FAULKNER: John A. Macdonald needs no defence or justification
Harrison Faulkner writes, "As conservatives, and more importantly as patriots, our fight needs to be about building statues, naming schools and organizations and defining the agenda ourselves."
In no other country around the world will you find the level of vilification and deliberate fabrication of a country’s founding hero than in Canada.
There is no Macdonald City. There is no Province of Macdonald. There are only a handful of Macdonald schools left in Canada, and most Macdonald statues have been either torn down or carefully removed from public view.
The federal government erased his biography from the Government of Canada website. His home in Kingston, Bellevue House, was reopened after six years of renovations in 2024 as a shrine to decolonization and reconciliation. The first words you see when visiting Bellevue House after the visitor centre are “He was a monster.”
There is no grand monument in Ottawa to John A., just a rather underwhelming statue within the gates of Parliament Hill.
The latest frontal assault on John A. Macdonald’s legacy by a government-funded Indigenous production company working on behalf of the CBC and APTN should serve as a reminder – a final one, perhaps – that there is no debating and arguing to be had with the forces who seek to erase John A. Macdonald from history.
There is nothing you can say or write about Macdonald’s virtues that would possibly win over people who are willing to lie, cheat, deceive and humiliate children’s authors, 80-year-old history buffs and retired RCMP officers to conquer this ideological battlefield.
Canadians around the country – especially the remaining few who are willing to actually defend our country and its foundation – must flatly reject the premise that we must justify or defend Macdonald.
No.
A man of his size and importance needs no defence. Macdonald needs no justification.
Those who devote their time and energy to tearing down his legacy and erasing Sir John A. Macdonald from Canadian history don’t actually care about him. The objective is not personal. The objective is to tear down Canada’s foundations.
Nobody is demanding that George Brown’s name be stripped from George Brown College in Toronto. Nobody is erasing or toppling down statues of Sir George Etienne Cartier or demanding the erasure of Sir Charles Tupper’s name from streets and schools.
But if George Brown had been the founder of Canada, or Tupper had been guided by destiny to fill Macdonald’s role, either man would suffer the same posthumous fate that Macdonald has been suffering through 159 years after his greatest accomplishment.
The activists who attack Macdonald do so because they deeply hate Canada. Canada itself is their target and Sir John A. Macdonald is the foundation.
For too long, conservatives have been fighting on the back foot in our efforts to save our own national history.
Our instincts as conservatives, when faced with any ideological battle, are to bolster our arsenals with facts, statistics and quotes. A noble effort, no doubt. There are hundreds of factoids that one can find about Sir John A. Macdonald with just an elementary glance online.
None of that actually matters anymore, because right now, conservatives are fighting on the wrong field.
Canada’s national heroes and icons are worthy of praise and honour if for no other reason than because we inherited these national heroes from the past as Canadians. These legendary men shaped the country we live in today, and did more for Canada than anyone living and since them.
The attitude we need to adopt when faced with the inevitable shrieking activist who pulls a 150-year-old quotation about First Nations people taken out of context should be “so what?” and nothing else.
As conservatives, and more importantly as patriots, our fight needs to be about building statues, naming schools and organizations, and defining the agenda ourselves.
We must stop wasting time justifying and explaining the personal flaws of Macdonald in YouTube videos and in Substack articles. The people who seek to tear down Canada will never watch and will never read our defences of Macdonald.
Instead, the time has now come to simply refuse debate with these nation-hating activists. They aren’t interested in hearing your defence of Macdonald and we shall no longer give their views any credibility.
Many of the same people who are leading the charge to erase Macdonald at an institutional level in this country would be safely categorized among the “Elbows Up” patriotic type. You know, the ones who bought a Canadian flag at their local Canadian Tire after the CBC reported that Donald Trump wanted to make Canada the 51st state. Prior to that, those same people look upon genuine patriotic Canadians who proudly waved the flag before 2025 with disgust and shame.
It is the same ‘Elbows Up’ type who believe that Macdonald was a villain. Most probably view Macdonald as the chief villain of Canadian history. They believe that there is proof of 215 children buried in a former Residential School in Kamloops and that the Freedom Convoy was a violent insurrection.
The ‘Elbows Up’ Liberal types in Canada do not get to launder Canadian patriotism to fit their own nation-hating ideology. One simply cannot claim to be a patriot and a nationalist while cheering on the burning of our churches, the toppling of our statues, and the erasure of our history.
Without Macdonald, there is no Canada.
Nobody would expect a genuine Canadian patriot to defend and justify their love for this great country in the face of someone who hates it and who won’t even listen to them anyway. The same should go for Macdonald.
We honour him because he’s worth honouring. Nothing else needs to be said.