Quote:
Originally Posted by passwordisnt123
In reality John A. was a petty drunk who happened to be extremely fortunate in his political life and extremely unfortunate in his private life. His three principal professional accomplishments were (1) being in the right place at the right time to secure leadership of the one federal party that was all-but-guaranteed to win him political power, (2) being corrupt enough to keep power once he had it, and (3) hanging Louis Riel.
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1) He became leader of the Liberal Conservatives in 1857, and their victory was hardly all but guaranteed, he was in and out of office three times before confederation. 2) He lost the 1873 election because of a corruption scandal 3) Riel was hanged in 1885, he had played a leading role in Canadian politics for 30 years at that point.
If you’re going to claim Macdonald made no contribution to the political events he is associated with (Confederation, the Constitution, the CPR, the National Policy, etc) then you should present an alternative theory of others who accomplished these tasks.
Heavy drinking was fairly common in the 19th century. The introduction to the Burns documentary on prohibition provides a good overview.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GECsin42oS0
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