This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Paul W. Bennett, March 26, 2025
All of a sudden, the small differences between Canada and the United States seem to matter once again. While flag-waving nationalism gives us a saccharine rush, it’s time to change the tune and stand up for Canada by ending the degradation of our nation-builders and returning their monuments to the public square.
First to be toppled was John A. Macdonald, then Egerton Ryerson. Now, Wilfrid Laurier is being threatened with erasure. Tarnishing their enduring legacies and taking down their statues has wrought unanticipated consequences, which have become visible in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to make Canada the 51st state. It has weakened our collective sense of identity and it’s time to halt the purge.
When it comes to education, the public reputation and legacies of two prominent educators, Egerton Ryerson and his American counterpart, Horace Mann, provide a few salient lessons. While the reputed architect of Ontario’s school system has been cast aside, even by the university that used to bear his name, Mann still stands, while somewhat diminished, as a pillar of the American republic.
My recent research report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), “Historic Injustice,” touched on the subject, but stopped short of connecting the dots. It demonstrated, once again, that Americans tend to show greater respect for, and are kinder to, their most influential nation-builders. What I missed, in the space of a few months, was why this would matter so much for the future of our nation.
Contemporary Canada has been described as a “post-national society” born of immigrants, open to newcomers and less inclined to upholding its founding traditions and institutions. It was best encapsulated in then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s memorable 2015 proclamation in the New York Times Magazine. Canada, he said, could be the “first post-national state,” claiming, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
Trudeau’s 2015 musings hearkened back to Bruce W. Powe’s conception of Canada as a unique post-national state in “Towards a Canada of Light,” which challenged the nationalist model best exemplified in George Grant’s classic 1965 essay, “Lament for a Nation.”
More recently, public intellectual and essayist John Ralston Saul likened this post-nationalist vision to an Indigenous concept of welcome. “Space for multiple identities and multiple loyalties,” is how he explained the philosophy, the roots of which go deep in North American soil, “for an idea of belonging which is comfortable with contradictions.”
Indigenous activism and support for Indigenous rights is much stronger in Canada and drove much of the public policy agenda during the statue-toppling phase from 2015 to the early 2020s. While the legacy of slavery and segregation are seared into the American consciousness, Indigenous injustices and inequalities exert a more potent influence in Canada.
Current trends in protests to remove statues and public figures like John A. Macdonald and Egerton Ryerson in Canada are driven by violence and injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples, most notably through colonial policy, oppressive actions and residential school atrocities. In the United States, Mann has been spared because most of the focus of such protests, driven by Black Lives Matter, has been on symbols of slavery, lingering Confederate values and racial segregation.
Disruptive protests aimed at toppling historical founding figures elicit different policy and civic order responses in the two countries. Following the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, American authorities moved swiftly to protect and safeguard American public squares and monuments, including the Statue of Horace Mann outside of the state capitol building in Boston.
The general pattern in Canada, according to MLI fellow Ken Coates, is one of “general government inaction and disturbing passivity in the face of disruptive protests.” Where protests challenge explicit government mandates, such as COVID vaccinations or diversity in hiring policies, laws are enforced, but if such protests conflict with “soft policy” on protecting historic monuments or pipelines, governments are loathe to act quickly, if at all.
Today’s angry and intolerant times have overridden traditional values of respect for historic nation-builders and tolerance for viewpoints that are at odds with the shifting popular consensus. Politeness and viewpoint diversity are endangered in what Coates describes as “the swirling mess that currently passes for public debate.” Attempts to come to terms with, and weigh the legacies of, historical figures like Ryerson are met with “intransigence and condemnation from all across the ideological and cultural spectrum.”
Serious and nuanced public debates are reduced to “black and white standoffs,” with combatants on both sides ready to pounce on even the smallest deviation from perceived wisdom in the ongoing culture wars. Spooked by protests, politicians take the easy way out, removing statures of Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian slave-owner, in the United States and John A. Macdonald, who favoured Indian residential schools, here in Canada.
With a notable lack of historical accuracy or much of a deep understanding of Ryerson and his times, Canada’s best known education reformer now stands condemned with what Coates termed “venom but little historical balance.” What’s more remarkable is the complicity and compliance of public bodies, including Parks Canada, the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and Library and Archives Canada.
Yet things have started to change recently. A precursor of this change was Darlene Bernard, chief of Lennox Island First Nation in Prince Edward Island, who broke ranks in 2024 by calling for the restoration of the statue of John A. Macdonald in a Charlottetown park that had been removed three years prior.
The looming American threat of manifest destiny exposed by the tariff war may be what turns the tide in the culture war in this country. Signs of the shift are emerging, perhaps best exemplified in the rebirth of Joe Canada’s “I am Canadian” videos, albeit with a “We are Canadian” twist. There’s a dawning realization that a break from the constant “Canada is broken” drumbeat is what we need right now.
The current wave of Canadianism, with its fresh infusion of patriotic fervour, is beginning to open our eyes to the unintended consequence of erasing names and burying troubling aspects of our contested past. When historical balance returns, our first prime minister will be accorded the respect he deserves and the first attempts to sully Laurier’s reputation will likely disappear. The founder of what became Canada’s public school system deserves to be among the first to be restored in the public square.
Paul W. Bennett is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, author of “Historic Injustice: Canada’s misguided betrayal of school system founder Egerton Ryerson,” director of the Schoolhouse Institute, an executive board member of the Canadian Association for the History of Education and an instructor at Saint Mary’s University.