Almost everyone has a story to tell about a home renovation project gone wrong. If Sir John A Macdonald was around today, he’d have a whopper.
Earlier this year the federal government re-opened Bellevue House – Macdonald’s one-time home in Kingston, Ontario – after a seven-year renovation. The purpose of the refurbishment, Parks Canada says, is to tell “broader and more inclusive stories about Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.” The real goal is to cancel Macdonald in his own home.
Macdonald and his wife Isabella lived at Bellevue House in 1848-1849 when he was a young elected official prior to Confederation. Unfortunately, it was not a happy time for the young family. The rent was beyond their modest means and their first son, John Jr., died there as an infant; the Macdonalds left Bellevue House shortly afterwards. The house was purchased by the federal government in 1964 and designated as a national historic site in 1995.
After many years of neglect and budget cuts, the site was closed to the public in 2017. This past May marked its official reopening. Like all renovations, there’s good news and bad news to be had.
First, the good news. Macdonald’s old digs look great. Compared to when I first visited in 1978, the new stucco, moulding, panelling, paint and roof work have Bellevue House literally gleaming. The gardens have been enlarged and are now well-suited to a leisurely ramble. The well-lit rooms are packed with decorative and practical articles from Macdonald’s era. And a team of eager young staff are keen to engage with visitors, but they’ll leave you alone if you prefer to wander at your own pace.
As for the bad news, Bellevue House has regrettably become one more battlefield in the Liberal government’s endless war on Canada’s past. It also reveals the apparent requirement under the Trudeau government’s reconciliation policy that Indigenous opinion be inserted into all possible government activities and institutions, regardless of relevance or factual accuracy. It makes for a rather odd visitor experience.
On the path leading to Bellevue House, for example, visitors are confronted with a variety of messages about Macdonald that range from the entirely factual – “We wouldn’t have Canada without him” – to the deliberately provocative – “He was a monster.” Without any context for this commentary, visitors, especially impressionable young schoolchildren, will quickly figure out which responses comprise the “official” view of the man.
As visitors make their way through the house, they will notice that nearly every room has some sort of Indigenous artifact on display, some easy to overlook, others not so much.
The nursery displays the Macdonald’s cradle, which evokes a somber mood given the tragic death of John Jr. But alongside this poignant reminder of personal heartbreak is a native cradleboard used by Indigenous mothers to carry their babies. And in the same room, former residential school students complain about their experiences on an endless video loop. The goal is to undercut any sympathy we might have for Macdonald in the very bedroom where his son died.
In other upstairs rooms, information panels variously describe Macdonald the man, the politician and nation builder. Whenever his achievements as a nation-builder or statesman are mentioned, however, they are always paired with some sort of attack on his policies, personal character or the era in which he lived. Again, the goal is to belittle Macdonald’s very real and significant feats. A handy glossary explains key terms visitor will repeatedly encounter, including colonialism, racism and genocide.
As Bellevue House’s Visitor Experience Manager Tamara van Dyk told the media “We can’t tell [visitors] how to feel about this history. But we can help them to understand this history…we share facts, non-biased facts.” This is a transparent cop-out. Parks Canada has deliberately constructed the displays to paint Macdonald in the most unfavourable light possible.
Despite all the attention paid to residential schools, there is no mention that during Macdonald’s time a majority of Indigenous students attended day schools, not residential schools. Or that most students dropped out after grade one. This is hardly consistent with claims of genocide, cultural or otherwise.
Also unmentioned is the very successful campaign Macdonald’s government ran to vaccinate every Indigenous Canadian against smallpox. If genocide was his goal, why go to such trouble to save so many Indigenous people from this terrible disease?
Similarly, despite the surfeit of Indigenous content, no mention is ever made of Macdonald’s friendships with many prominent aboriginal Canadians who supported him politically. This includes Oronhyatekha (also known as Burning Sky), who graduated from a residential school and attended the universities of Toronto and Oxford; he campaigned for Macdonald in the 1872 election.
Despite all the above complaints, however, the good news of the renovation outweighs the bad. Most of the irrelevant and randomly inserted Indigenous artifacts are easy to overlook. And those that aren’t are often so absurd that a visitor eventually tunes them out, the way our brains learn to ignore a bad smell. More importantly, the building is in great shape. That alone is reason to cheer.
In its current gussied-up state, Bellevue House will easily outlast our current Liberal government and its obsession with denigrating Canada’s past. That means there is every reason to expect it will be around to welcome future generations of Canadians who want to learn the real story about Macdonald’s true legacy as this country’s most important politician. The man and his house aren’t going anywhere.
Greg Piasetzki is an intellectual property lawyer with an interest in Canadian history. He lives in Toronto and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario. A longer version of this story originally appeared at C2CJournal.ca.
