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Saturday June 12, 2020

June 20, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 12, 2020

‘Their time has come’: Calls increase for removal of statues linked to colonial legacy

As statues and monuments of leaders from bygone eras are being toppled in response to growing calls to end systemic racism and discrimination, the sentiment is also growing here in Canada.

Sir John A. Macdonald available at Redbubble.com

Just this week, protesters in Belgium vandalized a statue of King Leopold II, whose rule of Congo led to the death of 10 million people. At Oxford University, there are calls to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, an architect of the apartheid. And in Bristol, England, a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was dragged through the streets and dumped into the harbour.

Meanwhile in the United States, several statues honouring Confederate generals and slave owners have also been taken down in response to the anti-Black racism protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd.

Canada is not immune to this, either. A Change.org petition calling for the removal of a Sir John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal has received more than 10,000 signatures as of Wednesday evening.

Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was an architect of the residential school system and led starvation tactics against Indigenous people in the Prairies.

“He was very proactive in starvation of Indigenous people, so why would we want a statue of him?” said Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

David MacDonald, a political science professor at the University of Guelph, told CTV News Channel that he believes these statues should be taken down.

“(Macdonald) certainly was the architect of several genocides in Canada, therefore I think it’s time that we continue to address his legacies and there shouldn’t be bridges and schools and all sorts of things named after someone who so blatantly went out to destroy Indigenous nations in this country,” he said.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plants told reporters on Wednesday that there are no immediate plans to take down the statue, but she is looking at ways to address systemic racism in the community.

“There is also an opportunity to create a dialogue between what was the past and what was right then or what was acceptable then, where at one point we’re like, as a society, ‘enough,’” she said.

November 9, 2018

A similar statue of Macdonald was taken down in Victoria, B.C., in 2018. Its artist said he is ashamed to admit that he didn’t know about residential schools until after he crafted the statue and now believes these monuments should also be taken down.

“We still need to confront our racism towards Indigenous people and if we have to tear down a few sculptures, great,” said John Dann.

Similar petitions in Toronto are calling for the city to rename Dundas Street, which is named after Henry Dundas, who delayed the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and for Ryerson University to take down its statue of the school’s founder Egerton Ryerson,who also helped develop the residential schools. (CTV News)


 

Statues from r/canadapoliticshumour

 

Posted in: Canada, International Tagged: 2020-21, Canada, Christopher Columbus, commemoration, history, Jefferson Davis, John A. Macdonald, memorial Edward Colston, racism, slavery, statues, tribute

Farewell John Baird

February 3, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

John Baird facesTuesday February 3, 2015

Foreign Minister John Baird confirmed Tuesday that he is resigning from his post and will not seek re-election later this year. He’s only 45, but he’s been in politics for what seems like an eternity. In actuality, he’s been in elected office for 20 years, serving in the cabinets of Ontario Premier Mike Harris, and federally with Stephen Harper, as Treasury Board President, Environment Minister, Transport Minister, followed by Foreign Affairs. He was dubbed “Harper’s pitbull”, a label which has stuck to him throughout his time in Ottawa characterizing his aggressive, gruff style, which has been thoroughly enjoyable for editorial cartoonists ever since. Some of my cartoons from the past 13 years: 

November 6, 2002
November 6, 2002
June 9, 2011
June 9, 2011
Friday, January 5, 2007
Wednesday November 6, 2002
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thursday May 19, 2011
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
January 7, 2015
January 7, 2015
Posted in: Canada, Cartooning, Ontario Tagged: cabinet, Canada, environment, foreign affairs, John Baird, politician, resignation, tribute

Friday, April 11, 2014

April 11, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Friday, April 11, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 11, 2014

Jim Flaherty’s personal touch was a rarity on Parliament Hill: Greg Weston

Jim Flaherty was promising improvements to a federal disability savings plan that helps parents of special needs children when the tears started welling behind his glasses, a few drops at first, then more and more until the nation’s finance minister was openly sobbing on live television.

“The politician lost to the parent on that one,” he later told a friend.

Thursday, it was his critics’ turn to cry.

One after another, opposition MPs who have made a career of publicly savaging Flaherty across the floor of the Commons were dissolving in tearful grief over the sudden death of a man they now call a friend.

It was an extraordinary sight rarely seen in Canadian politics, MPs of all political stripes clearly mourning more than the loss of a fellow parliamentarian.

In Jim Flaherty, their loss seemed deeply personal.

Jim FlahertyNDP leader Tom Mulcair completely choked up when he got to the words: “He was a good person.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus, a well-known Commons scrapper, started to tell a story about Flaherty, but fell apart in tears before he could finish.

Liberal finance critic Ralph Goodale said Flaherty had the extraordinary ability to get into a no-holds-barred donnybrook in Parliament “but somehow managed to leave you more chuckling than angry.”

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said tearfully: “I disagreed with his policies, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t very, very fond of him.”

One of Flaherty’s long-time loyal aides, Chisholm Pothier, says in many ways the affable former finance minister was “an old-style politician,” a throwback to the days when MPs could be foes in the Commons and still be friends at the bar.

Pothier says Flaherty wouldn’t hesitate to invite one of the opposition finance critics out for a drink. He liked most of them. And they liked him. (Source: CBC News)

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: death, Editorial Cartoon, Jim Flaherty, Justin Trudeau, obituary, Parliament, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair, tribute

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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