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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: [OT] Let's Unbox our First Prime Minister
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:28:19 -0400
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John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada, beginning on 
the day we gained our independence from Britain, July 1, 1867. A 
national icon that every school child learns about (or at least they did 
when I was in school; nowadays, probably not so much). So why is he in a 
box? Or, to be more accurate, why has a statue of him in front of the 
Ontario legislature been covered by a box for the past 4 years?

I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that he was "cancelled" over 
the whole issue of residential schools, the idea held by all the 
enlightened folk in his day that our aboriginal citizens would benefit 
from assimilating into our country by learning English or French and 
learning our ways. That, of course, is NOT today's thinking on these 
things so activists made a point of defacing statues to John A. 
Macdonald. In the case of the Ontario legislature, the Speaker of the 
House decided to box up old John A. (as most of us tend to call him), 
presumably to protect him from further vandalism.

Brian Lilley advocates unboxing John A. He says we need to stop hiding 
our national symbols in these nationalistic times.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y6rCCzphSdY [1 minute]

Maybe they could revert the name of Toronto Metropolitan University back 
to Ryerson Polytechnical University at the same time. (It got renamed 
about the same time John A. got boxed because the man it was named 
after, Edgerton Ryerson, also committed the thought crime of wanting to 
help aboriginals assimilate so he got cancelled too.)

-- 
Rhino