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Parks Canada Tries to Cancel Sir John A. Macdonald in his Own Home

Published

8 months ago

28 minute read

From the C2C Journal

By Greg Piasetzki

“You can’t go home again,” American novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote. Should the same advice apply to the home of Canada’s most important political personality? Greg Piasetzki first visited Bellevue House, one-time Kingston abode of Canada’s founding father Sir John A. Macdonald, when he was a university student in the 1970s. Now, following a controversial renovation of the site by Parks Canada that aims to tell “broader, more inclusive stories about Canada’s first prime minister” – a makeover that includes signs denouncing Macdonald as “a monster” in his own home – Piasetzki returns to Bellevue House to take the measure of the changes.

When my wife and I were students at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1978, we often spent our weekends enjoying the city’s many delightful amenities, including sailing on Lake Ontario and visiting local historic sites. Among the places we frequented was Bellevue House, the one-time home of Kingston’s most famous resident and Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

Built in 1840 by a wealthy local merchant and rented to Macdonald and his wife Isabella in 1848-1849, the house is a striking example of the Italianate style of architecture that was new at the time and quickly became popular among the well-to-do. With expectations that Kingston might soon become the capital of Canada, the ambitious Macdonald settled into the glamourous residence as a recently-elected legislator for Canada West (present-day Ontario) in pre-Confederation Canada.

Bellevue House was the Kingston, Ontario home of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, (top left) and his wife Isabella (top right) in the 1840s; it was later purchased by the federal government ahead of Canada’s 1967 Centennial and designated a National Historic Site in 1995. At bottom, the house circa 1891. (Source of bottom photo: Courtesy of Agnes Etherington Art Centre)

It was not a happy time for the young family, unfortunately. The rent on the house was beyond their modest means and their first son, John Jr., died there as an infant. The Macdonalds left Bellevue House shortly afterwards. The house remained a private residence until the federal government purchased it in 1964 and turned it into an historic park as part of Canada’s 1967 Centennial celebrations; it was designated a national historic site in 1995. When we first visited, Bellevue House looked every one of its 138 years.

Despite its fascinating backstory, Bellevue House in 1978 was a rather dreary experience. There was no bright and airy visitor centre on the grounds to welcome guests, as there is now. The house itself was poorly lit and signage inside said little about Macdonald or his many accomplishments. (Perhaps because most visitors learned all about him in school.) Several of the upstairs rooms were closed to the public and the washrooms were located in a grim basement. The surrounding gardens were also quite spartan. Visitors mostly came to admire the architecture and period furnishings (or what they could make out in the gloom) and pay homage to Canada’s founding father.

Major renovations were carried out in the 1980s, including construction of a reception centre where the carriage house used to be. Two upstairs rooms were re-opened as period bedrooms and the basement was returned to its original role as a scullery; the public washrooms were moved to the new visitor centre. Despite the improvements, however, the house’s aging infrastructure – floors, wiring, roof, and so on – remained largely untouched and slowly rotted away during the ensuing years.

Given the impressive modernization effort, Bellevue House is arguably in better shape today than when it was first built.

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In 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dramatically reduced Parks Canada funding as part of its plan to return the federal budget to balance. Along with many other historic sites across the country, Bellevue House had its opening hours and staff sharply reduced. Necessary structural repairs were also put off. By 2017 it was in such bad shape that it was closed year-round. This past May it was finally reopened to the public. According to Parks Canada, which oversees Canada’s historic sites, the “extensive renewal” of Bellevue House now “tells broader, more inclusive stories about Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.” It’s a good news/bad news situation.

“Extensive renewal”: Bellevue House was closed in 2017 due to its deteriorating condition; Parks Canada re-opened it to the public in May 2024 following a comprehensive modernization project. Shown, Bellevue House undergoing repairs in 2020. (Source of photo: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook)

 

 

First the Good News

This summer my wife and I returned to Bellevue House for the first time since our student days. We are pleased to report it looks fantastic. The new stucco, moulding, panelling, paint and roof work have the place literally gleaming. The gardens have been enlarged and are now well-suited to a leisurely ramble. A spacious parking area has also been added since we last visited. The well-lit rooms are packed with decorative and practical articles from Macdonald’s era. And a team of eager young staff seem well-informed and keen to engage with visitors, although they’ll leave you alone if you prefer to wander at your own pace.

Given the impressive modernization effort, Bellevue House is arguably in better shape today than when it was first built. And that is important. While Macdonald’s short stay at Bellevue House was not a particularly happy one, the building itself is clearly part of Canada’s political and historical heritage. It certainly has a stronger claim on our patrimony than the many colonial-era inns throughout New England that boast “George Washington once slept here” have on America’s past. As Canada’s most important historical figure, part of Macdonald’s legacy is embodied in this house. And now it has been returned to the state of its glory days in the 1840s when Kingston was a city of destiny and Macdonald a young politician on the move. That alone is a very good thing.

This old house looks great: The renovations of Bellevue House have transformed the structure into a beautiful representation of upper-class living in pre-Confederation Canada. Clockwise from top left: the visitor centre, Parks Canada staff in period garb, the dining room and the parlour. (Sources of photos: (top and bottom left) Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook; (bottom right) Dan Taekema/CBC)

Then the Bad News

Unfortunately, Bellevue House has become yet another battlefield in the federal Liberal’s war against what are sneeringly referred to as “dead white males” and the alleged evils of colonialism. As such, it reflects the lamentable decline in historical competency throughout Parks Canada’s portfolio. Bellevue House further reveals the apparent requirement under the Justin Trudeau government’s sweeping policy of “reconciliation” that Indigenous opinion be inserted into all possible government activities and institutions, regardless of relevancy or accuracy. As such, no opportunity is missed to paint our first prime minister in as unfavourable a light as possible. The goal, it appears, is to cancel Macdonald in his own house. This makes for a rather odd visitor experience.

After making one’s way through the welcome centre, guests are confronted with a variety of messages along the path to Bellevue House. Purportedly garnered from comments by earlier visitors, the messages range from entirely factual, such as, “We wouldn’t have Canada without him,” to the deliberately unsetting “He was a monster.” Without any context for this commentary, visitors – and especially impressionable young schoolchildren – will quickly figure out which responses comprise the “proper” view of the man.

The bad news: In keeping with the Justin Trudeau government’s apparent mission to denigrate and erase important figures from Canada’s colonial history, a sign on the path to Bellevue House claims Macdonald was a “monster”. (Source of photo: Dan Taekema/CBC)

The federal government’s plan to tell “broader and more inclusive stories” about Macdonald is as subtle as a sledgehammer. According to its opening-day press release, Parks Canada “formed working groups with Indigenous partners, culturally diverse members of Kingston and area communities…to share stories and develop new exhibit content.” Native Canadians may have plenty of stories to tell about Macdonald (although no Indigenous person alive today knew Macdonald personally or had any direct experience of him). But are they historically true and relevant to his time at Bellevue?

As visitors make their way through the house, they will notice nearly every room has some sort of aboriginal artifact on display. Some additions are modest and easily overlooked. On the main floor, for example, a dining room filled with Victorian-era dishes, candelabra and other knick-knacks also holds a side table with a collection of indigenous herbs such as sweetgrass, tobacco and sage; there are also books of native art on the shelves. It seems unlikely any of this would have been here when Macdonald rented the house. Then again, nearly all the items on display have no direct connection to Macdonald.

Upstairs the mood turns far more serious. A nursery with cradle (possibly the only authentic Macdonald artifact in the entire house) evokes a somber mood given the death of John Jr. On display in the same room, however, is a cradleboard used to secure an aboriginal infant to her mother’s back. And on the walls are excerpts from Macdonald’s speeches in the House of Commons promoting residential schools as the means to assimilate native children into Canadian society.

Repeat after me, colonialism, genocide and racism: Bellevue House is incongruously filled with numerous Indigenous artifacts and informational displays that attack or undermine Macdonald’s many great accomplishments. (Source of photo: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook)

The obvious goal is to remind visitors of the impact residential schools had on aboriginal children in the very bedroom where Macdonald’s own child died. If visitors still don’t get the message, a video screen blares out interviews with residential school “survivors” on an endless loop. Children as young as four-years old, guests are informed, were forcibly removed from their families and sent to such schools, perpetrating “violent assimilation and abuse”. We are meant to have no sympathy for Macdonald’s own tragic loss.

In other second floor rooms, informative panels variously describe Macdonald the man, the politician and nation builder. These achievements – saving the Canadian colonies from being swallowed up by the United States, bringing them together into Confederation and binding the country with a transcontinental railway, among other feats of statesmanship – will be familiar to anyone who has read one of the many biographies of Macdonald, including Richard Gwyn’s magnificent two-volume work.

But wherever Macdonald’s very real achievements are mentioned, they are always married with some sort of attack on his policies, personal character or the era in which he lived. Besides residential schools, this includes the starvation of Indigenous tribes on the Prairies in the 1890s, the Chinese head tax and on and on. “His vision for Canada did not include everyone,” states one sign, deliberately undercutting his commitment to Canadian democracy. A lexicon helpfully defines key terms visitors will encounter repeatedly throughout the house: colonialism, genocide, racism et cetera.

“Stories” in Abundance, Truth in Short Supply

At Bellevue House’s reopening ceremonies in May, Rodrick Donald Maracle, Chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, exclaimed, “Macdonald supported oppression of Indigenous Peoples’ identity; their language, spirituality, the places they came from were stripped from them…The new exhibits at Bellevue House provide a place where truths about Macdonald are able to be fully discussed.”

Parks Canada controls the narrative by choosing which ‘facts’ to present and which to omit. Indeed, it deliberately misses numerous opportunities to provide visitors with crucial ‘non-biased’ facts about Macdonald’s actual accomplishments and beliefs.

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Maracle’s unrestrained antipathy towards Macdonald is clearly the prime example of the “broader and more inclusive stories” Parks Canada wants Bellevue House to tell. Despite its explicit mandate to “protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage and foster public understanding,” Parks Canada makes no effort to let visitors know which stories are legitimate and which are pure fiction.

In an interview with a travel writer for The Globe and Mail, Tamara van Dyk, Bellevue’s Visitor Experience Manager, said, “We can’t tell [visitors] how to feel about this history. But we can help them to understand this history…we share facts, non-biased facts.” This is a transparent cop-out; Parks Canada controls the narrative by choosing which “facts” to present and which to omit. Indeed, it deliberately misses numerous opportunities to provide visitors with crucial “non-biased” facts about Macdonald’s actual accomplishments and beliefs. (The Globe article is also noteworthy for its grotesque error in claiming the “confirmation, in 2021, of hundreds of unmarked graves discovered on the grounds of Canada’s residential schools.” There was never any such “confirmation” and, where excavations at suspected grave sites have been subsequently performed, no human remains have been unearthed.)

Controlling the narrative: Rodrick Donald Maracle, Chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, used the re-opening ceremonies at Bellevue House to declare that “Macdonald supported oppression of Indigenous Peoples’ identity.”

Among the ample exculpatory evidence about Macdonald missing from Bellevue House’s numerous information plaques and displays is that most Indigenous students during Macdonald’s era went to day schools, not residential schools. Further, between 1891, when Macdonald died, and 1950, half of all residential school students dropped out after grade 1, hardly indicative of a program of “violent assimilation”. Children at residential schools were also sent home to their parents for a two-month summer holiday every year and, if practical, for the Christmas and Easter holidays as well. These facts – verifiable and true – are entirely inconsistent with the suggestion Macdonald deliberately plotted genocide, cultural or otherwise.

Also unmentioned is the Macdonald government’s extremely successful smallpox vaccination campaign for native Canadians. Over a period of more than 20 years, the Government of Canada sought to inoculate every Indigenous resident. Some natives were inoculated twice and, in at least one instance, a group of natives received their shots before local white residents did. If genocide was Macdonald’s goal, why go to such trouble to save so many Indigenous people from disease?

Similarly, despite the surfeit of Indigenous content in nearly every room, no mention is ever made of Macdonald’s many friendships with prominent aboriginal Canadians. This includes Oronhyatekha (aka Burning Cloud), a member of the Six Nations Confederacy who attended the Mohawk Institute Residential School and later graduated from the universities of Toronto and Oxford. Oronhyatekha campaigned for Macdonald in the 1872 election and later named his first child after him.

Despite the surfeit of Indigenous content in Bellevue House, there is no mention of Macdonald’s friendship with several prominent aboriginal Canadians, including Oronhyatekha, aka Burning Cloud (left) and Kahkewaquonaby, aka Peter Jones (right). Both earned university degrees (Oronhyatekha also attended a residential school) and played significant roles in Macdonald’s political campaigns.

Another close contact was Kahkewaquonaby (aka Peter Jones), the head chief of the Mississauga of New Credit, who received his medical degree from Queen’s University in 1866 and acted as a political organizer for Macdonald. He was also consulted on changes to the federal Electoral Franchise Act in 1885, an effort by Macdonald to give all native Canadians the vote, but which was stymied by his political opponents.

As to the Chinese head tax, the historical record shows Macdonald was a consistent foe of the idea; his instincts were always to defend minority rights. It was his political adversaries, largely anti-immigrant nativists in British Columbia, who forced Macdonald’s hand on the matter. When head tax proponents first demanded a $100-per-person tax, he appointed a Commission that countered with a very modest $10. And while Macdonald’s government eventually settled on $50, the tax had no appreciable impact on Chinese immigration. It was Macdonald’s Liberal successor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who hiked it to an unaffordable $500, effectively shutting down Chinese immigration for many years.

The Summing Up

Parks Canada’s revitalization of Bellevue House presents an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the debate about Macdonald’s place in our country’s history at a time when his reputation has come under assault from many sides. Clearly, this effort is not entirely successful. A magnificent renovation and modernization project has been marred by decolonization faddism. But is the good of its physical make-over outweighed by the bad of the historical nonsense?

Putting myself in a judge’s seat and based on my experiences at the property in 1978 and today, I find the changes to Bellevue House are, on balance, a benefit to Canada. The haphazard insertion of Indigenous artifacts in the room displays and the validation of untrue or hopelessly biased “stories” about Macdonald is certainly disconcerting and distracting at times. Yet many of these additions are so irrelevant or harmless – the native herbs in the dining room, a red ribbon dress in Macdonald’s own dressing room – that the visitor can easily disregard them.

Bellevue House ought to be seen as a physical manifestation of Macdonald and his enduring importance to Canada. And that alone is reason for hope.

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Other additions are harder to overlook: a sign proclaiming Canada’s first prime minister to have been a monster, the video and audio barrage inside the house as well as the repeated efforts at undercutting Macdonald’s many political accomplishments. Every room upstairs makes some claim to this effect. And while initially grating, over time it all becomes rather silly. What calumny will they come up with next? The cumulative effect is so incongruous and contextually out-of-place that eventually one becomes numb to it – the way our brains tune out an unpleasant smell. And having done that, all that’s left is the house itself: a magnificent example of colonial-era British Canada.

Parks Canada’s attempted cancellation of Macdonald in his own residence was always an absurd mission. Unlike the erasure of his name from various schools or other buildings and landmarks across the country, or the toppling of his statues, Bellevue House has not been removed as a physical presence. It still stands. Remember, the only reason Ottawa owns the house in the first place and then spent so long fixing it up is, as its national historic site designation states, because “it is associated with Sir John A. Macdonald, a Father of Confederation and Canada’s first Prime Minister.” Visitors to the site are not drawn there by a desire to learn more about his personal flaws or to view a random collection of Indigenous bits and pieces. Rather the magnetic force is and always has been Macdonald’s own unparalleled significance as a national figure. And with most of these actual historical achievements given at least grudging acknowledgement throughout the house, any discerning visitor should be able to separate the numerous grains of truth from the vast bushels of chaff.

For all time: Macdonald’s significance as Canada’s pre-eminent statesman is what draws visitors to Bellevue House. And this record of achievement is sturdy enough to survive any attempt to cancel him, even by the current federal government. Shown, Macdonald, standing at centre, in Robert Harris’ famous painting Fathers of Confederation, circa 1884. 

Bellevue House ought to be seen as a physical manifestation of Macdonald and his enduring importance to Canada. And that alone is reason for hope. Given the quality and scale of the renovations, the site will easily outlast our current Liberal government and, one can assume, society’s recent ahistorical convulsions as well. Video screens, red dresses and wall plaques are easily removed. But the house itself is going no where. After many perilous and grim years, Bellevue House is back better than ever. The same will eventually hold true for Macdonald himself. Cultural fads and social hysterics come and go, but his legacy – the legacy of Canada as an improbable country that became one of the world’s most successful and stable democracies – is here to stay. Like his house, it just needs a little sprucing up.

Greg Piasetzki is an intellectual property lawyer with an interest in Canadian history. He lives in Toronto and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.

Source of main image: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook.

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Mark Carney: Our Number-One Alberta Separatist

Published on April 27, 2025

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By George Koch

While envisioning Carney as an intentional saboteur is probably the stuff of parody, one can seriously state that were he trying to bring about Canada’s destruction, he could hardly fashion a more devilishly effective policy platform, nor a more toxic mode of practising federalism. If he doesn’t alter course dramatically as Prime Minister, he’ll be practically goading Alberta to launch a bid for independence.

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But what if Carney is being true to his word in both cases? What if the Oxford PhD and former governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England is a loyal Albertan to his very bones, his carefully curated persona as bespoke globalist climate-cult prophet an elaborate illusion; but that, at the same time, his policies are intended to wreck Canada, thereby rekindling a Prairie fire of separatism? Imagine that this is precisely Carney’s plan.

Imagine, in other words, that Mark Carney is some kind of Manchurian Candidate or 21 st century Scarlet Pimpernel, a deep-cover sleeper agent, sent East into the very heart of darkness – Ottawa – by a cabal of crafty Albertans intent on gaining independence. His secret mission: to worm his way deep inside Laurentian Canada, gaining the trust of Canada’s immensely arrogant yet not terribly bright Eastern elites, becoming both the manager of an enormous multi-billion-dollar investment fund and the secret right-hand-man of the Prime Minister himself, instructed there to wait until the right opportunity arrived.

And in January 2025, with Justin Trudeau’s resignation, that moment was at hand. Carney was given his ultimate mission: to gain the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and then to win electoral office with the mission of so misgoverning Canada as to bring about its dissolution and trigger the separation of Alberta.

This might all seem a bit far-fetched, possibly even satirical. But seen this way, certain strange things do begin to make some semblance of sense. Not just Carney’s weird lines about Alberta, but the sheer, wanton destructiveness of his policies.

Think of the $225 billion in federal deficits Carney intends to run over the next four years. Or his hapless responses to U.S. President Donald Trump. His unwavering advancement of the net-zero madness, capable of wrecking Canada’s economy from coast to coast. The equanimity towards Communist China.

Closer to (our) home, the contemptuous dismissals of Premier Danielle Smith who, as premier of Canada’s last remaining truly productive province, is someone whom logic and self-interest would suggest Carney should keep on his side. Instead, he ignores Smith and on the key issues of approving new energy pipelines and ditching the oil and natural gas emissions cap, he speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

While envisioning Carney as an intentional saboteur is probably the stuff of parody, one can seriously state that were he trying to bring about Canada’s destruction, he could hardly fashion a more devilishly effective policy platform, nor a more toxic mode of practising federalism. If he doesn’t alter course dramatically as Prime Minister, he’ll be practically goading Alberta to launch a bid for independence.

Creating a Manchurian Candidate/Scarlet Pimpernel named Mark Carney would be nefarious, devious, conspiratorial and downright evil. The way the CBC, Globe and Mail and various Liberal/NDP/Bloc politicians tell it, of course, there’s no shortage of such people in Alberta. So is it truly impossible? Or perhaps simply moot, Carney’s stated policies being so destructive as to render them indistinguishable from those of a spy.

Post-election, what would signal a looming crisis of national disunity? It’ll begin with the predictable political noise: soaring poll results for Alberta separatism, calls from surprising quarters – such as formerly-complacent corporate leaders – that the province get out from under Ottawa, perhaps a burgeoning independence party challenging Smith’s governing UCP.

There’ll be even more intense courtroom efforts by Alberta to resist federal overreach and unconstitutional laws and policies. Increasingly pointed warnings from Smith that the political situation could spiral out of control. Frequent invocation of Alberta’s Sovereignty Act to deflect abusive federal actions; perhaps even open defiance of the most illegitimate of these.

Alongside that, increasingly concerted measures to prepare the province of Alberta to become the self-governing nation of Alberta. The until now incremental steps to decouple Alberta law enforcement from the RCMP will be sharply accelerated. The so-far somnolent plod to unshackle Albertans from the bloated, under-performing and increasingly woke-driven Canada Pension Plan will be rattled into a sprint.

Alberta’s Department of Finance will be tasked with setting up a branch to start collecting – and keeping – federal taxes. Reports might trickle out of Alberta mapping the outlines of an intelligence service and armed defence force. Emissaries will be quietly sent to pitch First Nations that they’d be better off as Albertans.

Among the world’s currently 195 recognized states, an independent Alberta would have:

 The 52 nd largest global economy as measured by its 2024 GDP of $351.4 billion (US$256.2 billion);

 A population (4.96 million as of January 2025) larger than those of 70 other sovereign nations;

 A land area greater than those of 155 other nations;

 Per-capita GDP (US$53,834 in 2024) among the world’s 20 most prosperous nations; and

 A GDP sufficient to finance a military approximately as large and effective as Norway’s, a full NATO ally that already flies the F-35 stealth fighter.

In short, Alberta would be as politically and economically viable as Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand and other small but advanced countries.

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I doubt any free-thinking citizen of Alberta would believe the outlandish tale of how Carney wrecked Canada in order to bring about the glory of independence. And so in a final and bitter irony, ostracized and alone, the man who sacrificed everything for his beloved province –career, reputation, perhaps even his very soul – will not only be shunned from running in the first Presidential Election of the Republic of Alberta, he will likely be denied even the ceremonial role of Ambassador to the impoverished, embittered remnants of Canada, Laurentia.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

George Koch is Editor-in-Chief of C2C Journal.

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C2C Journal

“Freedom of Expression Should Win Every Time”: In Conversation with Freedom Convoy Trial Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon

Published on April 26, 2025

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Lawrence Greenspon Defends the Fundamental Freedoms of All Canadians

By Lynne Cohen

“Law is an imperfect profession,” famed American lawyer Alan Dershowitz – defender of such notorious clients as Claus Von Bülow, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and O.J. Simpson – once wrote. “There is no perfect justice…But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.”

Like Dershowitz, Lawrence Greenspon has spent a career fighting injustice in all its forms. Over the past 45 years Greenspon has become one of Canada’s best-known criminal lawyers through his defence of a long list of clients at risk of being crushed by Canada’s legal system – from terrorists to political pariahs to, most recently, Tamara Lich, the petite grandmother who became the public face of the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.

In taking on these cases, Greenspon is not only giving his clients the best defence possible, he’s also defending the very legitimacy of Canada’s legal system.

Lich faced six charges and up to 10 years in jail for her role organizing the peaceful Ottawa protest. Earlier this month she was found guilty on a single charge of mischief. The Crown says it intends to seek a two-year sentence for that one charge.

In an interview, Greenspon said he decides on cases based on whether he believes in the cause central to the case: “What’s at stake. And can I make a difference?” What attracted him to Lich’s case were key aspects of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Greenspon felt needed defending. “Canadians have a constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly,” he said. “These are fundamental freedoms, and they’re supposed to be protected for all of us.”

At issue was the impact the protest had on some downtown Ottawa residents and whether that conflicted with Lich’s right to free speech and peaceful protest. “We were prepared to admit right off the bat that there were individuals who lived in downtown Ottawa who experienced some interference with their enjoyment of their property,” Greenspon noted.

“But when you put freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly on a scale against interference with somebody’s enjoyment of property, there’s no contest. Freedom of association and peaceful assembly, and freedom of expression – these should win every time.”

Such a spirited defence of Canadians’ Charter rights is characteristic of the entire body of Greenspon’s legal work. Although his clients aren’t always as endearing as Lich.

Prior to being in the spotlight for the Lich trial, most Canadians probably remember Greenspon from the 2008 trial of Mohamed Momin Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act. The evidence against Khawaja was substantial and convincing. He was even planning a suicide mission against Israel. Greenspon is a Jew. It was not an issue.

“The fundamental point is that everybody’s entitled to a defence,” Greenspon said. What really mattered was the constitutionality of the new terror law, which Greenspon argued impinged on the free speech rights of Canadians.

In 2018 Greenspon represented Joshua Boyle, who faced over a dozen criminal charges stemming from accusations made by his wife Caitlin Coleman after they returned from being held captive in Afghanistan. Greenspon’s meticulous cross-examination of Coleman led Judge Peter Doody of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to conclude, “I do not believe her, just as I do not believe Mr. Boyle.” All charges against Boyle were dismissed.

He also defended Senator Mike Duffy, who in 2014 found himself charged in connection with an expense account scandal. “Duffy’s presumption of innocence had been completely annihilated. I had no problem representing Mike. In fact, I feel proud to have represented Mike,” he said.

Throughout his legal career, Greenspon has fought tirelessly for the constitutional rights of all his clients, regardless of public sympathy or apparent guilt. While such a stance can make him unpopular, such work offers a crucial bulwark against the state’s misuse of its authority in pursuing particular individuals, as well as the gradual erosion of the liberties promised to all Canadians by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Every Canadian has a stake in ensuring the court system is held to account at all times, regardless of the apparent evidence, current political mood or public support.

Without the work of lawyers such as Greenspon, Charter rights can soon deteriorate into empty platitudes – as the federal government’s shocking treatment of the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters revealed. That included the unjustified imposition of the Emergencies Act, the freezing of donors’ bank accounts, the mass arrest of supporters and the marked reluctance to grant bail to those charged.

As Greenspon pointed out numerous times during the trial, the conciliatory and always respectful Lich represents the very ideals of peaceful protest in Canada. And for the sole charge on which she was convicted, she still faces two years in a federal penitentiary.

In the case of Khawaja, Greenspon was asked by an Ottawa synagogue to explain why he, as a Jew, was defending an Islamist terrorist. “I told the synagogue members, somebody has to stand up for the person who finds themselves set against the entire machinery of the state. In this case it happens to be Khawaja. But what if the next guy is named Dreyfus?”

Lynne Cohen is a writer at C2C Journal, where the longer original version of this story first appeared.

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