John A. Macdonald - Legacy and Tributes

Legacy and Tributes

Macdonald served just under 19 years as Prime Minister, a length of service only surpassed by William Lyon Mackenzie King. Unlike his American counterpart, George Washington, no cities or political subdivisions are named for Macdonald (with the exception of a small Manitoba village), nor are there any massive monuments. A peak in the Rockies, Mount Macdonald at Rogers Pass, is named for him. In 2001, Parliament designated 11 January as Sir John A. Macdonald Day, but the day is not a federal holiday and generally passes unremarked. Macdonald appears on the present Canadian ten-dollar bill. He also gives his name to the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, and to Ontario Highway 401 (the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway), though those facilities are rarely referred to using his name.

A number of sites associated with Macdonald are preserved. His gravesite has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada. Bellevue House in Kingston, where the Macdonald family lived in the 1840s, is also a National Historic Site administered by Parks Canada, and has been restored to that time period. His Ottawa home, Earnscliffe, still stands and is today the official residence of the British High Commissioner to Canada. Statues have been erected to Macdonald across Canada; one stands on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. A statue of Macdonald stands atop a granite plinth originally intended for a statue of Queen Victoria in Toronto's Queen's Park, looking south on University Avenue. Macdonald's statue also stands in Kingston's City Park; the Kingston Historical Society annually holds a memorial service in his honour.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal believes that Macdonald's true monument is Canada itself: "Without Macdonald we'd be a country that begins somewhere at the Manitoba-Ontario border that probably goes throughout the east. Newfoundland would be like Alaska and I think that would also go for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. We'd be buying our oil from the United States. It would diminish our quality of life and range of careers, and our role in the world would have been substantially reduced." Macdonald's biographers note his contribution to establishing Canada as a nation. Swainson suggests that Macdonald's desire for a free and tolerant Canada became part of its national outlook: "He not only helped to create Canada, but contributed immeasurably to its character." Gwyn said of Macdonald,

his accomplishments were staggering: Confederation above all, but almost as important, if not more so, extending the country across the continent by a railway that was, objectively, a fiscal and economic insanity ... On the ledger's other side, he was responsible for the CPR scandal, the execution of Louis Riel, and for the head tax on Chinese workers. He's thus not easy to scan. His private life was mostly barren. Yet few other Canadian leaders—Pierre Trudeau, John Diefenbaker for a time, Wilfrid Laurier—had the same capacity to inspire love.