It might be safe to say that if Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, could vote in this snap Ontario election, it just might be for Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie.
“We have to get John A. out of the box,” Crombie said enthusiastically outside of Mississauga’s Stonehooker Brewing Company on Wednesday, the last day of her campaign before Thursday’s provincial lection.
What the former Mississauga mayor and one-time member of Parliament was referring to was how a grand statue of the iconic Macdonald has been covered up by boards on the front lawn of Queen’s Park for the last five years as the powers that be dither on just what to do about it.
The original reason to cover up the controversial leader stemmed from reports that there had been unmarked Indigenous graves picked up by special ground-reading equipment at former residential school sites. Many statues of the Scottish-born father of Confederation have either been removed or destroyed in response.
Streets and schools named after Macdonald are also facing renaming exercises or already have — like the former Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway in Ottawa. His likeness was also taken off the $10 bill. However, the mood is starting to shift on this matter.
Regardless of one’s view of Macdonald’s legacy, Crombie’s point from the first day of the campaign until the last is there is no way this statue should be left as an eyesore like that.
“Somebody should show some leadership,” Crombie told the Toronto Sun on Jan. 30. “Box up John A. Macdonald?”
She felt it was just not right.
“Make a decision and deal with it,” said Crombie.
Now on the last day of the campaign, she has vowed that she will deal with it and take down the tomb that surrounds Macdonald if she wins this election.
“If I had it my way, it would (come down),” said Crombie.
It’s so ironic that since he first came to power in 2018, Doug Ford’s government wrote to the mayor of Victoria and offered to repatriate their put-in-storage Macdonald statue to be displayed in Ontario. Yet the Ford government ended up encasing the legendary prime minister, which is the height of hypocrisy. Now it turns out that a Liberal leader has vowed to take him out.
If only Macdonald could vote.