Commentary This is Part 5 of a multi-part series examining Macdonald’s legacy. Previous parts can be found in the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Up until the last several decades, Western historians took considerable satisfaction in recounting stories about people who strove to become better over time. Teachers were unafraid to share heroic accounts of national origins and founding fathers. This is no longer the case. Today, persistent criticism of past decisions and those who made them are the special preoccupation of public intellectuals who feel they alone are free from poor judgement, irrational thinking, or moral turpitude. Given the dominant zeitgeist in Canada’s formative institutions, it was entirely predictable that our progressive establishment would come after the reputation of Sir John A. Macdonald. The guiding principles that informed the actions of John A. represent just about everything 21st-century progressives are against, from the …