A Few Facts Every Canadian Should Know about Sir John A Macdonald

For most of Canada’s history, Sir John A. Macdonald was rightly honoured as Canada’s first prime minister and the most important of the Fathers of Confederation.

He is widely considered to have written a majority of the terms of Confederation. His government negotiated the purchase of Rupert’s Land (most of Northern and Western Canada) and constructed the Canadian Pacific Railway which in turn brought British Columbia into Confederation. In short, he gave us most of the land area that we know as Canada today.

To summarise the view of his biographer Richard Gwyn; ‘No MacDonald, no Canada.’

More recently, his reputation has come under attack, largely for his alleged mishandling of Indigenous issues. These include residentials schools, claims of cultural genocide and even, occasionally, actual genocide.

However, a closer review of the historical record, particularly records of the government section formerly known as the Department of Indian Affairs, shows that such claims do not stand up to scrutiny.

Look first at the residential schools. The construction of the Indian day and residential schools was part of a larger social movement in the 1870s to require that all children have at least four years of schooling. The movement reflected the public’s belief that certain basic skills were needed to succeed in a society rapidly changing from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial.

The system of day and residential schools was intended to provide Indigenous children with the same basic skills and opportunities.

The federal government began building Indian schools in the 1870s. It eventually operated more than 300 on-reserve day schools and 80 residential schools that were intended to serve students from more remote, sparsely settled areas.

The majority of Indigenous students attended day schools and went home to their parents each night. The remainder attended residential schools and were sent home for a two-month summer holiday and, in some cases, Christmas and Easter.

However, in both the day schools and the residential schools, as many as 40% or more of students dropped out after grade one, and few made it to grade five. This was true in 1891 when Macdonald died. It was still true 60 years later, in 1950, when the government had begun closing the residential schools on the grounds they were expensive and inefficient.

In short, a system in which most students attend day schools and where most of those in day or residential schools attend for only one year can hardly be considered a program of genocide (cultural or otherwise).

Interestingly, in 1915, an American government representative sent to study the Canadian Indian school system praised the Canadian policy for its success in preserving Indigenous culture — unlike the American approach, which was intended to “obliterate his racial identity.”

As to the deaths of students at residential schools, children did die from disease and accidents. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported a confirmed 3,200 deaths among the 150,000 Indigenous students who attended residential schools between 1880 and the 1960s. A mortality rate of about 2 per cent overall.

At the same time, the mortality rate for school-aged non-Indigenous children in the late 1800s and the early 1900s was lower — but not by much. It was as high as 2.5 per cent in the late 1880s, dropping to below 1 per cent by 1940.

Given that the overall Indigenous death rate today on reserves is nearly two times higher than that for non-Indigenous persons in Canada, the 2 per cent mortality rate in the residential schools is unexceptional.

The higher mortality, then and now, is largely the result of there being few employment opportunities on many remote reserves. The resulting welfare economy based on government subsidies, leads to poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, addiction and family breakdown and violence.

Alcohol abuse had officially been recognized as a disaster for Indigenous people in Canada as early as a British colonial commission in the 1830s. As a result, the sale of alcohol to Indigenous people in Canada was banned for more than 140 years, by Macdonald’s government and others, until the ban was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada on the basis that it was discriminatory.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), caused by the mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy, exists on reserves today at levels 10 to 100 times higher than the rest of Canadian society. FAS results in children with mild to severe learning and behavioural problems, leading in turn to high rates of violence (including spousal and sexual abuse), addiction and suicide.

The initiatives of Macdonald’s government to save tens of thousands of Indigenous lives are equally inconsistent with the notion that he had any interest in genocide.

Smallpox killed thousands of Indigenous people in Canada in some pre-Confederation years. Macdonald’s government initiated a program that ran for more than 20 years to ensure that every Indigenous person in Canada, no matter how remote their location, was vaccinated against it. Macdonald’s national vaccination program ended that threat.

Similarly, when the buffalo population collapsed in 1880, Macdonald immediately initiated what was certainly the largest famine relief operation in Canadian history. At one point, it was estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 Indigenous people depended on the program. It should be noted that the program was beset by the usual missteps, incompetence and corruption that often occur in a hastily organized government program. However, even one of his harshest critics, James Daschuk, in his 2013 book Clearing the Plains : Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, conceded that the program saved thousands of lives and avoided a “region wide mortality.”

Macdonald is also criticized for providing “only” half rations to those who were off-reserve. However, under the treaty terms, only those who were on-reserve in compliance with the treaty were entitled to rations. In short, he provided rations when he was under no treaty obligation to do so.

A stark difference between the Canadian settlement experience and that of the Americans is the absence of Indian Wars. The Americans fought a series of “Indian wars” over a period of a century in which 60,000 Indigenous people and 40,000 settlers and soldiers died.

Macdonald was determined to avoid such bloodshed. His government’s policy was to ensure that treaties were signed and in place before allowing settlement in Western Canada.

In addition, his government created the North-West Mounted Police to deter incursions from the United States and to protect the legal rights of both Indigenous peoples and settlers once settlement began. As the famous Siksika chief Isapo-muxika (Crowfoot) stated in 1877: "The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter."

As a result, there were no deaths in Indian Wars in Canada.

It should also be noted that Macdonald was close friends with two prominent Indigenous persons of his time.

One was Oronhyatekha (“Burning Cloud”), who attended the Mohawk Institute Residential School, obtained a medical degree from the University of Toronto and then attended Oxford University. He later named one of his children after Macdonald. In the 1880s, Oronhyatekha became the president of one of the largest financial institutions in the world (the Independent Order of Foresters). Oronhyatekha campaigned on behalf of Macdonald in the 1872 general election.

The second was Kahkewaquonaby (also known as Peter E. Jones), the Head Chief of the Mississauga of New Credit, who received his medical degree from Queen’s University in 1866. Kahkewaquonaby acted as a political organizer for Macdonald and consulted with him on changes to the Electoral Franchise Act of 1885 which extended the vote to some Indigenous people in Canada. As Egerton Ryerson, a close friend for 30 years stated in his funeral sermon, Jones had “enjoyed the esteem of, and had access to, every class of Canadian society.”

It is hard to conceive of such friendships and political support existing if Macdonald harboured the ill will towards Indigenous people in Canada that his critics suggest.

An objective assessment of Macdonald’s record shows that, far from engaging in genocide, his policies likely saved more Indigenous lives than those of any other prime minister.