Ontario town at crossroads over future of John A. MacDonald statue

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An Ontario town is considering bringing a statue of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald back out of storage after it was defaced in 2020 amid a heated debate over the legacy of Canada’s first prime minister.

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Wilmot, a small community outside of Waterloo, Ont., has been mired in controversy since 2013 after a group of citizens offered to privately finance the construction of 22 statues of former Canadian leaders. Macdonald was the first statue constructed for the project, known as the Prime Ministers Path. It was first displayed in 2015, moved in 2016 and put into storage after it was splashed with red paint in 2020. Four years later, the town restarted consultations on the value of the project, and in April will hear recommendations about what to do with the statues of Macdonald and other prime ministers.

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Wilmot could become one of the first municipalities to propose re-erecting a statue of Macdonald after tributes to the founding father were vandalized and torn down across the country.

City council member Steven Martin said he views the conversation unfolding in Wilmot as part of a broader pattern across the country.

“When the Prime Ministers are portrayed, they can represent painful times in peoples’ lives, such as the Residential Schools or even Canada turning down ships of Jewish people during World War II who then went on to their deaths,” Martin told National Post in an email. “I believe that across Canada as we deal with our history and rename streets, buildings and other locations, in order to not glorify painful events, then we are dealing with issues in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

The Macdonald statue was briefly displayed on the Waterloo campus of Wilfred Laurier University in 2015. However, a petition created by a Laurier professor accused the Canadian founding father of playing a central role in the residential school system, eventually leading the school to remove the monument.

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“It is politically and culturally insensitive (if not offensive) to celebrate and memorialize all Canadian Prime Ministers in the form of bronze statues on land that traditionally belongs to the Neutral, Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee peoples,” Jonathan Finn wrote in his online petition that received over 1,000 signatures.

It’s a very complex issue

In 2016, Wilmot’s city council re-located the statue to Castle Kilbride, a Victorian home built by an industrialist in neighbouring Baden, where it was joined by sculptures of former prime ministers Robert Borden, Mackenzie King, Lester B. Pearson and Kim Campbell over the next two years.

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020, and the subsequent summer riots that rocked America, charged debates in Canada about the country’s founding fathers and historic treatment of Indigenous people. In June 2020, the Macdonald statue in Baden was graffitied with red paint, one of a string of vandalisms that targeted Macdonald monuments at the time.

Macdonald became a focal point of anger for many protesters who characterized the former prime minister as having played a central role in discriminatory policies against Indigenous people.

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Historian Patrice Dutil rejects such depictions of Macdonald as ahistorical and an example of Canadians judging historical figures according to modern views and attitudes. “Compared to how his contemporaries treated Indigenous people, Chinese workers and the Métis, Macdonald’s actions were relatively progressive, and it is high time this be recognized,” the senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute wrote in 2023 in response to the removal of a statue in Montreal.

When Wilmot restarted its project in 2024, it hired Land Use Research Associated Inc. (LURA) as consultants to facilitate community conversations — including “tea circles” — with the public to gauge interest. Last Wednesday, it held a meeting with residents to reveal some of the proposals the working group had assembled to deal with the statues and their future in the community.

The meeting included several potential recommendations, including educational signage beside the statues and even leaving red paint on the Macdonald statue. It was the first time community members could see the proposals before the final recommendations are expected to be introduced at a council meeting in April.

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“I think the impression I had,” Councilmen Stewart Cressman told National Post last Thursday, “is it’s a very complex issue.” Cressman said his general impression of community feedback was that residents “didn’t want to see the township spending any more money on the Prime Minister’s Path; it would have to be funded privately.”

“The educational piece,” he continued, referring to the creation of plaques beside the statues, “would likely continue to evolve, and there would be many iterations, and likely anything that would be in, or the potential for things to be included in that, would cause controversy.”

Martin echoed Cressman’s belief that Wilmot residents were increasingly weary of the project’s mounting expenses. Between 2020 and 2024, the project cost the township over $150,000, including over $10,000 in legal expenses as well as nearly $60,000 in storage and statue removal costs. Roughly a quarter of expenditures was covered by a federal grant.

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Wilmot initially paused the installation of statues following the defacement of Macdonald’s statue in 2020 and commissioned a group to conduct a public engagement study polling the community. That report, published the following year, recognized “the unbalanced historical representation within the Prime Ministers Path project” and approved the removal of all “existing statues related to the Prime Ministers Path and to discontinue any future expansion or investment in the Prime Ministers Path as it exists today.” It also encouraged the township to form a diverse “working group … to discuss, develop and suggest plans for the implementation of next steps centred in community cohesion and healing.”

Condemnation of historical Canadian figures accelerated in the wake of media reports in May 2021 that unmarked graves bearing the remains of 215 children were found at a former residential school in British Columbia, although no remains were ever unearthed.

In Charlottetown, the city council unanimously approved the removal of its Macdonald statue despite consultations with local First Nations groups who preferred the inclusion of an Indigenous statue nearby and signage explaining the former prime minister’s role in the residential school system. The following month, demonstrators ripped down a Macdonald statue in Kingston, the founding father’s former hometown. Later that summer, activists destroyed his statue in Hamilton.

Denise Soueidan-O’Leary, a program manager with LURA, wrote the Post commending Wilmot for its commitment to “meaningful conversations, truth and reconciliation, and the potential for collective healing,” noting the town served as a model “reminder that as Canadians, we resolve issues through dialogue, not division. We work toward collaborative solutions, not brute-force victories.”

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