Very frustrating that Harper went around renaming half the town, with a quarter of it branded with John A. It wasn't enough that he and Cartier already had a bridge, the airport and a bunch of other buildings? No, we needed to give them each a Parkway and Johnny a bank building.
Harper did that after he apologized for the residential school system and after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was established. WTF was he thinking?
I'd like to see the John A. Parkway renamed for his arch-nemesis Louis Riel as a royal F.U. As far as I know, Riel only has one school named after him in Ottawa.
While we're at it, the Georges-Étienne Cartier Parkway should also be renamed for an Indigenous leader, possibly one from the east. The idea of book-ending the downtown with the John A. and Cartier Parkways was to mark the partnership between the two men, Macdonald from English Canada West and Cartier from French Canada East. It would be fitting to flip that around and have an Indigenous Leader bare the name of the western parkway and an Indigenous figure along the eastern parkway.
Note that Cartier was dead by the time the residential school system was established. At this time, I don't think we're aware of what he may or may not have contributed to the Indigenous community's suffering. In any case, he has enough named after him, along with every other white politician of the era.
I would not go as far as removing Macdonald's statue from Parliament or renaming anything else, other than maybe the BMO Building Harper gave him as well (anything named recently when we should have known better). I'm pretty middle of the ground in that whole debate. Put up a plaque. List the good and the bad. Include the residential school system and Indigenous suffering in the history books. And for God sakes, build a monument to the victims of the Residential School system and colonialism. Why are we getting a monument to victims of Communism first?
Side note: renaming the already most popular museum in the Country, the Museum of Civilization to the much more generic History also pissed me off, but obviously we're facing a much broader issue with Macdonald.