Two of Sir John A. Macdonald’s cabinet ministers, future PM Sir John Thompson and Sir Hector Langevin, were in Haldimand, Ontario on this date in 1889. The pair were feted with an impressive luncheon. During the gathering a message from area First Nation leaders was read out. In the message asked that the visiting ministers pass on their message of gratitude for Macdonald’s granting Indigenous voting rights four years before.
“We desire to thank your government for your statesmanship in granting us the right of the franchise which had hitherto been denied us though we were householders, taxpayers and landowners as our white brethren are,” it read. “We shall be ever grateful for that treasure of justice offered us… Many bad things have been said of us. Your government has defended us and we are sure you will not regret it as years pass away and as we continue in our upward course in citizenship. We ask you to express our regard to our great chief Sir John Macdonald and to say wherein that we have every confidence in our representative and in the government he supports. We trust he may be long spared to direct the affairs of Canada and that you whom we address today have yet many years of honourable and useful life before you.”
The move by Macdonald in granting Indigenous voting rights – admittedly limited by today’s standards – was so progressive it was later removed. These voting rights would not be restored until 1960, under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
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.