How you have changed since I was your MP, back in 1878 -82 -- you're all grown up now! Yet - not so much. Many wise, well-educated, hard-working folks lived here 140 years ago, in civilized homes full of books and art, some even had pianos brought all the way around the Cape. I'm sure there are some residents like that today -- literate, temperate, cosmopolitan. I recognize a few trees too, which were mere saplings back in my day. Their survival is miraculous, given the vast stretches of pavement one sees now.
That my statue survived as long as it did may also be surprising. Its removal in 2018 is not surprising, given the tenor of the times -- nor, for me, is it a matter of regret.
The bad time was not when my statue (from the Latin "stare": to stand) was stood-down; the bad time was when it was put up. I had to stand immobile, as cold stone, I who had once been flesh and blood. I was even called "fiery" in my time, full of heat and lust for life and for work. Making a nation out of widely scattered regions, gathering together an educated populace from folks of many backgrounds, harmonizing quarrelling political parties and meshing liberal with conservative -- that was not easy. Who knew that of all my sins and weaknesses, it would be the part about educating the populace that would bring hatred on my head in the 21st century? I came from the Scottish tradition that believed education, learning, scholarship and literacy were to be shared among all races. How could I have known it would somehow become wrong not to have left the aboriginals out? I still don't get it.
But as I say, it was not being removed that bothered me, it was being erected as lifeless rock in the first place. As Prime Minister, binding provinces together through a railway (British Columbia would be American Columbia had we not got that railway built) it was my job to "put out fires", not to become rock. After becoming, like everybody does, dead meat and crumbling bone I then had to become stone, and stand alone in the midst of the gawking crowd. Better to be granted the dignified anonymity of death. I like it best when people walking by on the street don't notice me, to tell you the truth.
We public figures never get to retire from the public gaze. As statues we must stand for decades while the curious (and the incurious) stream past us. Facial reactions change as people respond like puppets to the ideologies of each era. One year they're all taking your picture, and the next they only stop to glare. Some even scrawled scurrilous messages on my plaques. Thousands of other Canadian "Johns" and "Macdonalds" get to rest in peaceful privacy, not molested in sculptural form, and I confess to envying them. Being taken down as a statue gave me in a counterintuitive way something of a lift. Being stationary on a plinth in the first place was the come-down, for one who was once so alive.
My real monument is Canada, great nation which I and others molded together. I understand, Victoria, that Canada is well-thought of across the world these days, especially among the millions who live without such niceties as education, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. Being one of those who secured those blessings is monument enough for me. The standing legal statutes are my memorial. History itself is my memorial, however some folks may want to obfuscate history with ideology.
I've been in the actual "fuscus" (dark) these past many months -- in a dark storage-room owned by the Municipality of Victoria. But it's been a relief to lie down. Now please excuse me while I continue to rest in this moment of obscurity, for it may not last. I've heard that I still have admirers and they want me standing upright again. Others meanwhile are preparing a plaque of insults about me to accompany my resurrection. It all sounds very tribal and childish, so who knows how well-rested I may need to be in future?
Sincerely yours,
John A. Macdonald, PM
