Glad Sir John A is gone

I do not agree with Gladys Hill's letter "Don't tear down history," May 29.

I am happy that the statue of Sir John A McDonald is no longer sitting in front of Victoria's city hall. He was responsible for the start of a very dark time in Canadian history. He was responsible for cultural genocide. Why would we honour that with a statue? How does that make our First Nations citizens feel to see a statue of the man who directly led their families into harm?

University of Ottawa professor Brenda Macdougall wrote on this topic: “Why are we so threatened? The argument that we are ‘erasing’ history doesn’t wash. History doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it is not a set of ‘objective’ facts that frame a natural or organic story... the idea that we can’t hold historical figures to contemporary moral/values is just wrong. We select people to honour based on our contemporary or living values, not those held by those figures of the past and their society. To argue this position ignores the reality that there are always conflicting values, present and past.”  

Gladys, if you miss him so much I would recommend picking up a history book.

Removing a statue is not erasing history. Instead, it is an act that shows we have changed, and we as Canadians stand together and do not tolerate racist behaviour.

Jasmine Schmidtz