Skip to content

Nobody venerating Sir John A. MacDonald statues

There aren’t flocks of white-hooded KKK members surrounding the statue of our first prime minster
8433142_web1_Letters-logo-2-660x440

Nobody venerating Sir John A. MacDonald statues

Re: “Removing Sir John A. MacDonald statue not historical erasure”, (Citizen, Sept. 6)

The writer’s argument is essentially a strawman fallacy. The Romans had statues built of their leaders, and people bowed down to them like idols. Nobody does this now. There aren’t flocks of white-hooded KKK members surrounding the statue of our first prime minster, offering incense over his views on First Nations. Nobody looks at it with the intention of venerating him, period.

If racism was Sir John A.’s sole claim to fame, the writer might have a point, but it isn’t. People pay to go to museums; why should we hide our history behind a paywall? Orwell would be spinning in his grave; I imagine some people either didn’t read 1984, or if they did read it, they didn’t get it. Some monuments were made of people who were practitioners of adultery. Adultery has always been wrong. Should their names and statues be scrubbed also?

Speaking of KKK members, there are buildings in the United States named for former late senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia, died in 2010), who was a Grand Kleagle in the KKK in the 1940s. Should these buildings also be renamed? The razing of Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban was done because the Buddhas were “idols” and their existence was immoral and thus offensive. We should be better than the Taliban.

April J. Gibson

Duncan