The guest of honour at the celebrations, of course, was the Prime Minister of the day, Sir Mackenzie Bowell. Earlier in the year, on Canada’s birthday, Bowell had also delivered an address at the dedication of Macdonald of Kingston’s statue on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

“A nation which shows respect for her public men and for the memory of her illustrious dead, is a nation which possesses within itself one of the elements which make a strong, rich and happy people,” Prime Minister Bowell said in his Kingston speech. “Canada possesses to a great extent that qualification which we find among the powerful peoples of the earth. Canada has not forgotten her dead; Canada has not forgotten Sir John Macdonald, the great statesman, the most illustrious of her sons…The history of Sir John Macdonald's life is the history of Canada. If you read one you read the other. His name is connected with every step which Canada has made in the great highway of development, progress and prosperity.”

Bowell concluded his address by quoting from a poem penned on June 10, 1891, only four days after the first Prime Minister’s death.  

“Citizens of Kingston, I thank you for the honour you have this day paid to the memory of my old chief. I appreciate it, more, perhaps, than you imagine, for with a full heart I can say that the longer I knew him, the more I admired him. I shall ever hold him in affectionate remembrance; and can, in unveiling this statue, which has been erected in perpetuation of his name, with truth quote the words of a Canadian poet [William Wilfred Campbell], when in singing his fame he said:

'God gave this highest honour To the Nation, that upon her

He was spared to lay the magic of his hand;

Then to live to see the greatness

Of his noble work's completeness,

Then to pass to rest beloved by his land.

With banners draped and furled,

Mid the sorrow of a world,

We lay him down with fitting pomp and state,

With slumber in his breast,

To his long, eternal rest

We lay him down, this man who made us great.’"

Kingston’s Mayor of the day, Clark William Wright, was the last speaker of the momentous day.

Mayor Clark: "On behalf of the citizens of Kingston, I am here today to accept from the Unveiling Committee, the magnificent memorial to the late Right Honorable Sir John A. Macdonald, G.C.B., which is now placed in our City Park. It is a proud satisfaction to feel that it is not the result of any political organization, but that Reformers and Conservatives have gone hand in hand in this matter to pay a fitting tribute and do honour to the great statesman who represented our city for nearly forty years in the affairs of this Dominion. Representing as I do the same city municipally, it is with a just feeling of pride that I find the duty falling to my lot of receiving this memorial on behalf of the citizens of Kingston knowing as I do that it will be gratefully received by them, and ever be remembered as a token which will always represent to us in a substantial manner the well merited opinions of our fellow-Canadians towards our Sir John as he was familiarly known to us. It stands as a monument to-day a tribute to the memory of a man valued by all true Canadians who recognized that his talents and abilities were directed as he believed for the best interests of Canada and the Empire.

I trust that it may be an incentive to the generation now growing up, and for many years to come, to follow the noble example of that illustrious man, and may the words now engraved on that pedestal live forever in the breasts of all true Canadians 'A British subject I was born, A British subject I will die.'

I can well recall the occasion when the remains of the dead Chieftain were brought to our city as the last resting place, and the many evidences that were then shown to us of the profoundest sorrow felt by those who in his life had been opposed to him politically as well as by his political friends.

As Chief Magistrate I accept charge of the statue, and will say in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, that I voice the feelings of the entire city when I express my gratitude for the magnificent memorial which is now handed over to the people of Kingston."