The Bank of Canada is erasing Sir John A. Macdonald — and our history
Sir John A. Macdonald created the Northwest Mounted Police (NWMP — later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — RCMP as we know them today). Macdonald managed to unite the country in the face of knowing that after the US Civil War, the Americans had a standing army of one million men. They could easily have invaded Canada and claimed the whole territory.
Macdonald deserves to be on the ten-dollar bill, not Viola Desmond, nor the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. The Bank of Canada honours a woman who left Canada for greener pastures in New York City and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that has denied Canada the fundamental human right — the presumption of innocence — on the matter of the alleged “genocide” that took place at Indian Residential Schools.
Retiring Canada’s first prime minister from the $10 bill is more than a currency change — it’s another step in rewriting the nation’s past.
Portrait of Sir John A. Macdonald (1889): Henry Sandham