Play reflects Canada’s complex history with Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy [Video]

Just about the time a protective plywood box will be pulled away from the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at Queen’s Park in Toronto, a comedy about the complex history of Canada’s first prime minister will be hitting the stage in southwestern Ontario. 

Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor’s play Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion will begin its summer run at the Blyth Festival on June 18.

It tells the fictional story of an Anishnawbe man who sets off on a “sojourn of justice” to the site of Macdonald’s grave. The man goes on a mission to dig up Macdonald’s bones so he can swap them for a medicine pouch stolen from his grandfather when he entered a residential school decades earlier. 

The play was first commissioned by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa back in 2017. Since then, Macdonald’s legacy has continued to face new scrutiny, with his statue pulled to the ground or splattered with paint in a handful of different …