Macdonald Down

Yesterday a mob pulled down the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Montreal.

I am pleased to see that most online reactions condemn this. We are perhaps not fully mad yet. Premier Legault immediately said the statue must go back up. Jason Kenney said if Montreal does not want it, Edmonton does, for the provincial legislature. Erin O’Toole showed his bona fides by condemning it, praising Macdonald, and saying politicians need some spine.

Someone, however, posted a link to this justification for the action. It is interesting to see how mad at least some Canadians have become.

Let’s look at some of the points:

“The myth of Macdonald as the pillar of Canadian nationhood and a paragon of integrity seems rock-solid.”

It has never been common to see Macdonald as a paragon of integrity. More common are tales of his drinking, and of his wheeling and dealing.

Nevertheless, his accomplishment of uniting Canada, extending it across half a continent, from sea to sea to sea, then binding it with a railroad over muskeg and mountains, is worthy of commemoration. To topple Macdonald’s statue is an attack by proxy on the very idea of Canada itself.

“The Empire’s vast colonial projects were aimed at assimilating subject Indigenous populations (generally non-white) and, of course, exploiting their natural resources. This was argued to be something beneficial to the ‘civilizing’ of such ‘inferior’ peoples; in short, the racist notion of the ‘White Man’s Burden.’

This institutionalized racism underlay the all-White immigration policy of South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand which spanned the last six or seven decades of the nineteenth century extending well into the twentieth century.”

The author contradicts himself. If the British Empire was about assimilating indigenous populations, how is this accomplished by an all-white immigration policy?

In fact, the British Empire was strikingly disinclined to assimilate indigenous populations. Compare India to Goa, Macao to Hong Kong, the US to Mexico. Other nations assimilated. The British simply ruled. Assimilating the small indigenous population of Canada could only have been a minor consideration in any case. Most federal policies seemed to prevent such assimilation: hiving them off on reserves. Of course, “exploiting” Canada’s natural resources, or those of other parts of the British Empire, was part of the plan: people are inclined to make a living. Refuse to exploit your natural resources, and you will probably freeze to death before you die of thirst.

European empires generally were intended to civilize the people subjugated—in other words, to improve their lives, by introducing the benefits of European technology. This does not look venal, and it does not obviously look misguided. At least, a contrary case must be made. Would the Canadian Indians be better off without wheels, or houses, or electricity?

Canada did not have an “all-white immigration policy” during the last six or seven decades of the nineteenth century. Canada actually had an open door policy until 1885. In that year, restrictions were placed on Chinese immigration. The 1910 Immigration Act later allowed the government to restrict immigration of groups that might find the climate unsuitable. In terms of racial discrimination in immigration, that’s about it.

The climate concern may look racist to us today, but it does have a scientific basis. We are genetically adapted to our environment. People coming from generations living in tropical countries face some health issues in Canada. The recent COVID crisis revealed one: blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to die from it in the US, because with their darker skin they are almost always deficient in vitamin D. And, as I can personally vouch, and as the Brits all used to know well in the days of Empire, pale-skinned Europeans face health issues in the tropics. This may seem relatively trivial now, but people were more sensitive to this when medical science was not so advanced.

As to the restrictions on Chinese immigration, this was at the insistence of B.C. workers and trade unions, who felt they could not compete with them as cheap labour. Perhaps ungenerous, perhaps not, when you are poor and barely getting by; but not racist.

“Although the subject of limiting Chinese immigration to Canada has been covered, few Canadians know of the $500 ‘Head-Tax’ levied on would-be Chinese immigrants via the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885.”

The head tax imposed in 1885 was $50. It was raised to $500 some years later.

“Macdonald had made it clear that Chinese immigration was necessary for the building of the national railway. However, he considered the Chinese a ‘foreign race’ that ‘could not be expected to assimilate with our Aryan population.’

Hitler, no less an admirer of Aryan purity than Macdonald, would make a similar statement regarding Jews some four decades later.”

Macdonald used the term Aryan. Hitler used the term Aryan. Therefore, Macdonald was a Nazi.

When Macdonald used it, “Aryan” was a neutral scientific term. It is still used in linguistics.

Macdonald was being sensible; Chinese culture is different from European culture. Chinese do not assimilate well abroad. They tend to form “Chinatowns” and keep to themselves for generations.

“In 1923, Canada put in place laws meant to limit immigration from eastern Europe.”

The only immigration legislation passed in 1923 was a new Chinese Immigration Act. Canada was actively promoting immigration to the Prairies from Eastern Europe at this time.

Although there were no restrictions on others, Canadian governments always actively promoted immigration from the United Kingdom. This stands to reason: just as current Canadian governments tend to be more concerned with the welfare of Canadians than of foreigners. Canada was part of the British Empire.

“The flagship of Canadian institutionalized racism was, and remains, The Indian Act (1876) adopted in 1876 and amended several times since.”

Agreed. But the Canadian government is not responsible. The essential features of the Act were forced on Canada by the requirements of the Indian Treaties. Canada tried to abolish the Act in 1969. Our treaty partners, the Indian bands, refused. It is at their insistence that it remains in force.

“Canada was built on the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous populations.”

If ethnic cleansing was intended, it was a historic failure. There are far more treaty Indians in Canada today than at Confederation, and they are among the fastest-growing segments of the population.

Nor have they been dispossessed. Eighty-nine percent of Canada is still Crown land, and, by treaty, the aboriginal people still have a right to hunt and scavenge there at will. Should any really want to, they could continue their life just as it was before the first Europeans arrived. The rest of Canadian lands, they have usually ceded for an agreed compensation. Ceded, in effect, to themselves, as Canadian citizens.

“Macdonald started Residential Schools, the odious and dehumanizing institution to which Indigenous children, torn away from their families, were sent to be assimilated and brutalized, to be ‘civilized’ in the White European way.”

The residential schools were demanded by the Indians by treaty, not the federal government. The federal government would no doubt have preferred to spend less money by sending Indians to the regular schools, or by simply leaving them to their families to educate. Moreover, if the intent were to turn Indians into “civilized Europeans,” the way to do this would again have been to send them to the regular schools, to learn the same things European children learned, along with them. The residential schools, misguided as they might have been, were an expensive way to preserve a distinct Indian culture.

“In 1873, Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police, today the RCMP, whose mission was to harass and control Indigenous peoples in the Prairies.”

The impetus behind the founding of the NWMP was the Cypress Hills massacre of 1873, in which twenty Assiniboine Indians were murdered by American traders and bison hunters. In other words, the primary mission of the NWMP, certainly in the popular mind, was to protect Indians. Secondarily, it was to establish Canadian sovereignty and forestall American incursion.

“Macdonald subsequently undertook a policy of starving the Métis and First Nations out of the Prairies. This was done to build a railway through their dispossessed lands – by killing off their principal source of food, the bison, much as the Americans were doing in the United States to Indigenous peoples there.”

Even if Macdonald had wanted to kill off the bison, he did not have anything like the manpower on the Prairies to do so. There are claims that some American authorities had this idea, but if so, they too probably could not have done so. And Macdonald had no control over them. The buffalo were depleted by overhunting—and probably overhunting primarily by the Indians, now that they had rifles and horses.

“In 1882, Macdonald confirmed his policy of genocide against Indigenous peoples by way of starvation in Canada’s House of Commons:

‘I have reason to believe that the agents as a whole … are doing all they can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense.’

David Mills, a Liberal MP, followed Macdonald’s ode to genocide with the complaint that they were not being starved enough:

‘No doubt the Indians will bear a great degree of starvation before they will work, and so long as they are certain the Government will come to their aid they will not do much for themselves.’”

The quotes disprove what they claim to prove. Macdonald, despite political pressures, would not let the Indians starve.

Some context is in order. In the latter half of the 19th century, the Indians of the Northwest faced general starvation. This was not primarily due to the decline of the buffalo, either. It was because of the decline of the beaver. The Indians had been making a good living by selling pelts to the Hudson’s Bay and Northwest Companies. Through over-exploitation, the beaver population had gone into severe decline—a process seen in eastern Canada centuries earlier. Having lost the greater part of their livelihood, the Indians might have gone back to hunting and scavenging; but that way of life always involved periodic mass starvation.

Accordingly, the government plan was to settle them on reserves with basic agricultural supplies, and show them how to farm. This may or may not have been done inefficiently and with supplies gone missing—this was government, and in a remote area.

The Indians, on the other hand, had the idea that, with transfer of sovereignty in the treaties to their “Great Mother,” the government had taken responsibility for their welfare as if a parent. This came up often at the treaty negotiations: “if there is famine, will the government feed us?” Although they took care not to put anything in the treaties, the federal negotiators, tended to reply that, if there was a general famine, the government would of course do what it could. They could not let the Indians starve.

So, many Indians calculated that they did not need to farm or otherwise work any longer.

In a time when there was no sort of welfare for the general population, the resultant need to support the Indians, while their neighbours needed to farm their land, did not sit well with government or public.

This Indian assumption more or less prevails into the present. The Indians have been trapped in poverty by it ever since.

“Riel was demonized by the English-Canadian press while Macdonald was credited with being a saviour of the nation.”

This, by careful omission, is the opposite of the truth. Riel was lionized by the French-Canadian press. While there was a strong lobby against him personally in English Canada, the Metis uprising was also widely romanticized, as it still is today. It became the subject of popular novels, in which the heroes were always Metis. Macdonald lost a great deal of popularity by allowing the hanging of Riel. Some say his Conservative Party has never recovered.

“In 1885, concerning the execution of Louis Riel for treason, Macdonald states, confirming his contempt for the Métis and French Quebec: ‘He shall die though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.’ Macdonald’s reference to ‘dogs in Quebec’ did not have anything to do with our four-footed canine friends. The racism is explicit.”

This reveals how popular Riel was in Quebec. If there was any racism in Macdonald’s famous comment, it was only implicit. Quebecois are not dogs—the present author shockingly asserts that they literally are. They are also not of a different race than Macdonald.

The obvious interpretation of the word “dog” is that the word “dog” means “dog.” Any other interpretation is on this author, not Macdonald.

“Again, in 1885 … Macdonald hanged eight Cree warriors who had dared to resist the destruction of their way of life”

The eight were hanged for murder, explicitly unconnected to any military objective. Even if their rebellion was not treasonous, they were war criminals.

“In 1885 Macdonald also passed The Electoral Franchise Act which limited the rights of Blacks, First Nations and other visible minorities to vote.”

Macdonald proposed in 1885 to extend the vote to both treaty Indians and unmarried women. He was, sadly, too far ahead of his time, and parliament refused this. However, the act they passed still had no restrictions on voting by blacks. It did not introduce any new restrictions on the franchise.

Why would someone write such a series of falsehoods? I do not think incompetence is sufficient to explain it. Rather, this is the fruit of postmodernism. Truth has no value: one simply constructs the “narrative” one prefers.

And any great man is vulnerable to the envy of others.