Last month Karen Dubinsky published a post with us on Kingston’s preparations for commemorating the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth. In that post she mentioned a symposium on “Critical Indigenous Reflections on Sir John A. Macdonald” that was held in November at Queen’s University. Much of that symposium was recorded and has now been placed on YouTube. The full line up includes a talk by artist David Garneau (who will be in Kingston today) and a book launch of Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks as well as panels on Metis relations, artistic interventions, government policy and re-imagining Canada. As an epilogue to our series on Canada’s first prime minister, we’ve embedded the first of these videos (Garneau’s talk) as an entry point into this useful resource.
The common theme of defensiveness – why is it there? Well, we most assuredly know that the literati and the cognoscenti dismissed Macdonald as a hack. Prolific beyond words, he churned out novels and stories at a mind blowing pace his entire life. In the old school reference work World Authors 1950-1970 (published by H.H. Wilson) he says that when starting out as a young writer he kept thirty to forty stories in the mail at all times. What a fine example of self confidence and determination!
http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2015/01/john-d-macdonald-look-at-some-aspects.html#.VNHn89L