Too many Canadians have a positive view of John A MacDonald & I can only assume that a lot of those people had huge gaps in their education when it came to Canadian history. Some of them, doubtless, are just racist, but the official history needs to catch up with reality.
To John A, the only Canadians who counted were wealthy, white, Anglophone, British, and Protestant. He did everything in his power to force a country into existence that met those qualifications. Where Canada ended up otherwise, it was because of people working against him.
He was NOT in favour of poor people having the vote. In 1867 they couldn't. He had to lose an election to the other party for (white, male) non-landowners to get the vote. This was his sincere belief rather than political expedience. The larger electorate reelected him later.
John A wasnt the only or even the most white supremacist Canadian politician of his time. But HE was the one who stole the West, sent the army after the Metis, signed into law the system that kept Indigenous people starving & trapped on reserves that were too small & unproductive
The genocide that cleared the West for white settlers (mostly white, not exclusively white, but definitely not Indigenous) was one of John A's main projects. I don't want to let everyone else off the hook. He didn't do it alone. But he was signing the cheques.
He also blocked Francophone expansion in Canada as much as he was able. A huge part of John A's part in the Riel Rebellion was his manipulation of events to keep Francophones out, which is why so many Quebecois supported Riel. They were well aware of the consequences.
The Canadian collective identity radically changed circa 1967. We tend to think of ourselves as a "nation of immigrants," a "hyphenated nation," (which still conveniently sidelines Indigenous people but anyways) but for the first 100 years that was an alien concept.
It's not wrong to describe John A MacDonald as an avatar of Canadian identity at its founding. But we were founded as an exploitative, colonialist, white supremacist nation, and we ought not to forget that.
