Full Comment - John A. helped Indigenous people, Riel didn’t, and other unpopular realities

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00:01:31.120 He's Canada's founder, the man who stitched together various colonies into one new nation.

00:01:36.400 Sir John A. MacDonald was revered in Canada for many years.

00:01:40.360 Now he's on the cancel list.

00:01:42.140 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:01:44.120 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:01:45.540 Thanks for listening and if you enjoy this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, please hit the subscribe button so we can keep the good conversations going.

00:01:54.260 Today we're talking about Sir John A. and his true legacy, a legacy that's now under attack.

00:01:59.760 Statues have been taken down in places like Kingston, Charlottetown, Victoria, and Picton where he practiced law.

00:02:05.840 Here in Toronto at Queen's Park, the Ontario legislature, the statue of Sir John A. is boarded up at the request of the Speaker.

00:02:12.060 And a legislative committee is conducting a study on what should be done.

00:02:16.560 And in Kingston at his former home Bellevue house, it's run by Parks Canada.

00:02:21.980 Well, they reopened this year with a rewritten history that focuses on the sexism and racism of the man and the country he built.

00:02:30.420 In his new book, Sir John A. MacDonald and the Apocalyptic Year, 1885, author and academic Patrice Duttill writes a book that looks like MacDonald in one of his most tumultuous years.

00:02:41.260 He paints a different picture, though.

00:02:43.020 He describes a man who, for all his sins, was the most enlightened and constructive public figure of early Canadian history.

00:02:50.960 Patrice Duttill is a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.

00:02:57.720 He joins me now to talk about the book.

00:02:59.420 Patrice, thanks for the time.

00:03:00.740 Thank you very much for having me on.

00:03:02.060 You've written many books, many papers about Canadian history, but specifically about Sir John A., and I get the feeling you're not done yet.

00:03:10.640 Why so many books and papers on MacDonald?

00:03:13.460 What drives the fascination?

00:03:15.180 Oh, thanks for that question.

00:03:18.620 The man is endlessly fascinating.

00:03:20.200 I've come to John A. very late in my academic career.

00:03:25.280 I'm mostly an Edwardian.

00:03:26.760 My area of predilection, my area of interest is usually the years before the First World War, because they're utterly fascinating.

00:03:35.440 But John A. really came to my attention in a new way when Richard Gwynne published his two-volume biography, you know, almost 20 years ago now.

00:03:46.100 And I thought there was something else here that needed to be told.

00:03:51.800 And so I devoted a good portion of my research to Sir John A. MacDonald.

00:03:56.320 I published an edited book 10 years ago on Sir John A., new ideas, bringing in new scholars, new scholars and new thinking.

00:04:06.340 And then I plowed into another book on the prime ministerial power, its origins, and again, focused on MacDonald, but also on his most important successors, Wilfrid Laurier and Robert Borden.

00:04:19.800 And yet, when I was doing that, 1885 kept coming back.

00:04:23.160 1885.

00:04:23.680 Of course, the Riel insurrection in the Northwest Territories.

00:04:27.980 Well, what they was called then in the Northwest.

00:04:30.040 Today we call it Saskatchewan.

00:04:32.920 The issue around Chinese immigration.

00:04:36.820 The issue around electoral reform.

00:04:41.340 The issue around smallpox epidemic.

00:04:45.380 All these issues.

00:04:46.240 But they'd all been looked at individually, but never as a collective.

00:04:50.200 And I thought, my goodness, what an incredible story 1885 is, when literally the pressures of history combine in the space of weeks.

00:05:01.300 And what was the impact on MacDonald?

00:05:03.860 Why is, what was going through his mind?

00:05:06.700 And again, that's a topic that had never been looked at in particular.

00:05:10.880 So, 1885 is a wonderful, I think, microcosm of Canadian history in that first, you know, the last 30 years of the 19th century.

00:05:21.440 And it's a real, really interesting laboratory to look at how MacDonald worked policy.

00:05:29.020 What were his politics?

00:05:30.360 That kind of stuff.

00:05:32.060 He wasn't a new politician at this point.

00:05:34.020 I mean, he was well-established even before 1867, but he'd been in and out of the prime minister's office and was, just had a successful re-election in 1882.

00:05:45.360 And all of these things came together at once.

00:05:47.880 That must have been an incredibly stressful year.

00:05:50.580 Yeah, he's not a young man.

00:05:51.740 He's born in 1815.

00:05:52.980 So, he's celebrating his 70th birthday.

00:05:56.740 And, you know, it actually begins, the book begins with him coming home.

00:06:02.240 And, you know, he comes to, he's coming home, I should say, he's coming home from Britain. 0.81

00:06:06.380 The book is, begins and ends in Britain.

00:06:08.840 He's in Britain in the fall of 1884 because he needs to sell Canada.

00:06:14.460 He needs to sell the idea that Canada is a place worth investing in.

00:06:18.800 Does that sound familiar?

00:06:19.540 All these things, all these things that I'm going to talk about, that we're going to talk about, you know, about this book or anything else, they're all very contemporary.

00:06:27.740 This is stuff that Trudeau is looking at today that John A. would have recognized.

00:06:32.580 You know, it's, it's, it's, he's going to Britain and he comes back and, of course, he has a, there's a big party for him in Toronto.

00:06:38.820 And there's an even bigger party for him in Montreal in early January of 1885.

00:06:43.540 So, that's how it begins.

00:06:44.740 And he talks about his career.

00:06:46.140 And the fact is that he's been in politics since the 1840s.

00:06:50.040 So, I mean, it's, it's a long career and it's a lot of words and it's a lot of, it's a lot of policy.

00:06:56.880 And, you know, when we're, when we're, when we're looking at his career, we can't forget that he may have made mistakes.

00:07:02.140 Yes, but he also accomplished a great deal.

00:07:04.080 For any politician in any given year, having just covered a lot of them going through the pandemic of the COVID pandemic, you know, smallpox was deadly at the time.

00:07:17.420 We don't think about it now.

00:07:18.800 It was deadly.

00:07:19.820 Dealing with just that in a year would be a lot.

00:07:21.980 Dealing with a rebellion in the territories would have been a lot.

00:07:27.280 But he had all of that at once.

00:07:30.820 So, what, tell us about the smallpox outbreak and, you know, give us the backstory on that and then how we reacted and how it affected him.

00:07:41.380 Well, here we get into issues of federalism.

00:07:44.140 So, in those days, issues around public health were mostly the jurisdiction of the provincial government.

00:07:53.520 And what happened in 1885 is that the, the, the virus, the bacterium worked its way through the, the train lines and came from the U.S. apparently, came from the U.S. and landed in Montreal.

00:08:09.960 And in Montreal, the French population, the Québécois, were not inoculated.

00:08:16.020 Some of them were.

00:08:17.280 Most of them probably were.

00:08:18.660 But a substantial portion of the Montrealers, the French Montrealers, were not inoculated against smallpox.

00:08:26.180 And so, it begins in the spring of 1885.

00:08:29.160 And by September, it is rampant.

00:08:31.800 By the end of the year, by the end of 1885, 6,000 people are, are dead in Montreal and Quebec.

00:08:40.060 It's an enormous, it's an enormous amount of people.

00:08:43.900 Far more than the hundreds who died, the hundred who died in a Northwest insurrection.

00:08:49.720 6,000 people.

00:08:51.460 Now, what did the federal government do about this?

00:08:53.620 Not a whole lot, I have to say.

00:08:55.480 The issue is really a city issue, a Montreal issue, but it didn't spread.

00:09:02.180 And the story is important here, because what was McDonald's responsibility, of course, was looking after the indigenous people.

00:09:09.600 And he made sure that the indigenous people were inoculated.

00:09:12.940 He had programs to inoculate the indigenous people around Montreal in all the provinces.

00:09:19.500 And so, a remarkable story here of public health.

00:09:23.020 How can that be true?

00:09:23.980 He was a racist who wanted to, you know, just assimilate and take over.

00:09:30.820 Well, this is where I think that my book makes a contribution in demonstrating how, if you look at McDonald's real policies, you may come to a very different conclusion.

00:09:39.580 That there is a great deal of enlightenment in the approach John A. MacDonald had to governance.

00:09:46.260 And this is a demonstration of it.

00:09:48.580 People suffered.

00:09:49.220 I mean, again, 6,000 people dying suddenly in three months, largely because they were negligent.

00:09:57.180 And the city of Montreal was negligent.

00:09:59.340 It took a while to fix it.

00:10:00.780 But in terms of the indigenous population, it was preserved.

00:10:04.480 Because, again...

00:10:05.220 Whether it were...

00:10:05.740 So, he was inoculating whether it's a reserve like Kanesatage...

00:10:09.640 Yes.

00:10:09.940 ...outside of Montreal or all the way up to the Northwest Territories.

00:10:13.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:15.160 Again, it wasn't imposed on anybody.

00:10:17.420 But, you know, if the indigenous population wanted... 0.78

00:10:20.380 And you have to remember, the indigenous population had been devastated by diseases like smallpox in the past.

00:10:25.620 You know, the leading indigenous leaders in the Northwest were scarred with previous bouts with smallpox.

00:10:33.140 This is a serious disease.

00:10:34.400 And the indigenous people, unfortunately, knew it very well because it had ravaged their ranks. 1.00

00:10:40.580 So, let's stick with his policies on indigenous issues. 1.00

00:10:47.240 Yes.

00:10:47.460 Because that is why he is on the cancel list right now, primarily over residential schools.

00:10:53.040 Yes.

00:10:53.260 And I have to ask you, is it a fair assessment?

00:10:57.940 The popular narrative that is out there would be that he was part of a genocide and this was a plan.

00:11:08.540 No, I reject that completely.

00:11:10.640 That was not the intention of Sir John A. MacDonald.

00:11:13.780 It all really...

00:11:14.800 I mean, the idea of residential schools, first of all, is not his idea.

00:11:20.320 And, you know, if you want evidence of that, look at the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

00:11:26.060 It talks endlessly about the experience of creating residential schools that practically goes to the beginning of New France.

00:11:34.340 This was part of the European idea of Christianizing indigenous people.

00:11:41.980 That was their idea.

00:11:43.560 And, you know, again, this is typical of Europeans. 0.99

00:11:47.220 You know, whether it was in Labrador or at the very tip of Argentina, that was the way, that was the approach.

00:11:54.560 Or even in Asia.

00:11:55.800 When Europeans come in, they want to Christianize. 1.00

00:11:57.960 It's part of their mentality.

00:11:59.420 It's part of their mission.

00:12:01.160 It's their mission.

00:12:02.200 So, we had the same thing in Canada.

00:12:04.020 Johnny MacDonald picks up on that.

00:12:06.160 In the 1880s, he's got a particular problem.

00:12:09.220 And it really comes down to the buffalo.

00:12:16.380 I mean, I don't want to be reductionist here, but the whole crisis in the West really comes out of this natural catastrophe, which is the disappearance of the buffalo.

00:12:26.180 I say natural.

00:12:27.000 And most of the buffalo were eradicated by the Americans.

00:12:30.140 As they traveled through the frontier and, you know, made their way into the American states, they were slaughtered for their meat, for their hides, and for sport, merely for sport.

00:12:40.360 They were diseased also.

00:12:42.920 The end result is a complete devastation of the stock.

00:12:47.480 And the indigenous people who made their living, who literally hunted for their survival, were stuck.

00:12:55.360 They couldn't continue to pursue the buffalo.

00:12:58.640 There's no buffalo left, and the Americans are really blocking them at the border. 0.98

00:13:04.500 So, that's a real problem.

00:13:06.000 That means that the indigenous… 0.98

00:13:07.100 And the buffalo herds, they didn't know borders?

00:13:10.100 No, no.

00:13:10.460 They're moving back and forth.

00:13:11.520 Yeah.

00:13:11.880 Yeah, they're moving back.

00:13:12.540 What's left of them is moving back and forth.

00:13:15.540 So, there's a crisis here of historic proportions.

00:13:24.940 How could you…

00:13:25.800 I mean, it's impossible to exaggerate.

00:13:27.560 Here you have peoples who had migrated, you know, from the Hudson's Bay area, had followed the tracks of the Hudson's Bay Company to hunt for beaver furs, literally stuck now in the prairies, roaming around, looking for buffalo, and needing to survive.

00:13:50.100 So, of course, the government of Canada signs various treaties to help the indigenous people settle.

00:13:58.900 That is done through the 1970s.

00:14:00.680 It's actually started by John A. in the late 1869.

00:14:04.440 But in the 1870s, it's actually continued by the McKenzie government.

00:14:07.820 So, McDonald comes into power in 1878, returns to power in 1878, and he sees that the crisis, the hunger crisis, has not been looked after by the liberals.

00:14:20.460 What does he do?

00:14:21.440 Well, my book documents the amount of expenditures, the amount of money, John A. McDonald and his government dedicated to helping the indigenous people survive.

00:14:32.440 Part of that is food.

00:14:34.920 Part of that is helping them settle.

00:14:37.460 Part of that is helping them get an education.

00:14:40.840 And that was the whole notion behind residential schools.

00:14:44.520 Keep in mind that in signing those treaties, the indigenous people demanded two things in particular.

00:14:51.620 Well, protection on one thing, but they also wanted education and they also wanted medicines, you know, in case there's trouble.

00:14:59.680 A lot of people argue that the government of Canada didn't do enough for medicines.

00:15:03.680 A lot of people will argue that the government of Canada didn't do enough for education.

00:15:06.900 But I find that difficult to reconcile.

00:15:10.000 I think McDonald did a lot.

00:15:11.300 You point out using politicians in their own words, and I should say, one of the interesting things about your book is you don't edit their words.

00:15:22.260 You put them in and you say right at the beginning, look, some of the language in this book is going to be offensive to modern ears.

00:15:30.840 If McDonald refers to someone as a half-breed, which is what they called Métis at the time, you just leave that in because that's how he spoke.

00:15:40.080 But so did everyone else.

00:15:42.680 When he refers to people as Indians instead of indigenous, you leave that in.

00:15:47.360 But you quote people extensively, and, you know, as much as people will look back now with revisionist viewpoints on the residential schools, it's well documented that the opposition liberals complained loudly that you're spending too much on the Indians.

00:16:09.320 Stop spending so much money on those Indians. 1.00

00:16:11.520 Yeah, and it's actually in that context that McDonald, you know, retorts, and it's always quoted back to him, but it's quoted in the wrong context.

00:16:18.960 You know, yeah, we're keeping them half-starved.

00:16:21.100 He's trying to, he's in the House and he's saying to the liberals, look, we're doing our best.

00:16:24.340 We're not going to let them die, but we are keeping them half-starved.

00:16:28.040 At least they can survive.

00:16:29.460 You know, the idea that at least they can survive and live another day.

00:16:32.880 They're not going to be, you know, they're not going to be, you know, they're not going to have full bellies, but at least they'll survive.

00:16:38.600 And again, it's important to remember the context here.

00:16:41.420 We're not delivering food, you know, by FedEx in refrigerated trucks.

00:16:46.600 There is no railway.

00:16:48.740 There is no railway.

00:16:50.180 There is no way of transportation for the foodstuffs going out in the Northwest.

00:16:55.300 It is literally…

00:16:56.120 Because the railway wasn't completed until 1885.

00:16:58.600 But it's remarkable that, you know, we're expecting the government of Canada in the 1880s to deliver rations to people in the Northwest.

00:17:12.420 Now, again, the government does succeed to some degree.

00:17:16.380 And that's what's remarkable.

00:17:17.800 They do find cattle.

00:17:19.240 They do find ways to provide rations.

00:17:21.860 And they're providing rations, by the way, to indigenous people who are refugees from the United States.

00:17:27.760 I mean, because they're coming to Canada because there's food in Canada.

00:17:31.400 There's no food in the United States, but there's food in Canada.

00:17:34.300 And who's providing that food?

00:17:35.660 It's Sir John A. MacDonald and his conservative government in the 1880s.

00:17:39.000 So I wanted to ask you about that, that it should be widely known, but it's not talked about now in the current narrative that Canada, under Sir John A. MacDonald, was seen as a refuge for many indigenous peoples coming up from the U.S.

00:17:57.060 It was known.

00:17:58.040 We've forgotten.

00:17:59.120 And in today's climate, when the accusations are hurled at MacDonald, there are very few voices to respond.

00:18:06.580 This is a knowledge that's been forgotten.

00:18:09.000 Or neglected.

00:18:11.060 And it's unfortunate.

00:18:12.740 It's unfortunate.

00:18:13.920 And yet, as I've written elsewhere, it's utterly understandable because we've now had two generations, including most of the politicians who are working today, two generations who have never heard of Sir John A. MacDonald because we don't cover it in school.

00:18:27.800 I mean, you have to be of a certain age to remember the days when Pierre Burton had a fabulous series on the CBC in the mid-1970s.

00:18:39.240 So you have to be at least 64, 65 years old to remember seeing that series on the CBC.

00:18:45.420 After that, there's nothing.

00:18:47.860 Johnny MacDonald is not part of the popular culture.

00:18:50.280 And he's been erased from the curriculum.

00:18:53.520 And as I say, he's been erased from the curriculum for over 40 years.

00:18:56.440 How do you expect anybody to have an answer?

00:18:59.180 The last time you touched Sir John A. MacDonald was when you were 11 years old or 12 years old in grade 7.

00:19:04.680 And that was only for a few minutes.

00:19:07.040 Otherwise, we do not cover Sir John A. MacDonald in high school.

00:19:11.100 And as I've pointed out many times before, and I'll say it again ad nauseum, there are only three provinces in this country where a credit in Canadian history is required to graduate high school.

00:19:20.780 In most of Canada, you do not need a Canadian history credit.

00:19:25.000 You do not need to have to know Canadian history in order to get high school. 0.97

00:19:29.240 Find me another country that is so ridiculous. 0.97

00:19:32.960 But anyway, I digress. 0.91

00:19:34.520 Well, tell me which provinces, because…

00:19:37.840 Three provinces that require a credit in Canadian history are Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec.

00:19:43.400 Oh, if you're a francophone, by the way, in Nova Scotia and P.I., you do need one. 0.99

00:19:48.940 But if you're an anglophone, you don't need one.

00:19:51.180 Because an anglophone doesn't really need to know Canadian history.

00:19:54.200 It's utterly…

00:19:55.280 I'm not saying that kids are not graduating with high school history.

00:19:58.880 I'm just saying they're just not required to do it.

00:20:01.660 And so if you're not inclined, why would you do it?

00:20:04.520 You know, it should be a requirement of our citizenship that you will know our history.

00:20:09.240 And again, in high school, we start with the First World War.

00:20:12.560 That's a wonderful thing.

00:20:13.640 The First World War was an extremely painful experience for our country, for our forefathers.

00:20:23.900 But I think that to get Sir John A. MacDonald exposed to an adolescent mind, at least an adolescent mind, not a child of 11 or 12, might raise awareness, which would create a robustness that could resist the sloppy thinking that is now part of the narrative around Sir John A. MacDonald.

00:20:47.020 Well, before we leave his Indigenous policies, this might explain what you've just said about it not being taught in schools, might explain why every time I raise the fact that Sir John A. extended the vote, extended the franchise, not only to women but to Indigenous, not everyone.

00:21:06.860 But not everyone got the vote back then.

00:21:09.380 He extended it to the Indigenous population to a degree.

00:21:12.840 They looked at me stunned.

00:21:14.360 No, no, that couldn't possibly be.

00:21:16.260 So who exactly got the vote when he did extend it?

00:21:20.040 And how long did that last?

00:21:22.500 It happened in 1885, of course.

00:21:24.960 Like everything else, it happened in 1885, which is remarkable.

00:21:27.460 I mean, here John A. is fighting off the Brits because the Brits want him to fight in Sudan.

00:21:32.160 He's saying, no, we're not going to Sudan.

00:21:33.740 He's fighting off the Americans because the Americans want to fish even more in coastal waters. 0.73

00:21:40.160 And he says, okay, this is the time to reintroduce my bill on expanding the franchise, expanding the right to vote for Canadians.

00:21:48.560 I mean, this is really quite something.

00:21:50.100 Because at that point, you had to be male and a landowner, right?

00:21:53.760 You had to have $150 worth of stuff.

00:21:59.540 And, you know, it could be a house.

00:22:01.220 It could be tools.

00:22:02.520 If you're a workman, a laborer, it wasn't onerous.

00:22:06.920 And, you know, there were variations.

00:22:08.420 And every province had its variation.

00:22:11.080 And this is something that McDonald had wanted to do forever.

00:22:13.920 He wanted the federal government to have control on the federal franchise.

00:22:18.520 At that point, it was the provinces.

00:22:20.040 And he suspected that things were, you know, if you have an enemy party in government in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, they're going to tinker with things and make sure that the conservatives don't vote or do whatever.

00:22:34.060 You know, he was just very suspicious.

00:22:35.540 And he thought it was just a matter of just common sense.

00:22:37.680 And the Constitution provided for it that the federal government would look after the federal franchise.

00:22:42.580 So, yeah, in 1885, he proposes that women be given the right to vote as long as they have the same material qualifications as a male.

00:22:52.200 That idea is shot down.

00:22:53.960 It's shot down by the conservatives and it's shot down by the liberals.

00:22:57.380 He also proposes that indigenous men who meet the qualifications also be given the right to vote.

00:23:03.540 This is at the time when Frog Lake is taking place.

00:23:07.780 The Frog Lake Massacre is taking place in the Northwest where basically a number of indigenous warriors killed 10 people, 10 settlers in Saskatchewan.

00:23:22.620 People will say, are you serious?

00:23:24.320 You're going to give the vote to those people?

00:23:26.480 And he says, yes, I'm going to give the vote to those people because they are citizens of this country.

00:23:31.940 This is John A. Macdonald at the height of the insurrection making this demand.

00:23:37.460 The end result will be that indigenous men will get the right to vote, except in Saskatchewan in the Northwest Territories. 0.96

00:23:47.680 But elsewhere else, they will get the right to vote.

00:23:49.920 And there's a study, not mine, there's a study out there that demonstrated that they did vote in Ontario.

00:23:56.320 In particular, in a number of ridings in Ontario, where in fact, they held arguably a balance of power.

00:24:03.900 And most of the time, those indigenous people voted conservative.

00:24:07.520 Sometimes they voted liberal, but most of the time they voted conservative.

00:24:11.040 That's not my study.

00:24:11.980 It's another colleague.

00:24:13.120 And so it demonstrated that the indigenous men who had the property qualifications did vote, that Macdonald was right. 1.00

00:24:23.200 These people understand freedom.

00:24:25.180 They understand what this country is about.

00:24:27.140 And he was fully confident that they could exercise their vote.

00:24:31.360 Maybe he was being bullish.

00:24:33.180 Maybe he thought they'd all be good Tories.

00:24:35.880 But who knows?

00:24:37.340 He was willing to take the chance, is my point.

00:24:39.180 He was willing to take the chance.

00:24:40.440 We've got to take a quick break.

00:24:43.060 But when we come back, I want to ask you about the 1885 rebellion, about its impact on Macdonald's tumultuous year.

00:24:55.360 But also, how do we turn it around in terms of putting things forward?

00:25:01.460 Bellevue House, we'll talk about that as well when we come back.

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00:26:19.900 Patrice, I mentioned off the top that, you know, all the statues taken down and here at Queen's Park, it's boarded up and who knows what will happen.

00:26:27.120 What's remarkable to me is that nobody has noticed the statue to the men who went and fought.

00:26:31.200 It's on the grounds of the legislature, of the men who went and fought in the 1885 rebellion for the government, recognizes battles like Cut Knife Hill and things like that.

00:26:41.540 At once upon a time, putting down the rebellion was taught a certain way in English schools.

00:26:48.680 I know how I was taught, but apparently if you were in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, especially in a French school, you were given a very different view of that history.

00:26:57.080 How should we view it from your perspective as you look at the impact of the second rebellion in 1885 in McDonald's tumultuous year?

00:27:07.380 How should we see it?

00:27:09.660 Well, I would say that you have to see it the way contemporaries had to see it.

00:27:17.040 What happened here is that Louis Riel declares the area on the North Saskatchewan River to be an area separate from the rest of Canada.

00:27:29.060 He creates a provisional government.

00:27:31.380 He says that in this jurisdiction, the government of Canada has no authority.

00:27:36.020 Now, I mean, I don't think it takes too much imagination, even today, to think that if somebody said, I am not recognizing Canada, I am seizing this territory, and then I'm going to kill policemen.

00:27:50.720 I think that even today, the reaction would be very similar to what happened in 1885, namely that we will not put up with this kind of thing.

00:27:58.740 The state, the authority of the state is being challenged directly, and the state has the obligation to defend its integrity.

00:28:08.840 I don't think today would be different, but this is what happened in Saskatchewan in 1885.

00:28:14.660 The RCMP was attacked.

00:28:16.380 Eight men died at Duck Lake.

00:28:19.360 Is it surprising that the McDonald government, it would have been any government, would have done the same?

00:28:25.080 The liberals would have done the same?

00:28:26.480 I'm absolutely sure of it.

00:28:29.840 And yet today, you know, it was just a couple of weeks ago, we had Louis Riel Day, and I had statements from all kinds of politicians.

00:28:37.040 You don't get that on Sir John A.'s birthday.

00:28:39.560 Sir John A. is, as we said, on the cancel list.

00:28:43.020 And Riel, who was not a hero in the education I was given many, many years ago, is now a hero.

00:28:50.960 In Saskatchewan, they've got the highway name for him, Highway 11.

00:28:53.900 Yes, absolutely.

00:28:55.340 There's been a radical transformation, and this has been the product of 50 years of work by the Métis community,

00:29:02.020 to have Louis Riel recognized as a national hero.

00:29:08.460 To a degree, I'm sympathetic.

00:29:10.540 I am a Francophone.

00:29:11.880 And there is a romantic aura around Louis Riel that he was defending the French language, and for that, and defending the Métis.

00:29:21.260 By the way, the Métis community is two communities.

00:29:26.740 You have to remember that.

00:29:27.560 They were called Métis if they were Francophone.

00:29:29.460 They were called half-breeds if they were Anglophone.

00:29:32.760 Because don't forget, there is a Scottish, a big Scottish presence in the Northwest Territory,

00:29:39.380 where a lot of these guys married Indigenous women or united with Indigenous women and created a half-breed community. 0.56

00:29:46.900 They had a lot of associations with the Métis people.

00:29:49.580 So there were two communities inside that agglomeration of people that had both heritages,

00:29:59.220 inherited from both the English and the French.

00:30:02.140 My point is that that romantic aura has developed.

00:30:05.120 I cite Pierre Trudeau in 1968, even as late as 1968, saying,

00:30:09.440 wait a minute, the guy raised arms against the Canadian government.

00:30:14.980 There's got to be something wrong here.

00:30:16.500 But yeah, the politicians have bent over backwards to hail Louis Riel,

00:30:22.380 who arguably put 100 people to death as a result of his ridiculous campaign in 1885.

00:30:32.880 The government of Canada was doing nothing to the Métis people.

00:30:35.700 It's not like it was pursuing them.

00:30:37.440 They were surveying lands.

00:30:40.360 They were leaving the people alone.

00:30:41.840 What was the reasoning to raise a military campaign against the government of Canada?

00:30:47.820 There is, there was no reason, except perhaps paranoia or fear.

00:30:52.240 And Louis Riel was a paranoid.

00:30:55.700 Regardless, I think that Louis Riel did a terrible thing in 1885.

00:31:00.540 And the government reacted as you would expect them to react.

00:31:07.780 So, you know, Louis Riel as a figure, as I said, has become romanticized,

00:31:12.360 immensely romanticized and unfairly romanticized.

00:31:15.100 There is opposition.

00:31:16.240 I mean, there are some scholars who've written a different account.

00:31:19.340 But right now, Louis Riel is living his golden years in terms of being remembered.

00:31:24.140 I can understand the desire of some people to say,

00:31:28.600 okay, well, look at the good he did, or look, he's a hero to this community.

00:31:32.740 And I understand that.

00:31:33.640 And I would just say what I say about people who want to criticize or tear down McDonald.

00:31:40.880 Let's look at them in the full story.

00:31:45.780 Don't just, you know, put them off to one side and pigeonhole them.

00:31:50.680 What was the full story?

00:31:51.800 What was their full record?

00:31:54.080 And McDonald is someone who, you know, his full, people will just dismiss him.

00:32:01.880 I'm a history geek.

00:32:03.980 And, you know, when I was up in Ottawa and working in center block, you know,

00:32:09.420 people would just be dismissive.

00:32:11.640 Oh, you showed up drunk all the time to Parliament. 0.99

00:32:14.360 Oh, that's silly. 1.00

00:32:14.880 That's silly. 0.98

00:32:15.580 That's just silly. 0.98

00:32:16.940 That's just silly. 0.98

00:32:18.380 I can't stand that. 0.94

00:32:19.880 I mean, John McDonald.

00:32:21.540 Did he have a drinking problem at one point?

00:32:23.600 He had a drinking problem at one point.

00:32:25.360 You put yourself in his shoes, you'll have the same thing.

00:32:27.900 He was suffering terrible gallstones.

00:32:30.100 He was under enormous pressure to set up the government of Canada in the late 1860s.

00:32:34.700 You know, the fact is, he dried up.

00:32:37.380 He dried up seven, eight years later.

00:32:39.000 He came to Toronto.

00:32:40.260 And what do you do when you come to Toronto?

00:32:41.760 Well, you stop drinking, okay?

00:32:43.040 Because it's Toronto the good.

00:32:45.440 McDonald moved to Toronto for a couple of years.

00:32:47.900 And he dried up.

00:32:49.680 I mean, there's no, I mean, if you look at the accounts, there is no account of him being, you know, a drunk, out of his mind drunk, after the mid-1870s.

00:33:03.920 So, yeah, he had a bad period.

00:33:06.600 Everybody drank in those days.

00:33:08.940 There's a temperance movement launched because the problem of drinking is so bad.

00:33:14.160 But I think that the real story around McDonald is that he moderates.

00:33:17.300 He actually trains those demons.

00:33:19.340 And he's no longer a habitual drinker from the 1870s onward.

00:33:24.080 So, that's not an excuse.

00:33:25.840 You know, and I come back to what you said about Louis Riel.

00:33:27.580 I actually would challenge that.

00:33:28.680 What did Louis Riel actually do except contribute a memory?

00:33:31.720 He actually did nothing for the Métis people.

00:33:34.240 He did nothing.

00:33:35.540 I mean, I'm sure I'll be…

00:33:38.000 You'll be on the cancel list.

00:33:39.580 Oh, I'm already on the cancel list.

00:33:41.900 I mean, it's…

00:33:43.980 But I would challenge anybody to tell me what Louis Riel actually contributed, except for a memory.

00:33:49.160 Otherwise, I don't see what he's done.

00:33:51.800 Compare that to what Sir John A. MacDonald accomplished, you know, in one month.

00:33:56.540 In one month.

00:33:57.540 Give it any month.

00:33:58.920 You know, there's no comparison.

00:34:00.300 And yet, as you say, nine of the 11 statues in Canada dedicated to Sir John A. MacDonald from 1895 onwards are now destroyed or in storage.

00:34:09.420 There's only two left, and they're under police guard.

00:34:11.900 The one that actually breaks my heart, other than the one at Queen's Park, was Picton.

00:34:16.920 They had a fun statue of Sir John A. MacDonald standing next to the witness box, and it was in the area where he had practiced law, and the statue was of him at that age.

00:34:29.400 And you could, you know, stand in the witness box and get your photo taken with him, which, of course, I did.

00:34:33.960 But now it's gone.

00:34:36.360 I want to talk about the railroad and a couple of other things.

00:34:39.900 But you've mentioned that a lot of Indigenous voters, when they got the vote, voted for him.

00:34:43.560 Today, when we look at Quebec, people say, oh, conservatives will never do well in Quebec except around Quebec City.

00:34:51.620 But you've got a chart on your website that shows that he was up and down in Quebec, but at times, including 1882, the election that had him in power in this time period, in this tumultuous year, he won the majority of seats in that province.

00:35:10.640 Well, what's remarkable is that, and I developed that whole notion in my book, the reality is that in the election following the terrible year of 1885, Sir John A. MacDonald is handily re-elected and increases his vote in Quebec.

00:35:29.780 So Quebec, which apparently was absolutely distraught by the death of Louis Riel, still supports Sir John A.

00:35:37.540 And then in the last election, in 1891, he and his coalition will actually earn more than 50% of the vote.

00:35:46.060 And that's against a francophone Quebecer, Wilfrid Laurier.

00:35:49.920 So tell me that Sir John A. MacDonald was unpopular.

00:35:53.920 And this came out of the report of the city of Montreal when they justified the tearing down of the statue.

00:35:59.780 In Canada Square.

00:36:01.820 That MacDonald was never popular in Quebec.

00:36:05.480 Well, I'm sorry.

00:36:06.280 Look at the facts.

00:36:07.620 All I'm doing here is pointing to the facts.

00:36:10.780 MacDonald was highly popular in Quebec.

00:36:13.960 And there are a lot of reasons why you would not want to be popular in Quebec if you're the prime minister at that time.

00:36:19.220 Namely, that the economy is going so badly in Quebec that people are leaving.

00:36:24.160 There are more Jutsis, my family name.

00:36:27.100 There are more Jutsis today in Maine than there are in Montreal. 1.00

00:36:29.780 In Quebec.

00:36:30.600 They went down for the…

00:36:32.100 For the factory jobs.

00:36:33.000 Yeah.

00:36:33.360 There were jobs.

00:36:34.300 People were leaving.

00:36:35.600 They knew that the government was not doing, you know, was not helping to protect their jobs.

00:36:40.500 But in the 19th century, you would never expect the government of Canada to protect your job.

00:36:45.900 Those people who remained clearly thought that Sir John A. MacDonald was still worth a vote after 20 years in power.

00:36:54.040 With all the terrible things that happened in 1885 with the pandemic, with the death of Louis Riel, they still think Sir John A. is worth another vote.

00:37:06.260 Now, again, square that with the way he is being criticized today.

00:37:13.540 I think that, you know, we're in a mode of thinking here that's ahistorical, where people who have the microphone are, you know, who are in government are not doing the job of rectifying the record.

00:37:27.780 And maybe I'm expecting too much of our elected politicians.

00:37:32.540 I think people simply do not know the history, which is why I'd encourage people to read your book.

00:37:37.240 But, you know, the airport in Ottawa is called MacDonald-Cartier Airport.

00:37:44.160 The 401 is actually the MacDonald-Cartier Highway because he had a powerful coalition in Quebec and a powerful partner in Georgia-et-Cartier.

00:37:55.540 I used to love when my office was in old Montreal, in Saint-Jacques, walking by the plaque up for the office that Cartier had down there.

00:38:08.200 In 1885, in fact, because everything happens in 1885, he unveils the statue to his old friend who died, you know, who died almost 15 years before.

00:38:18.320 And he remembers him fondly.

00:38:20.940 This was the man who paved the way for Sir John A. MacDonald, an eloquent man who sold the Québécois, the French-Canadians, on the idea that Canada was worth, as René de Vecq said later on, a beau risque, that there were going to be problems in associating yourself with an English majority.

00:38:38.560 But it might still be worth it because there might still be some new ideas of nationality that could emerge from this, that could elevate the human existence in the Canadian country, in the Canadian countryside.

00:38:50.100 Noble ideas that anybody today would stand by, anybody who's right thinking would stand by, that inspired a generation.

00:38:58.360 Georges-et-Cartier was that kind of man, and Johnny MacDonald had the wisdom to recognize that.

00:39:04.240 He was a great political ally.

00:39:05.640 Now, after, not related to 1885, so allow me to go past that, but after Laurier does finally win in 1896, first Francophone prime minister, he's liberal.

00:39:21.600 Quebec does become a liberal stronghold, and has been for most of its time since then.

00:39:28.020 Was there a mythology built up around Laurier?

00:39:34.840 I mean, you've studied this great prime minister as well, so how did he make that turn for the province that's been kind of at the center of so many of our debates and challenges over the years?

00:39:47.140 Well, no, Sir Wilfrid comes in in 1896. Of course, the conservatives are completely exhausted, and they wind up with old Sir Charles Tupper as leader, and Laurier, who's been in office, I mean, has been in parliament for 20 years at that point, is an experienced man.

00:40:05.340 He's an experienced debater. He's an experienced politician. He knows everybody in Quebec. He's brought people around him who are fantastic organizers, people like Israel Tarte and Raoul Danzuran.

00:40:17.940 People, these are names that, of course, are very close to my heart, but they're completely unknown today.

00:40:22.880 What I'm saying is that Laurier came into power because he forged a phenomenal coalition in Quebec, but also in English Canada.

00:40:30.860 And then he had the great luck of being prime minister at a moment when Canada just explodes in terms of wealth, in terms of prosperity.

00:40:39.180 We have wheat growing in the West. We have a critical mass of farmers in the West who are growing the country, who are growing the economy.

00:40:46.540 Things are doing well in eastern Canada, and Laurier rides the Coteurs.

00:40:51.460 He's also a great prime minister. He's a great manager, and he's got ideas.

00:40:56.320 To the last days of his government, he has ideas.

00:40:59.980 Of course, French Canada loved this man. He was eloquent. He was eloquent. He made them proud.

00:41:07.760 Laurier made the Quebecois, the French Canadians, across Canada, very proud.

00:41:13.100 And then, of course, the conservatives shoot themselves in the foot, quite literally.

00:41:17.000 And I wrote a book about that, two books, actually, with my colleague David McKenzie, on the 1911 election and the 1917 election.

00:41:24.080 The conservatives literally blow it.

00:41:27.080 And this experience will hurt them right through the generations.

00:41:31.960 It goes up through their ups and downs.

00:41:33.800 There's Diefenbaker, who convinces Quebec in 1958, with the help of Maurice Dublessy, the Quebec premier.

00:41:41.760 But once people realize this guy, Diefenbaker, he really doesn't understand Canada,

00:41:47.100 they actually vote against him, and they'll give the liberals and Pearson their support in 1962-63.

00:41:53.320 But yeah, it's a long story.

00:41:55.000 Had the magic of McDonald's been preserved, had it been bottled and passed on to the next generation,

00:42:01.120 surely the conservatives would have done better.

00:42:03.200 You know, there are signs of revival.

00:42:05.300 Meehan, you know, Meehan in 1925 did a remarkable job.

00:42:09.780 You know, again, this is Arthur Meehan, one of the worst politicians that ever, you know, that ever walked the land.

00:42:15.120 One of the worst politicians.

00:42:16.260 But even he got some support in Quebec because Mackenzie King,

00:42:20.660 and by the way, I've got a book on Mackenzie King coming out next year,

00:42:23.800 because Mackenzie King was such a nondescript prime minister in the first years of the 1920s.

00:42:30.820 But, you know, they have to recapture that McDonald's magic, and it's not easy.

00:42:36.540 Let's go back to 1885 to round out the chat, and the railroad.

00:42:43.680 I mean, that's one that people still know at least a little bit about.

00:42:47.100 They've seen there's a photo somewhere of a guy with a hammer and a top hat.

00:42:51.280 But, you know, I didn't realize all the things that happened in 1885 until your book.

00:43:02.020 This was the original promise of McDonald in uniting the country was,

00:43:07.800 especially when they brought in British Columbia, Wilbrainer Railroad.

00:43:11.660 It took a while, maybe not as long as our Eglinton Crosstown here in Toronto.

00:43:17.300 Well, doesn't that put things in perspective?

00:43:20.680 Doesn't that put things in perspective?

00:43:22.260 Look, I mean, you've been to the Rockies, whether you've been in a plane or whether you've been on the highway,

00:43:26.460 you realize how difficult it is to cut through that land, to create a grade for a train, an 1880s train to travel.

00:43:34.760 Well, the engineering marvel that we have in a CPR is extraordinary, but it took time.

00:43:40.160 It took time.

00:43:40.880 Yeah, McDonald built that railroad.

00:43:42.960 He, and I talk about it in the book, I mean, he had tremendous trouble in convincing even members of his own cabinet that the CPR was worth it.

00:43:52.200 I mean, it's a lot of money.

00:43:53.360 And, you know, the government is always guaranteeing loans because in those days, you didn't pay for it.

00:43:59.120 The government had no money to pay for things.

00:44:01.180 You had to get the private sector to provide financing.

00:44:04.300 But what the government could do was provide, you know, provide guarantees, raise bonds to help pay for things.

00:44:11.820 It comes through in 1885.

00:44:14.400 And when the Riel attacks the Canadian government, the railroad is nearly done, not completely done, but nearly done so that you can actually move troops from Montreal.

00:44:24.460 And there are French contingents, French regiments in Montreal that are going to take the train to go to the West.

00:44:30.260 It's just as popular in Montreal as it is in Toronto.

00:44:32.840 And they will take their trains to go fight Riel, and they're there within three weeks.

00:44:39.600 So it's phenomenal.

00:44:40.740 Compared to the first rebellion of Louis Riel in 1870, it took three months to move the troops to Winnipeg.

00:44:47.160 Here you had to go further, and you did it in three weeks.

00:44:49.620 So, yeah, the CPR, that really saved McDonald's bacon.

00:44:54.020 But again, he had the foresight to stick with it.

00:44:56.520 It was, as you say, the original promise.

00:44:59.140 This was the promise of Canada articulated in the 1860s, before Confederation.

00:45:05.060 In the 1860s, people like Georges-Étienne Cartier, people like Samuel Tilley in New Brunswick, Charles Tupper in Nova Scotia, George Brown in Ontario.

00:45:19.960 What are they thinking about?

00:45:20.980 They're thinking about the West.

00:45:22.860 Yeah, they're thinking about their little provinces.

00:45:24.760 But they know that the West is where it is, and they know that the West is where the Americans will challenge Canada's sovereignty.

00:45:33.160 You know, this is something that we forget.

00:45:36.660 Canada had to assert sovereignty in a land that was sparsely populated.

00:45:41.860 There are, at best, 20,000 Indigenous people roaming the land in Western Canada at that period.

00:45:49.400 That's not enough for the American army.

00:45:52.280 And it is a blessing, because I can't explain it otherwise, why the Americans resisted invading Canada when it had the largest standing army in the world and could have walked into the territory, could have walked into Manitoba, what we know as Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and even British Columbia, after the Civil War.

00:46:14.060 They could have walked in and taken it.

00:46:16.520 They had Alaska, right?

00:46:17.380 Alaska, the deal was signed in Alaska in 1867, a few months before Confederation.

00:46:23.040 But it had been in the works forever, and the Canadians knew this.

00:46:26.580 It had been in the works forever.

00:46:28.700 How the Americans didn't seize that opportunity is amazing to me, amazing to anybody who looks at the record.

00:46:36.220 And thank goodness that they didn't.

00:46:39.540 Well, yeah, thank goodness they didn't.

00:46:41.800 It became a land for Canadians and for our philosophy of government and for our philosophy of life, flawed as it may be, flawed as it may be.

00:46:50.420 The railway that opened in 1885, we're still using it today.

00:46:56.080 It's been repaired.

00:46:59.040 It's been repaired.

00:46:59.640 A few times, yeah.

00:47:02.640 Tracks have been replaced.

00:47:04.040 Yes.

00:47:04.300 But anyone that thinks that, well, we don't really use rail anymore, it's not a big thing.

00:47:10.000 Just think about the double rail strikes and the impact that was going to have on the economy.

00:47:16.700 Unless you're urbanites like you and I, a lot of people will not travel by rail all that often anymore.

00:47:22.840 But the goods and services, this is still, to this day, a fundamental linchpin of Canada's economy.

00:47:32.360 Absolutely.

00:47:32.860 If you'll allow me, Brian, I mean, that picture, that iconic picture you mentioned about the last spike, and it's a beautiful picture.

00:47:41.400 But it did leave out the Chinese workers.

00:47:43.800 And I think that it's important for us, again, in remembering that period, it's important for us to recognize that 600 of those guys died in building the railway from 1881 to 1885, 1886.

00:47:59.280 600.

00:48:00.120 That's a lot of people.

00:48:01.740 That's a lot of people.

00:48:03.460 And, you know, a lot of people think that John A. MacDonald was a racist in terms of the Chinese because, you know, he did, he did, and again, you got to say this,

00:48:12.540 you know, he did refuse the right to vote to the Chinese.

00:48:16.420 He's willing to give it to the indigenous, but he's not willing to give it to the Chinese. 0.91

00:48:21.720 And he has two reasons for that.

00:48:23.700 Number one, because the people from British Columbia, the politicians from British Columbia, are exerting enormous pressures on him to make sure that the Chinese do not vote. 0.64

00:48:34.220 Why?

00:48:34.620 Because they potentially hold the balance of power in British Columbia.

00:48:38.540 Almost 10% of the men in British Columbia at that time were Chinese.

00:48:43.960 And there's a lot of fear that, you know, between the liberals and the conservatives, it'll be the Chinese bloc that will determine the win.

00:48:50.140 And that can't be very democratic.

00:48:52.300 And MacDonald is forced to make that.

00:48:54.620 He does it as an amendment at the very last minute.

00:48:57.420 He's not a racist.

00:48:58.400 He doesn't want to do this.

00:48:59.480 He's even created a royal commission that concluded that the Chinese people, they're all men, the Chinese men are actually honorable people.

00:49:07.840 They're honorable people who are making a contribution to this country.

00:49:10.700 This is the product of Sir John A. MacDonald, his doing, a royal commission that says that the Chinese are not a threat to this country. 0.96

00:49:17.260 I talk about that in the book.

00:49:19.280 But let's remember, the 600 Chinese men, over 600, who died for this?

00:49:23.660 And that's an important part of the story of 1885, I think.

00:49:28.940 Patrice, I could keep asking you question after question and talk about history all day.

00:49:33.860 But we both do have to get on to the day job.

00:49:38.000 So thank you so much for your time.

00:49:39.480 I encourage everyone to check out the new book on 1885.

00:49:43.980 Truly fantastic.

00:49:45.060 Thanks so much for the time.

00:49:46.200 Thank you very much for your time.

00:49:47.820 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:49:50.040 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:49:51.400 This episode was produced by Andre Pru, theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:49:55.120 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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Full Comment - December 09, 2024

John A. helped Indigenous people, Riel didn’t, and other unpopular realities

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