Sir John, Eh?

Please see below for my story.

Like most Canadians, I spend about .000000001% of my time ever thinking about Sir John A Macdonald. But, when I do, he comes to mind as our country’s first prime minister and as a man of vision who worked to create the nation of Canada. According to Google, Canada is one of the best countries of the world to live in and so I salute him for his achievement. Not everybody accepts that – but what political leader was ever accepted by everybody? And, for crying out loud, the guy died over 125 years ago!! How come this controversy is coming up now? I question his role in the residential schools but apologies in Parliament have been made, restitution has been made – maybe we can all move on by accepting that Sir John made some bad calls. We don’t honour him for those but we honour him for his accomplishments. Unfortunately, some writers continue to see an “us versus them” attitude while actually we should be working together regardless of our background to make Canada an even better and more prosperous country for all Canadians. Some writers disparage “Colonialism”; however, in 21st century Canada, people don’t scruple to use a “colonial” internet, drive “colonial” trucks and snowmobiles, live in “colonial” housing or accept “colonial” money. So let’s all move on.

My own story is that three of my grandparents came to Canada from England in the early years of the last century. (My maternal grandmother was born on a farm near Peterborough.) My father’s parents invested everything they had in a corner store in downtown Toronto. Family legend says that they had one knife, a fork and a spoon between them and they sat on orange crates for furniture. But the store prospered and my dad took it over when he married my mom in 1939. My mother was a very smart woman – always in the top 2 or 3 in her school class. But she was the eldest (of 6) and she had to leave school at the age of 16 when her dad deserted the family and disappeared at the height of the Great Depression. Times were tough. She worked as a servant for a wealthy family but went to business school at night to learn typing and shorthand. She landed a job at Eaton’s in the typing pool and worked her way up to become secretary to one of the vice-presidents. Unfortunately, my dad had problems which led to his death in 1955 from self-inflicted injuries, leaving mom with 4 kids. We were an early single-parent family. We all turned out all right. My elder sister became a high school teacher, my elder brother (before being killed by a bus) became an economist and MA in linguistics, I am a CPA (chartered accountant) and my younger sister is a pastor and evangelist. Bad things don’t only happen to Indigenous people; but you can either be a victim or a victor. So I believe that there should be a statue to my mother, and to all the people groups (eg: Irish, Italians, Africans; Chinese as well as Indigenous) who look for a better life and a brighter future in Canada.