00:00:08.460City councils are voting to remove his monuments all across the country.
00:00:13.300We have national historic sites that are just flat-out demeaning to our first Prime Minister.
00:00:19.980And our current Prime Minister stripped him from the dollar bill.
00:00:24.040And it's not just Macdonald, other historical figures are being attacked.
00:00:27.140Wouldn't it be nice if young Canadians, the future of this country, were taught at an early age the truth about John A. Macdonald and the truth about Canadian history?
00:00:35.080That there would be a way for parents to teach their children about this country without the bias of the radical left?
00:00:40.640Well, that's exactly what has happened with True North's latest book.
00:00:45.120Authored by former True North writer Lindsay Shepard, A Day with Sir John A. is now a bestseller in the children's book category.
00:00:54.500And Lindsay Shepard joins us now to talk about this new book.
00:00:58.060Lindsay, the first and the most obvious question is what motivated you to write this children's book about our first Prime Minister, about John A. Macdonald?
00:01:06.680Yeah, so we know that in the K-12 education system, children are going to learn about Canada in a way that is meant to make them feel shame and guilt.
00:01:19.780They're going to feel like they have to apologize. And so we wanted to kind of get in there before all that happens or at the very early stages,
00:01:29.580because this book is aimed at ages three to seven and say, look, actually, the founding prime minister of this country and the father of Confederate,
00:01:42.060one of the fathers of the confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald, he was actually a pretty, pretty good guy, a guy with spirit, vision, a progressive mindset.
00:01:53.340And so we're hoping to, you know, get in there and say, you don't have to buy into all that guilt and shame and apologizing stuff.
00:02:03.260And what is it about Macdonald that mainstream historians seem to get so wrong?
00:02:09.520And perhaps I can expand that question to include what it is about Macdonald that it seems to be so polarizing in this country?
00:02:17.600Sure. So I think all that people learn about Macdonald is about the Chinese head tax and about residential schools.
00:02:26.540And that's all that they associate with him. And maybe, sure, yes, he built the railroad that crosses the country and united this country and made us Canada.
00:02:36.460And who knows what we would have been without him and without that railroad.
00:02:42.100But, you know, oh, he was such a bad person. Well, it turns out he's very unfairly maligned.
00:02:47.560And when I was writing this book, I actually anticipated, like, maybe I'm going to have to do a lot of defending or maybe I'm actually going to have to kind of apologize for him in some ways.
00:03:00.080But I didn't have to do that at all because his his record is pretty outstanding.
00:03:06.700He was an early advocate for women's suffrage, for giving the vote to indigenous people.
00:03:13.660And, yeah, at the time, there were property requirements.
00:03:18.700However, he was still very, very far ahead of the game.
00:03:22.220And even things like the first national park that was established by him in what we now know as Banff.
00:03:31.800And so, yeah, his his record really speaks for itself.
00:03:35.540And that was that was one of the things I was going to ask you about, which was in the description of the book.
00:03:40.960You mentioned that, you know, readers will learn about Johnny McDonald's progressive worldview.
00:03:46.960Now, in today's context, I think many conservatives see the word progressive and think, you know, the ideology of progressivism.
00:03:53.580Right. But in McDonald's context, what does that mean?
00:03:57.400Is that about women's suffrage and native vote as well?
00:04:00.840Look, what what is what is McDonald's progressive? What was McDonald's progressive worldview?
00:04:06.900It's that. Yeah, of course, I don't mean in the context of today's leftism and that, you know, and DEI principles and all that.
00:04:15.580I don't mean that. I just mean he was really someone who had vision and that he could see far ahead.
00:04:21.800And even when it comes down to things like his daughter, Mary, who had a severe disability, she was in a wheelchair, she couldn't speak.
00:04:34.060And he loved her unconditionally throughout her whole life.
00:04:39.160And a lot of historians say this is why she lived so long, despite her severe illness.
00:04:44.360And this is at a time when we looked at disability or when, you know, disability was looked at very differently than it is today.
00:04:53.120And so for him, it was just really about being able to put principles ahead of what was maybe fashionable at the time.
00:05:04.180You know, so much of the attacks that we hear about McDonald and the I guess you call them the slights on his legacy, like we've seen at at his home, Bellevue House in Kingston, the toppling of his monuments, the the erasing of his monuments all over the country.
00:05:21.580So much of it is justified by cherry picking piece of pieces of his legacy or even just not even telling the truth about McDonald's legacy.
00:05:30.040I'm curious, as an author of this book about McDonald's, do you feel like the attacks that we've seen on McDonald's are really designed to be attacks on Canada and to try to attack the the foundation of our country?
00:05:44.040Because I'll tell you, that's that's kind of the way I look at it.
00:05:49.520And for me, you know, I don't really remember when I was in school going into a lot of depth about McDonald's.
00:05:57.180And still, I've kind of always carried this feeling of of knowing that if it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't we wouldn't be Canadian and this country wouldn't exist without him.
00:06:09.440And it was really because of his determination.
00:06:14.140And interestingly, that was the catalyst for this book, because the publisher of this book is True North at True North.
00:06:22.360We had known for a long time that we wanted to kind of look at how we could publish a children's book about history.
00:06:28.980And it had just kind of been an idea form for maybe even a couple of years for a while.
00:06:36.880And then the Bellevue House thing happened in May 2024.
00:06:41.200And we learned that after years of closure, Parks Canada had revamped Bellevue House, which is somewhere where McDonald had lived for a year.
00:06:52.260And they had infused Indigenous elements into every single room of the house, even where it didn't belong.
00:07:00.780I know you've been there, Harrison, and you did a video about all this, and you've interviewed Gregory Piazatsky, who also was a historical reviewer of my book.
00:07:11.180But yeah, that was the catalyst, because it was like, okay, perhaps the only true artifact from Sir John A.'s life was his son's crib, his son John's crib, which is in Bellevue House.
00:07:29.960That is where John Jr. died when he was only one year old.
00:07:32.640And in this room where that crib is, when you're supposed to be feeling grief and sympathy, you actually have a loop of Indigenous teachings or something that is just interrupting your thoughts.
00:07:51.560And that's just kind of the theme of Bellevue House, right, is it's all about they're trying to put into your head colonialism and genocide.
00:07:59.260And it's all about residential schools.
00:08:42.720Did you just Greg or did you have other people that went through the book to make sure that what you've written is is accurate?
00:08:47.600Yes, we also had Dr. Tom Flanagan, who is a co-author of Grave Error, which is another one of True North's books, maybe our most prominent.
00:08:59.360And then also Kelsey Walker, who who I know, and she did her master's thesis about Macdonald.
00:09:07.220And so these three individuals were so helpful.
00:09:11.580And otherwise, yeah, I mean, just months and months of research went into creating a setting for the book, making sure everything was accurate.
00:09:20.960I mean, even when I was working with the illustrator, right, you have to be so particular about things like sometimes I would notice that she did the wall trim a little bit different in this image or this image that we have to correct that.
00:09:33.720So, yeah, everything was very, very reviewed and perfected, hopefully.
00:09:41.800Well, it appears as though it all paid off because the book has experienced a lot of success in very quick fashion, right?
00:09:48.680I mean, I think it's at the top of an Amazon bestseller list, if I'm not mistaken.
00:09:52.520Are you are you pleasantly surprised about the the appeal and the reception that Canadians have had to the book so far?
00:09:58.540Yeah, so we're a number one bestseller in all of our categories, which is amazing.
00:10:04.600And you know what? It's because there's a gap.
00:10:07.260There's really a need for this kind of book, because a lot of people have pointed out to me that in the States, kids are taught from a very early age who their founding fathers are, you know, the the Mount Rushmore guys.
00:10:20.200But in Canada, we don't really have that same tradition.
00:10:23.920And actually, there was no picture book about Sir John A. MacDonald out there.
00:10:32.460And what I mean by that is there are nonfiction books for kids, you know, like kind of visual encyclopedia type of books for older readers.
00:10:40.480But in terms of illustrated storybooks that are fictionalized nonfiction, it just didn't exist.
00:10:53.720And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to ask you, as this is your your debut book into the children's category.
00:11:01.240One thing that's been obvious is that, you know, these children's books that we see now, a lot of them are very political.
00:11:08.120Right. The authors are trying to inject critical race theory into these books, transgenderism into some of these books for a very young audience.
00:11:15.760What is that about and why is it that there really aren't many books that are appealing to, frankly, not not the right side, but just apolitical children's books?
00:11:27.740Yeah, I mean, in terms of history, like I said, it's it's all about shame and guilt.
00:11:37.480I mean, I thought there was just one book about Orange Shirt Day for kids, but I was in a museum recently and there's actually like 10 now.
00:11:46.240And though the thing is, like, those are the books that are being featured, right?
00:11:50.980Those are the ones that get the displays and are meant to catch your eye right away.
00:11:56.580And yeah, same thing about with the books about gender, you know, me and my two dads, all that kind of stuff that that's also very prominently displayed at libraries and and bookstores.
00:12:12.400And with our book, we're not necessarily trying to counter that we're just trying to write about Sir John A. Macdonald and Canadian history in the way that it deserves and in a way that actually was you would think about history in the late 90s or the early 2000s before everything got infected.
00:12:34.260So I think we achieved that and we were very fair.
00:12:38.540Yeah, well, that was another question was going to be, you know, to play the devil's advocate and to say, you know, to people who who might say that this book is simply the the other the other side of the same coin.
00:12:51.880Right. It's trying to it's trying to be political on the other side.
00:12:55.680What would your response be to that? Would it be, as you've just stated, that this is right down the middle and you can't really you can't really take issue with the history in it?
00:13:03.280Yeah, exactly. I mean, we were just the goal was really just to be fair.
00:13:10.460And like I said, I was prepared to when I was reading about Sir John A and doing that initial research,
00:13:17.860I thought I'd have to be apologizing for a lot more or that there'd be a lot more difficult material for me to deal with.
00:13:27.600And there just really wasn't. And so people who haven't really here's the thing when you're a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or uncle and you're reading with the children in your lives.
00:13:39.360You know, like me, I read a lot of picture books. It's basically all I read now.
00:13:45.720And you you actually end up learning from your children's books, partially because it's the things that you'll pick out for them.
00:13:53.400Partially, it's because they'll pick something out. You know, like my son will pick out books about dinosaurs.
00:13:58.180Now I can name 20 dinosaurs because of him.
00:14:00.680So you you end up learning a lot from children's books as a parent, and it'll also refresh your memory and remind you of things like, oh, hey, yeah, I remember learning about that 20 years ago.
00:14:14.000And so we also have a very comprehensive note for parents at the end of the book.
00:14:21.420And so hopefully parents can also this can be a launch point for them to learn about the true legacy of Sir John A and really spark that appreciation of Canada again for kids and adults.
00:14:38.420So the the reception has been, you know, very impressive.
00:14:42.380A lot of people seem to seem to love this idea, love this book.
00:14:45.700They're buying it. There's a market for it.
00:14:47.420Are you planning to do another book? Are you planning to, you know, try to tell the true story of other historical figures that have been maligned in Canada?
00:14:59.020I do have a preliminary list of ideas of figures who may be on that list, but we'll have to see.
00:15:07.640It may be in the works, but we'll have to see.
00:15:10.020Well, I think that if the success of A Day with Sir John A is anything to go off of, another attempt and another book that might be able to clear up the legacy of a Wilfrid Laurier or a Negerton Ryerson would be very well received.
00:15:25.380And I also think just very good for the country.