Historians are pondering Canada’s statue dilemma, too

Despite being immersed in Indigenous history for the past 30 years, James Daschuk still isn’t sure what the right move is when it comes to the contentious and frequently vandalized John A. Macdonald statue in Victoria Park.

“There seems to a movement across the country dealing with Macdonald and Macdonald’s legacy,” said Daschuk, a professor at the University of Regina.

“The statues are kind of the focal point for how our understanding of the past is changing. A lot of people are discovering the ugly side of our past if you want to put it that way.”

And people are dealing with it in different ways, many calling for the take down of names and statues that honour the man responsible for the horror that were residential schools.

A year and a half ago, the Canadian Elementary School Teachers Association voted in favour of taking the name Macdonald from schools and just this past June, the Canadian Historical Association took the name off its prize for most influential Canadian history book of the year (an award Daschuk won in 2014 for Clearing the Plains, a work detailing Macdonald’s ill treatment of Indigenous populations in the West).

In August, a statue of Macdonald was taken down from outside Victoria’s City Hall. ...