It’s not a great time to be a Sir John A. Macdonald impersonator.
Just ask Brian Porter, a retired elementary school teacher from Brockville, Ont., who used to get booked for 20 to 30 events a year in costume as Canada’s first prime minister. Since 1998, he’s done more than 350 such events; he tracks them in a logbook.
But in recent years, even before the pandemic hit, that’s shrivelled to just a handful. Porter’s last busy year was in 2015, the 200th anniversary of Macdonald’s birth, when he did 29 events. A year later he did just eight events, and by 2018 he was only booked for two.
“That’s a good question,” he said when asked why the demand for his services has largely disappeared. “I don’t really know for sure why.”
Of course, he acknowledges it likely has something to do with the movements that have sprung up in the past few years to have Macdonald’s name removed from public buildings due to Canada’s colonial history with First Nations people.
The anti-Macdonald sentiment was back in the news again this week after a statue of him was toppled and beheaded in Montreal. A Macdonald statue outside Ontario’s legislature has also been vandalized this summer, and was recently boarded up to protect it. Two years ago, the city council in Victoria, B.C., voted to remove a Macdonald statue from outside city hall. There are numerous other ongoing Macdonald controversies around the country.
Unsurprisingly, Porter takes a dim view of calls to remove Macdonald monuments or rename the buildings carrying his namesake.
“Macdonald is not known in this country,” Porter says. “He needs to be better known as the interesting and important human being he was. Much distorted, misleading and inaccurate information is circulating, as the vandalism of his statues continue. He is being portrayed by some as solely a one-dimensional racist.”
His defence of Macdonald echoes that of Richard Gwyn, Macdonald’s foremost biographer, who died in August. Gwyn — who spoke at multiple events where Porter was booked in costume — had pushed back on the idea that Macdonald was a racist figure.
“Hard questions do need to be asked about what (Macdonald) did when the Plains Indians’ food supply vanished with the disappearance of the buffalo,” Gwyn wrote in a 2014 essay for The Walrus. “But conspicuously missing from many accounts of this story is how Macdonald did a great deal for Native communities — and did it far better than those before and, for a long time, after him.”
Porter argues the same and has a lengthy list of quotes and anecdotes he uses when Macdonald is accused of being racist.
“I’m going to defend the guy for sure,” Porter said. “He is worth defending. His accomplishments are enormous.”
Back in 1998, Porter was part of a Civil War era re-enactment troop when he was asked to portray Macdonald at an event at the local museum.
“It was going to be a one-off back in ’98 here at the Brockville Museum and I was thinking, you know, there’s more here I could do with this,” Porter said. “I thought, well maybe I need to put together a better look. Better costuming, more detailed. And I started to learn more about the guy…. I started reading everything I could get my hands on.”
Porter’s wife, Renee, got into the act, portraying Macdonald’s second wife Lady Agnes. At events, Porter plays Macdonald as he was in 1887, speaking about Canada’s accomplishments in the 20 years since confederation.
“I see Macdonald as a very interesting human being,” Porter said. “He was a man with a very good sense of humour, he was a very sociable guy. People liked him and he liked people. He had those personal skills that a good politician needs.”
He added that he doesn’t talk much at events about Macdonald’s notorious drinking habit, which Macdonald eventually managed to kick. “But it always comes up, somebody always brings up the drinking,” Porter says with a laugh.
Porter has taken up the cause of Macdonald’s defence, writing submissions to Queen’s University officials as they consider whether to remove Macdonald’s name from their law building and to councillors in Ontario’s Prince Edward County as they decide the fate of a Macdonald statue in downtown Picton.
“We built a heck of a country here, a really decent country,” Porter said. “We have to stand up and be proud of what we’ve built here. We’ve got a lot of problems to be solved, and we have to get on with solving those problems. But it is possible to stop beating ourselves up and deal with these problems in the usual Canadian way of compromise. It started with John A.’s time and we’ve been pretty good at it over the years.”
As for whether he’ll be booking many appearances as Sir John A. after the pandemic ends, he’s less optimistic.
“I don’t know if there’s much call for it,” he said. “In some cases, people are afraid to invite you now because they don’t want to have a controversy.”
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