“The grandest thing for his memory will be that his fame needs no monument to extend or to preserve it,” the fourth Prime Minister said. “At the time of his death it was poetically and truthfully said, 'a nation' stands his monument.’ (Cheers.) Of no man of any period can it be more truly said that he was the father and founder of his country.”

You can read Thompson’s tribute to Sir John A. Macdonald below.

Prime Minister Sir John Thompson: I consider it my first duty to tender my congratulations to … the people of Hamilton, for having been the first in the Dominion of Canada to erect and unveil this statue to the eminent statesman whose memory we are to recall today. (Cheers.) I thank you in the name of the government of Canada; I thank you and congratulate you in the name of the people of this Dominion; but my congratulations and thanks are wider still, for I have the pleasure here of voicing the sentiments of millions of British subjects all over the world, who will hail this as a great event and a new milestone reached in the history of the British Empire. (Loud cheers.)

"As time goes on other statues will be raised to his memory in various parts of Canada, and yet the grandest thing for his memory will be that his fame needs no monument to extend or to preserve it. At the time of his death, it was poetically and truthfully said, 'a nation' stands his monument." (Cheers.) Of no man of any period can it be more truly said that he was the father and founder of his country.

"In the first place Sir John's love of Canada and his desire to serve her must be put far in the front of all his characteristics. His daily thought might be expressed in Webster's words: 'Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.'

"'Nothing but our country' in the sense that Canada was to be first of all in every consideration of public policy or personal action. His true and deep Canadianism was the 'pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of tire by night' to the hundreds of thousands whom he led, as no man could have led by a mere party banner. (Cheers.)

"The sight of that statue of the departed leader in your public place … will do honour to this country … and place upon us the responsibility of carrying on — you as electors, us as public men — the task which they laid before them, and in the execution of which they strove with the genius of master hands, guided by the inspiration of heaven which falls upon truly patriotic men. (Cheers.) I thank you, citizens of Hamilton, for the noble work which you have done in erecting, the first statue to Sir John Macdonald. Addressing this vast assemblage which is here to see that statue unveiled, I beseech you that you will learn by looking upon that figure the lessons which he whom it represents desired that his countrymen should learn and should practice: devotion to the interests of Canada our country, and the determination that the banner of England shall continue to wave over this country as long as time shall last." caption id="attachment_1450844" align="alignleft" width="512" Statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, in Hamilton/caption Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.