John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada, beginning on
the day we gained our independence from Britain, July 1, 1867. A
national icon that every school child learns about (or at least they did
when I was in school; nowadays, probably not so much). So why is he in a
box? Or, to be more accurate, why has a statue of him in front of the
Ontario legislature been covered by a box for the past 4 years?
I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that he was "cancelled" over
the whole issue of residential schools, the idea held by all the
enlightened folk in his day that our aboriginal citizens would benefit
from assimilating into our country by learning English or French and
learning our ways. That, of course, is NOT today's thinking on these
things so activists made a point of defacing statues to John A.
Macdonald. In the case of the Ontario legislature, the Speaker of the
House decided to box up old John A. (as most of us tend to call him), presumably to protect him from further vandalism.
Brian Lilley advocates unboxing John A. He says we need to stop hiding
our national symbols in these nationalistic times.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y6rCCzphSdY [1 minute]
Maybe they could revert the name of Toronto Metropolitan University back
to Ryerson Polytechnical University at the same time. (It got renamed
about the same time John A. got boxed because the man it was named
after, Edgerton Ryerson, also committed the thought crime of wanting to
help aboriginals assimilate so he got cancelled too.)
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Rhino
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