The reappearance of his statue at the Ontario legislature is not the end of the conversation. It should be the beginning

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This summer, the Ontario government will remove the box that has, for several years, concealed the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at Queen’s Park. It was in 2020 — after several statues across Canada had been painted, toppled and even beheaded — that Macdonald’s likeness in Ontario’s capital was boarded up.

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Uncovering the statue is a welcome move. But if that’s all we do, we are likely to find ourselves back here again before long. Until Canadians are willing to revisit the actual historical facts — and in particular Macdonald’s relationship with Indigenous-Canadians — the cycle of erasure and outrage will continue.

The most widespread and damaging misunderstanding is the idea that every Indigenous child was forced by law to attend a residential school, was taken far from home, kept for years and subjected to routine abuse. This narrative has become almost universally accepted in Canada.

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