"Free John"
Daniel Tate and the cover up of Canada's founding father
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“I do find very worrying the way in which history is being used, it’s used I think often for very bad purposes. It’s used to mobilize one people against another, it’s used to back claims for seizing land from one of your neighbours.” – Historian Margaret MacMillan, in a recent talk with theologian & ethicist Lord Nigel Biggar at the Canadian Institute for Historical Education in Canada
It’s not just historical content distorted by bad actors, it is the entire way history is thought about, taught, and used to legitimize all sorts of nefarious agendas, which forms a broader set of concerns. For instance, a Toronto man recently found himself in trouble over a meaningful act of non-destructive civil disobedience involving a monument to a beloved and needlessly contentious Canadian historical figure. Daniel Tate is an ardent patriot and founder of a civic advocacy group called IntegrityTO, who describe themselves as “a coalition of concerned citizens who want to restore integrity-driven leadership so that Toronto can be a great city once again.” In a minor act of public vandalism, and in a moment of frustration over the disrespect shown to Canada’s boxed up father of confederation, Tate spray painted “Free John” on the plywood hoarding covering the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at Queen’s Park in Toronto. No paint touched the statue itself, just the plywood that hides it away from the public, and protects it from the angry and destructive social justice mob.
Sir John A’s Queen’s Park statue initially became the unseen centerpiece of the current unsightly plywood enclosure after an incident which took place in 2020; three radical social justice activists splashed it with pink paint. It is worth pointing out that this cherished monument to the father of confederation was first installed in 1894. And although Black Lives Matter activists Daniel Gooch, Danielle Smith, and Jenna Reid initially found themselves in hot water over their costly and disrespectful acts of public vandalism (they also painted statues of Egerton Ryerson and King Edward VII Equestrian), all charges were withdrawn in 2021. In their statement to the media the group said, “along with a coalition of artists, the group artistically disrupted statues of slaveholders and monuments to colonialism at Ryerson University and at Queen's Park.” One would think Daniel Tate should be extended the same leniency for his “artistic disruption.”
As it stands, Tate has been criminally charged with mischief under $5000 which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison. Still in the preliminary stages, his next court appearance is scheduled for June 30.
Last month Tate appeared on AM 640’s The Oakley Show where he remarked, “The sad irony of it, people were defacing and vandalizing national monuments with impunity…four or five years ago. No Charges. We were all watching aghast at how this was all happening. And, it was acceptable somehow. And here I am five years later. I didn’t even deface a statue or a monument, it was literally a piece of plywood – the cheapest plywood you could find. And now I’m clogging the criminal justice system with this completely frivolous charge.”
While covering Tate’s case, independent journalist Daniel Bordman said, “This is a great example of 2-Tier policing because if he wrote Free Palestine instead he’d probably be given the key to the city.” And journalist Anthony Furey posted the following on X: “There has been so much lawlessness and disorder on Toronto streets in recent years that goes totally unchecked…But if you write FREE JOHN on a boarded up statue of Sir John A, police handcuff and arrest you on the spot – which is what happened to Daniel Tate the other week.”
This begs the question, if security was on-site to arrest Tate in the immediate moments that followed his minor spray paint transgression, why does Sir John A. need to be boxed up at all? One security guard around the clock would suffice. Does the Queen’s Park premises not already have security? It appears they keep a close eye on Sir John A’s unfortunate wooden container. So, why not free John? Beef up security a little if necessary, but let our first Prime Minister once again be visible and unadulterated in his rightful place of honour. For the sake of our blessed Holy Peter, it’s been five bloody years!
I reached out to Tate yesterday for comment on the situation. He responded:
“This case starkly reveals the moral decay festering within our educational and political institutions. That we now yield to activist pressure and confine our nation’s founding father in a wooden box is not only shameful—it is ominous. It sends a disturbing signal that we are embarrassed by our history, and in doing so, we empower those intent on dismantling the very foundation upon which Canada was built. This is not merely a symbolic failure; it is a collapse of moral leadership. My prosecution should serve as a clarion call: Canada stands at a crossroads. Unless we confront the cultural and historical erosion taking place, we risk a deeper descent into national amnesia and irreversible decline.”
The issue of course extends beyond Statutes. The Toronto District School Board has unsurprisingly embroiled itself in similar controversy. In February, TDSB trustees voted to rename three schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald, Henry Dundas and Egerton Ryerson.
Mark Johnson, the founder of SaveOurHistory.ca, a “non-partisan, grassroots movement dedicated to preserving and celebrating our rich Canadian history by protecting the historical names of our schools,” feels the key issue concerns “the misguided tearing down of our great leaders and the cack-handedness of the TDSB in doing so.” He penned a piece for the National Post where he wrote:
“Their decision was outrageous on many grounds, one of which is that it may be in violation of the bylaw requirement that financial and budgeting information be publicly presented. Equally bad, after I reached out to TDSB trustees asking for them to comment on this apparent violation, they clammed up and have stayed silent for over a month.”
Beyond any financial improprieties and breach of by-laws, the TDSB did not consult with any historians. As per usual, activists do not want to actually consult, they do not want to learn anything. They already know everything, they think. Staged consultations, where social justice activists stack the deck with other activists, are for optics, they are meant to give the impression that a process of discovery, that proceedings and public discussion took place. But the truth is, if authentic historical research, consultation with real experts, and open public discussion were to occur, the activists would not be successful in defaming and erasing Canada’s founding fathers.
Johnson asks and answers the following question:
“How can the TDSB determine and judge 19th-century events without the benefit of historical research? Simple: it was a sham all along, nothing more than the righteous application of a 21st-century woke purity test.”
Save Our History works with other groups, like the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, who are historians concerned with setting the record straight and opposing misleading or fake information that defames Canada’s founding fathers. In a recent CIHE talk with Nigel Biggar and Margaret MacMillan, Biggar had the following to say about the key historical topic most twisted, distorted, and weaponized by the social justice left: the imperial ways of the colonial era,
“For most of history, for most people, empire was a fact of life. Up until the end of the first world war, probably most people lived under empires. Long before Western European nations developed colonial empires overseas in the 18th and 19th centuries, we’ve had empires in the Middle East or the Near East (Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian), Greek/Roman, we had empire in South America and Meso-America (with the Incas and the Aztecs), empire in China. Empire is a universal political form.”
Biggar goes on to explain the indigenous empires. In the Americas, Iroquois “colonizers” attacked other tribes of indigenous people, including the Huron, torturing and killing the men and abducting the women and children. The Comanche, who were known to be particularly brutal, “expanded eastwards” in the 1700s and overwhelmed the Apache. This created what a Finnish historian called “a vast slave economy.” In the 1820s the Zulu expanded westward, crushing other Africans in their path. In 1835, the Maori “slaughtered 10% of the Moriori population and enslaved the rest.”
Considering the level of carnage that has pervaded most of the globe for most of the time humans have been on it, it is eerie and more than a little bit odd this obsession with Canada’s historical record. In historian Patrice Dutil’s new book, Sir John A. MacDonald & the Apocalyptic Year 1885 – a “micro history” which examines in depth John A.’s political maneuvers in the pivotal year of 1885 – the authour laments, “It’s hard to imagine, a reputation being trashed so hatefully, so suddenly and so thoroughly.” Historian Christopher Dummitt responded to this in the National post writing the following:
“And yet, this is exactly what has happened. Across the country, cities have removed Macdonald’s statues, and mobs regularly deface those that remain. Whether it is the names of pubs or law schools — those in authority have decided to dishonour John A. Macdonald — to remove him from a place of public prominence.”
Dutil provides the context that leftist activists are not interested in. When it comes to history, understanding cannot really occur without context. If one is not interested in historical context, what are they interested in? Activists appear not to be after truth or understanding, they do not engage with the works of a Nigel Biggar or a Patrice Dutil, they only wish to “decolonize.” But even worse than ignoring the contextual aspects of history, activists engage in disingenuously selective acts of historical cherry-picking. Dummitt writes, “While other scholars go seeking out the few words Macdonald spoke about the issue and moralize about their racist nature, Dutil actually tries to understand why Macdonald said what he did and how it fits in with what we know about both Macdonald and the world in 1885.”
We are now well past the point where George Orwell quotes can be considered melodramatic. However, with so much Orwellian historical revision and erasure going on, and even though I am aware of the overuse of the following by far too many lazy writers, I cannot help but bring it up again because there is no better more direct or perfect way to say it, nor to encapsulate the implications concerning Daniel Tate’s bold, although somewhat haphazard, spray paint gesture of defiance and Canadian patriotism:
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." – 1984
If we wish to remain free, we must Free John!
Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read Black Fatigue: How one race gets away with far too much bullshit
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Can we start printing T-shirts that say FREE JOHN, with John A's face on it? I 'm all for it.At least lets start a defense fund for Daniel Tate.
Among the pearls of wisdom in James Pew’s article is the following: “As per usual, activists do not want to actually consult, they do not want to learn anything. They already know everything.” When I got in trouble in the school system for defending academic values and historical truth, no one was interested in what I had to say. My employer never talked to me before coming up with dozens of allegations. That I was academically and historically within the canon mattered not at all. It was beside the point. The goal was strict conformity to dystopian woke ideas, such as Canada being a horribly racist society. Nobody wanted to dig for graves or hear from the side of police in shootings of black men. The die was cast. Woke-ism ruled.