Parks Canada will re-open the historic Kingston, Ont., home of Canada’s first prime minister with a new tour examining “racism and sexism” during the Victorian period.
Bellevue House National Historic Site reopens May 18 after closing for the COVID-19 pandemic and then undergoing a $2.1 million renovation.
The new “Unpacking Macdonald”
tour, at $9 a person, “is for people looking to examine topics like social class structures, racism, and sexism in Victorian Canada while looking closer at some of Macdonald’s political decisions,” Parks Canada said on its website, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“Bring an open mind and open heart and join the discussion in this safe space.”
A 2023 Management Plan for the historic home
states, “Every person coming for a visit to Bellevue House perceives Canada and its origins through their own lens: a country of refuge, a land symbolized by beloved icons or a place of pain representing oppression, inequality and intergenerational trauma.”
The plan adds that Sir John A. had a “complicated legacy” and said the site should evolve to connect “past struggles to today’s movements for human rights.”
“To advance this work, Bellevue House will continue to build partnerships with Indigenous peoples and racialized communities, expanding upon a narrative that speaks about Macdonald and themes of colonial power and privilege in his time,” the plan states.
Sir John A. has been the focus of protesters’ anger for several years. Attacks on statues of Canada’s first prime minister began in 2020, with protesters criticizing his role in residential schools and saying he represented a “colonial vision.”
A statue of Sir John A. was
toppled in Montreal in August of 2020 amid protests calling for the defunding of the police and was never re-erected. While the toppling was
condemned by many politicians at the time, a City of Montreal committee decided in 2022 not to put the statue back up.
A year later, another statue of Sir John A. was toppled in Gore Park in Hamilton, Ont., as activists protested a vote by the city council not to remove it. As of June last year, Hamilton had no plans to replace the fallen statue, the Hamilton Spectator newspaper
reported.
A statue of Sir John A. was
also removed from a park in his home city of Kingston in 2021 after a city council vote on the matter and placed in the cemetery where he is buried. Another statue
was removed from a park in Regina that same year.
Elsewhere, Sir John A.’s name was removed from a parkway in Ottawa, his biographical profile was
deleted from the Government of Canada website in 2021, and schools bearing his name, such as the Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia, were renamed.
Despite the outcry from activists, many have defended the legacy of Canada’s first prime minister.
Over 130 experts, including historians and policy specialists,
signed a statement in 2021 condemning the attacks on statues and monuments and calling for a balanced understanding of Sir John A.’s legacy.
“Macdonald’s failures must, however, be weighed against an impressive record of constitution and nation building; his reconciliation of contending cultures, languages, and religions; his progressivism; and his documented concern for and friendship with the indigenous peoples of Canada,” the experts said.
