John A. Macdonald and the First Nations

In the month that marks the 200th anniversary of John A. Macdonald's birth in 2015, a review of Canada's first prime minister's relationship with the First Nations is most timely. A growing awareness of Aboriginal Canada has led to increased interest in this topic, but no full-study exists. A number of scholars currently argue that the Macdonald administration had a negative attitude toward the First Nations and Metis.

In a 2013 contribution to the Globe and Mail, for example, James Daschuk (When Canada used Hunger to Clear the West, 19 July 2013) identifies Macdonald as one of those most responsible for the horrors inflicted upon the Aboriginal people on the prairies. He concludes "that modern Canada is founded upon ethnic cleansing and genocide."

This joint presentation takes a biographical approach to the question of Macdonald and the First Nations. Don Smith will examine our first prime minister's personal contact with the First Nations from his boyhood to the troubles of 1885. Macdonald will be judged by the standards of his day, not our own. Smith's full text appeared in the new volume released in October, edited by Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall, John A. Macdonald @ 200: New Reflections and Legacies. Allan Sherwin's biography, Bridging Two Peoples (2012), specifically examined the relationship of Macdonald with Dr. Peter E. Jones (1843-1909), the important Mississauga chief and medical doctor.

Part of the FPST Lecture series School Of Community and Public Affairs (SCPA).

About the presenters

Allan Sherwin is a Professor Emeritus of Neurology, McGill University

Donald Smith, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Calgary, and member of the Order of the University of Calgary (awarded in 2013), taught Canadian History at the University of Calgary from 1974 to 2009, with special interest in the history of Aboriginal Canada, Quebec, and the history of Calgary and Southern Alberta. Born in Toronto he was raised in Oakville, Ontario.  He obtained his Honours B.A. in Modern History from the University of Toronto in l968; his M.A. from Université Laval in Quebec City in l969; and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in l975. His wife is Nancy Townshend, and they have two sons David and Peter.  He and his family live in Calgary. His publications include five biographies on individuals connected with Aboriginal Canada, and a history of Calgary, entitled Calgary’s Grand Story. The Making of a Prairie Metropolis from the Viewpoint of Two Heritage Buildings (2005). The Ontario Historical Society awarded him the 2013 Donald Grant Creighton Award, which honours the best biography or autobiography highlighting life in Ontario, past or present, published in the last three years, for Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada (2013), in June 2014.  In October 2014 he was given the 2014 Floyd S. Chalmers Award for Mississauga Portraits, by the Champlain Society, for the best book written on any aspect of Ontario history in the preceding calendar year.