The one-time home of John A. Macdonald was re-opened on Victoria Day with an emphasis on "identity politics," a Toronto political science professor complains.The Bellevue House in Kingston, Ontario was built by businessman Charles Hales in 1840 and built in the Tuscan Villa style. It was rented in 1848-49 by John A. MacDonald as a home for his wife and new son. Sadly, he died there. The structure was declared a Federal Heritage Building in 1967.After six years of renovations, Parks Canada reopened the house on Victoria Day. Patrice Dutil, Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, first visited as a Grade 7 student more than 50 years ago and was disappointed at the latest presentation.In an article first written for The Hub, the Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute called the house a "spectacle steeped in identity politics" that portrays MacDonald "among Canada's worst-ever villains."The website for the house has indigenous greetings following 'hello' and calls on visitors to engage "in conversations about the complex and lasting legacies of Canada's first prime minister..The problem, Dutil writes, is that much of Macdonald's time and legacy is neglected, such as biligualism, nation-building, Confederation, the politics of uniting a country, economic challenges of the time, emigration out of Canada in those times, the hardships of women and children in those days, and how anyone who survived to age ten was expected to work thereafter."Instead, the re-opening of the historic Bellevue House provides yet another embarrassing display of national flagellation, triggered by the adoption of the Trudeau government’s Framework for History and Commemoration (2019), a short-sighted guideline not designed to enlighten but instead to demonize Canada’s past and those who (mostly volunteered) to preserve it," says Dutil.Dutil said the Trudeau government had many options for the house it closed in 2017, including selling the house or donating it to the city or nearby university, but re-opened it with a clear purpose following consultations with indigenous groups."The opening ceremonies were clear: the mission of the reborn national site is not to celebrate Kingston’s most important (by far) citizen, a man who led a national party to six electoral majorities and who was joyously celebrated in his own lifetime even by his adversaries, but to trot out the usual tropes: he was a racist, a drunk, a man who hated Indigenous peoples to the point of starving them or forcing them to go to school. A man who probably did not like women or immigrants either," Dutil writes."Not surprisingly, there is a display about residential schools. Academic Channon Oyeniran gave introductory remarks at the reopening ceremony and talked about how the event was a 'testament' to the 'rewriting of this history'. She was being honest. No known historian of Macdonald, Kingston, or Victorian Upper Canada was even invited."History's rewrite is a warped depiction, according to Dutil."The reality is that Bellevue House is a fake. ...There are no Macdonald artifacts on display (except, maybe, a crib) because the family was house-poor and had little in the way of furniture—Macdonald was 34 years old, barely earning a living as a lawyer, with no money to buy the expensive items that are now on display and presented as totems of privilege," Dutil says."To add insult to injury, Bellevue House will now be used to heave all the ills of the Victorian era on Macdonald’s shoulders. Ignoring the fact that he was the product of democracy, today the government of Canada, which he helped create, continues to ransack the history of the country and goes out of its way to ensure Macdonald gets a kicking."Dutil, who's book about Macdonald is coming out in the fall, says the current prime minister has failures of his own to account for."The debacle at Bellevue House shows just how Prime Minister Trudeau continues to lead the march of the historical boodle brigade," Dutil said."Among his final gestures will be this fiasco at Bellevue House. For this government cannot miss an opportunity, however small, to kneecap its first prime minister’s reputation. On the other hand, there will be plenty of opportunities to boycott Bellevue House."
