weed-whacking the underbrush. (It must have been our spare-no-expense Conservatives—the Liberals think confederation began with Wilfrid Laurier, our seventh prime minister.)
But we should take umbrage at whoever put that cross up at the site. It is not only spanking new in shiny granite but it sure as hell is contrary to Sir John’s wishes. He would not want anything so ostentatious where he is buried.
What Sir John gave us was the leadership that created Canada as a country from sea to sea. He got us a cross country railway by hook or by crook—mainly by crook. His idea of railroad building was not particularly considerate of incumbent Indians and métis. He created the North West Police and ‘tamed’ the West.
Sir John left Canada as a legacy. That is no small feat.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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