By Greg Piasetzki
Almost everyone has a story to tell about a home renovation project gone wrong. If Sir John A. Macdonald was around today, he’d have a whopper.
Earlier this year the federal government re-opened Bellevue House – Macdonald’s one-time home in Kingston, Ontario – after a seven-year renovation. The purpose of the refurbishment, Parks Canada says, is to tell “broader and more inclusive stories about Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.” The real goal is to cancel Macdonald in his own home.
Macdonald and his wife Isabella lived at Bellevue House in 1848-1849 when he was a young elected official prior to Confederation. Unfortunately, it was not a happy time for the young family. The rent was beyond their modest means and their first son, John Jr., died there as an infant; the Macdonalds left Bellevue House shortly afterwards. The house was purchased by the federal government in 1964 and designated as a national historic site in 1995.
After many years of neglect and budget cuts, the site was closed to the public in 2017. This past May marked its official reopening. Like all renovations, there’s good news and bad news to be had.
First, the good news. Macdonald’s old digs look great. Compared to when I first visited in 1978, the new stucco, moulding, panelling, paint and roof work have Bellevue House literally gleaming. The gardens have been enlarged and are now well-suited to a leisurely ramble. The well-lit rooms are packed with decorative and practical articles from Macdonald’s era. And a team of eager young staff are keen to engage with visitors, but they’ll leave you alone if you prefer to wander at your own pace.
As for the bad news, Bellevue House has regrettably become one more battlefield in the Liberal government’s endless war on Canada’s past. It also reveals the apparent requirement under the Trudeau government’s reconciliation policy that Indigenous opinion be inserted into all possible government activities and institutions, regardless of relevance or factual accuracy. It makes for a rather odd visitor experience.
On the path leading to Bellevue House, for example, visitors are confronted with a variety of messages about Macdonald that range from the entirely factual – “We wouldn’t have Canada without him” – to the deliberately provocative – “He was a monster.” Without any context for this commentary, visitors, especially impressionable young schoolchildren, will quickly figure out which responses comprise the “official” view of the man.
As visitors make their way through the house, they will notice that nearly every room has some sort of Indigenous artifact on display, some easy to overlook, others not so much.
The nursery displays the Macdonald’s cradle, which evokes a somber mood given the tragic death of John Jr. But alongside this poignant reminder of personal heartbreak is a native cradleboard used by Indigenous mothers to carry their babies. And in the same room, former residential school students complain about their experiences on an endless video loop. The goal is to undercut any sympathy we might have for Macdonald in the very bedroom where his son died.
In other upstairs rooms, information panels variously describe Macdonald the man, the politician and nation builder. Whenever his achievements as a nation-builder or statesman are mentioned, however, they are always paired with some sort of attack on his policies, personal character or the era in which he lived. Again, the goal is to belittle Macdonald’s very real and significant feats. A handy glossary explains key terms visitor will repeatedly encounter, including colonialism, racism and genocide.
As Bellevue House’s Visitor Experience Manager Tamara van Dyk told the media “We can’t tell [visitors] how to feel about this history. But we can help them to understand this history…we share facts, non-biased facts.” This is a transparent cop-out. Parks Canada has deliberately constructed the displays to paint Macdonald in the most unfavourable light possible.
Despite all the attention paid to residential schools, there is no mention that during Macdonald’s time a majority of Indigenous students attended day schools, not residential schools. Or that most students dropped out after grade one. This is hardly consistent with claims of genocide, cultural or otherwise.
Also unmentioned is the very successful campaign Macdonald’s government ran to vaccinate every Indigenous Canadian against smallpox. If genocide was his goal, why go to such trouble to save so many Indigenous people from this terrible disease?
Similarly, despite the surfeit of Indigenous content, no mention is ever made of Macdonald’s friendships with many prominent aboriginal Canadians who supported him politically. This includes Oronhyatekha (also known as Burning Sky), who graduated from a residential school and attended the universities of Toronto and Oxford; he campaigned for Macdonald in the 1872 election.
Despite all the above complaints, however, the good news of the renovation outweighs the bad. Most of the irrelevant and randomly inserted Indigenous artifacts are easy to overlook. And those that aren’t are often so absurd that a visitor eventually tunes them out, the way our brains learn to ignore a bad smell. More importantly, the building is in great shape. That alone is reason to cheer.
In its current gussied-up state, Bellevue House will easily outlast our current Liberal government and its obsession with denigrating Canada’s past. That means there is every reason to expect it will be around to welcome future generations of Canadians who want to learn the real story about Macdonald’s true legacy as this country’s most important politician. The man and his house aren’t going anywhere.
Greg Piasetzki is an intellectual property lawyer with an interest in Canadian history. He lives in Toronto and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario. A longer version of this story originally appeared at C2CJournal.ca.
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This article and the replies to it just show the Ignorance Non- Indigenous people STILL have to this day. This is 100% Canada’s history and should be told accordingly. “To leave him alone” as someone said in the replies, is like trying to ignore the blatant racism the government showed towards minorities. Especially ones that owned majority of the land before hand. I don’t think we should exclude John A from history, that would be cowardly and show how no one wants to take accountability for the genocide created at the hands of the government. But I also don’t want to praise him. He helped in colonizing this country and it should be told. With no malice but straight facts. Nothing should be hidden from people because they are embarrassed by their countries past.
I noticed the same theme when we visited Goerges island in Halifax this summer. Most of the displays basically said who awful the white people were. I’m not ignoring of our history but this isn’t the right way to go about depicting what went on.
So here’s what we do we cancel anyone before 1960. Cause obviously they were all racist. Let’s just never mention those dates times places again.
And let’s make it easier for the future generations and just cancel ourselves cause we are all homophobic wank stains.
If anyone has an issue with this this is what happens when we start cancelling people cause we are sooooo much better than them!
In Victoria BC the Feds just handed over $250,000 to a Metis organization to take over the Port Ellice heritage home historical site. The house is (or was at least until the new management) is known as the O’Reilly House after the Irish family who owned the house from 1867 until 1975 when they gifted the house and all its Victorian era contents, to the Govt. The house was originally built by Katie and Charles Wallace in 1861-1862. They went bankrupt and moved out in 1866 presumably taking their possessions with them, before the O’Reilly’s bought the house. Katie Wallace was the daughter of John Work (an Irishman) and his wife Josette Legace. Josette was the daughter of a French Candadian fur trader father and Spokane Nez Pearce native mother. That is the ONLY Metis or indigenous tie to the house’s history. According to the Metis Association of Canada definition, Josette doesn’t qualify as Metis, or its a stretch at best.
But here’s the kicker, the Metis organization as new manager, intent on telling the FN’s and Metis history of Victoria( presumably in order to obtain the grant) has set up a Metis display, as in a” trading post” in the vistor centre on the house’s grounds, with Metis artifacts that are not original to the house. It has plans to de-content the house’s colonial contents to further tell the native story.
Excuse me but doesn’t that sound like replacing displays in the Hockey Hall of Fame with Tennis memorabilia because one of the founder’s parents once played with someone who played with someone at Wimbledon?
Someone needs to remind the Govt not to be in such a tizzy to decolonize our history, especially when the retelling is fraught with inaccuracies and innuendo.
History is just that….history. I agree mistakes were made but the alternatives were few. Sir John A McDonald was one man and trying to undermine the good work he and others did is sad,very sad. They were different times and I’m sure a hundred years from now Canadians will look back at what the Liberals have just done and shake their heads.
If I perceive this correctly, the gist is that public money has been used to propagandize a view of a major figure in the founding of Canada.
This is what all governments do at some time rightly or wrongly.
You can argue for and against Sir John A. as in a High School history lesson. He had many faults but a monster? Too much.
Thank you for this! Agree totally after much reading! As a “cause”, the Liberals chasing after the greatly exaggerated, perhaps completely false genocide mantra, the LPC has diminished considerable sympathy for Indigenous people because thinking persons have realized the impossibility of 20,000 native residents at European arrival could not claim occupier rights to the entirety of our country as they are trying to do. Simply more fatuous opportunism by Justin Trudeau that would have disgusted his father!
The fact that people are placing the blame on one person rather than the government as a whole(one that continues to place unfair assessment and treatment on the indigenous pepples to this very day) shows a lack of willingness to accept fault on the part of the government today for the policies of the past. How can anyone move forward when they still will nit admit to the atrocities their policies created??
John A McDonald was just the man who was the face of the government at the time. Today we have a government unwilling to full accept their role in the atrocities past and present and make amends willingly.. instead they fight every atonement payment in court and waste even more money unnecessarily.
It would be nice to know what government department is responsible for this project and how much they spent for restoration, the display curated and operation. From this story, the former PM rented this house for only one sad year -long enough to lose his child. I wonder how important this particular space was in Canada’s history. Meanwhile the Prime Minister’s Residence in Ottawa has been allowed to deteriorate so badly that it is no longer usable and would require extensive costly renovation. What’s the spending priority for current affordable housing due to lack of federal investment over decades, and including safe sufficient homes with access to clean water for Indigenous Persons. As for the precious “randomly inserted artifacts” of Indigenous life of which the columnist Mr. Piasetzki’s brain learned “to ignore the bad smell,” I agree that these special Indigenous artifacts should be removed and repatriated to their peoples, away from vision of unappreciative Canadian visitors. Let’s leave Sir John A’s story at Bellevue unedited. Like PEI’s popular”Anne of Green Gables House” site for a fictional character, Bellevue could be yet another attraction.
Has anyone discussed the slaughter of British and Canadian forces by Indigenous in retaliation? Isn’t that as poignant?
I second Em’s comment. In every society, there are those (mostly only a small faction) who look for opportunities to take advantage. No country is perfect, and mistakes are made but, overall, I am very proud of our Canadian Heritage.
John A. Actually Sir John A. is HISTORY and at that time society had very different views on what type of activity was “good”, “bad” or “ugly” than they do now.
For better or worse (and I think mostly for better if my history teachers told be the truth) we should leave Sir John alone, as he was and celebrate his memory as one of our primary nation builders.
I’m glad they fixed up the house. Now if we could just fix up the Liberal penchant for changing history we’d be in great shape. We do not need to try to rewrite history to comply with current social trends. What we need to do is to do things that will be worth writing into our history in another 50 or 100 years. Things that move us forward in a positive way.
I applaud this article and statement of facts.
I agree that Sir John A. got an inaccurate bum rap from some quarters. His successes were much greater than his failures. And he should be judged by the norms and standards of his day that were very different and more difficult than today. However, it’s a counterproductive diversion to try to turn history into a diatribe against any of today’s political parties. We need to move on and focus our energies on positive measures to solve the problems of today and building a better tomorrow.
Thank you Mr. Piasetzki for writing this very interesting and informative column. I’ve learned some new history, especially the story of Oronhyatekha. History will remember Sir John A Macdonald very well, while the very small and inadequate man who is our current PM will be mostly forgotten- and soon.
This article is like a breath of fresh air in a world that seems all too quick to embrace cancel culture anywhere and everywhere.