On Jan. 11, 1885, Sir John A. Macdonald celebrated his 70th birthday. The subsequent year would be the most tumultuous of his long premiership, calling upon all his skills and wisdom to keep Confederation together and strong.
On Jan. 11, 2015, Canada marked the bicentennial of Sir John A’s birth. A most difficult decade for Macdonald would follow — and from the grave he could not fight back. Canada’s 22nd prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was elected in 2015 and would oversee 10 years in which Canada’s first and most important prime minister would be erased from our public spaces.
In his infamous interview with The New York Times soon after his first election, Trudeau indicated what was coming. A country with no “core identity,” a “post-national” state must, by necessity, turn with ferocity against the founder of the nation. To destroy an identity it must be ripped out by its roots. The choice of instrument of the Trudeau post-nationalists was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which reported that same year.
Ten years have passed. Trudeau is headed for the exit, and his project of moving past the nation Sir John A. founded will go with him. This year, 2025, will mark the beginning of Sir John A.’s comeback. The worst of his difficult decade is now over.
The TRC-fuelled argument that Canada was a vast criminal enterprise from the beginning made great advances, but the argument is turning. The excessive claims of 2021 regarding “mass” residential school graves have been refuted. The facts of Canadian history — lights and shadows — are stubbornly reasserting themselves, despite the historical distortions of the TRC final report — assertions unsupported by its own published research.
An important new biography, Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885, presents anew a fulsome, truthful account. The biographer, the estimable Patrice Dutil, favours the nickname “Old Tomorrow” — the statesman who conserved the past but was remarkably progressive about the future.
Dutil adopts the “microhistory” approach of reading a life through the lens of a single year. What a year 1885 was! It included a range of very recognizable issues.
“Imagine a prime minister dealing with the problems of immigration and the challenge of integrating thousands of new arrivals, to dealing with a new president of the United States who doesn’t think much of his northern neighbour, to the demands of a foreign alliance calling on greater military contributions, to facing a revolt in Western Canada,” writes Dutil. “Throw in a deadly epidemic to manage, a sluggish economy, swelling nationalism in Quebec, and a massive infrastructure project on the verge of collapse, and these calamities might overwhelm most politicians. Does it sound familiar?”
“Macdonald dealt with all the above at the same time, in 1885 — the most trying year of his life.”
Sir John A. earned more than a little respect for that record. For most of the intervening Canadian history, it was granted.
Recall the years leading up to Sir John A.’s bicentennial in 2015. In 2009 and 2011, Richard Gwyn published his two volumes, John A: The Man Who Made Us and Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times. The work of one of Canada’s leading biographers and journalists was both critical and appreciative. I was at the festive launches in Kingston, Ont.; the books were widely praised across the political spectrum.
Arthur Milnes, a local Kingston treasure, drew upon his vast knowledge of Canadian prime ministerial history to organize walking tours in the footsteps of the Old Chieftain — the title of Donald Creighton’s 1955 biography. They included a stop at Macdonald’s prominent statue in a downtown city park.
Amongst the leaders of these tours? Former prime minister Paul Martin and chief justice Beverley McLachlin, both impeccable establishment liberals, came to Macdonald’s hometown to honour him.
The actual bicentennial birthday in 2015 was celebrated by the sitting prime minister, Stephen Harper, in Kingston, joined by two of his predecessors, John Turner and Kim Campbell.
Then came the TRC and Trudeau and the vandals were loosed upon the nation’s memory. Kingston’s cowardly city council took down Macdonald’s statue, the emptiness of the spot now an apt expression of their logic and courage. At Queen’s Park in Toronto, Doug Ford — now congratulating himself for being Captain Canada — crated up Sir John A., and still hasn’t got around to uncrating him.
Unlike 1885, Canadians now expect little from their national leaders, much less from Kingston city council or Ontario’s premier. Most political leaders — unlike Sir John A. — are actually followers.
The work of repair takes longer than the work of destruction. But that work is underway, and in due course our diminished leaders will follow.
Thanks to scholars like Dutil, brave researchers across the land, and exemplary journalism like that of our own Terry Glavin, the worst decade of Sir John A.’s long posthumous life is over.
His 210th birthday this year was not as momentous as his 70th in 1885, but there are reasons to hope. Sunny days may be ahead, sunnier than were brought by the dawn of Trudeau.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre hailed Sir John A. on his birthday last Saturday by stating: “A nation-builder, he brought Canada together through Confederation and the Canadian Pacific Railway, laying the foundation for a strong and prosperous country. Without his vision, Canada would not exist today.”
Old Tomorrow is back. And just in time, for perils are afoot and Canada needs him again.
National Post