People are so used to using their tap debit/credit cards, digital wallets, or e-transfers that lots of people don’t even carry cash anymore.However, in the event of a sudden collapse of the power grid, as happened in Spain and Portugal on April 28, 2025, the same day that Prime Minister “Net Zero” Carney was elected, people find out in a hurry how helpless they are without cash. These national blackouts lasted some 12 hours. Imagine yourself in the city, where suddenly your mass transit train trip stops. You have to walk home or take a cab. You’re thirsty, so you stop at a convenience store to buy a $3 drink, but you don’t have cash. Only your card. The ATM is down. No cash. No purchase. Or maybe you have a $20 — but you won’t get change.No cab or Uber will take you home unless you can “show them the money.”With that in mind, I go to the bank when I hear of any incoming extreme weather, or if I am travelling, and I take out a couple of hundred dollars in small bills, fives, tens, some toonies, and loonies.But I was not prepared one day, that as my friendly teller counted out the tens, she suddenly stopped and removed the only ten-dollar bill that featured Sir John A. Macdonald. She replaced it with the ten-dollar bill that features Viola Desmond on one side and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights on the other.I was shocked. She said they are removing them for destruction. I begged to keep one..I have written a number of historical articles and documentaries about the Canadian West. Sir John A. Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police (NWMP — later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — RCMP as we know them today) and sent them west to stop the genocide of the Blackfoot Nation being perpetrated by American whisky traders. The integrity of Col. Macleod and his men was respected by the Indians, who ultimately agreed to sign the Treaties that paved the way for the Canadian Pacific Railway, which bound our nation together. It was Sir John A. Macdonald who created the essence of modern-day Canada, with his vision of a great nation from sea to sea, “A Mari usque ad Mare.”Unlike the USA, where Indian Wars raged from 1644 to 1924, there were few violent conflicts between Europeans and Indians in Canada.Macdonald managed to unite the country in the face of knowing that after the US Civil War, the Americans had a standing army of one million men. They could easily have invaded Canada and claimed the whole territory.This is why Macdonald deserves to be on the ten-dollar bill, not Viola Desmond, nor the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.While it is true that Desmond was a freedom fighter for black people in Canada, it is also true that long before her conflict over segregated seating at a movie theatre, black slaves escaping the US sang “The Song of the Free” — to the tune of “Oh! Susanna.”I'm on my way to Canada, That cold and dreary land,The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand,My soul is vexed within me more To think that I'm a slave,I'm now resolved to strike the blow For freedom, or the grave.Oh, righteous father, wilt thou not pity me,And aid me on to Canada, where coloured men are free.Ms. Desmond departed for New York after her divorce, though she retained family ties in Nova Scotia, and returned to Nova Scotia briefly to aid her ailing father, but then went back to New York..Sir John A. Macdonald dedicated 50 years of his life to Canada. A functional alcoholic with a personal life filled with grief, many denounce him today and blame him for Indian Residential Schools and the alleged “genocide” that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights loudly trumpets.In fact, as noted in historian Don Smith’s article, “Chief’s Journey”, acting on the advice of a Mohawk surveyor named Thomas Green, Macdonald extended an invitation to several Western chiefs in 1886 to come East and see how the world was changing, and to tour the Mohawk Institute, which they did.From Smith’s essay: “From Regina in March 1886 Green wrote: Show them, or at least, allow them to be shown the principal sights & cities of Ontario & Quebec, and above all, have them visit the most prosperous Indian reserves of these provinces… Let them see how their Indian brethren are prospering in those provinces; let them understand that the Indian can subsist like the white man where there is no game; and let them understand that the government do not wish to exterminate them.”Chief Red Crow was delighted by the presentations made by the students at the Mohawk Institute and approved of this concept for teaching the children of his tribe. He adored the red mittens that the girls had knitted for him as a gift, and reportedly wore them with pride, all the way home. Chief Red Crow willingly sent his adopted son Shot Close to St. Joseph’s/Dunbow Industrial School, reasoning that the time away at school, though a painful separation, was like that of a brave away on a hunt. Someone with a purpose to bring home the prize — food from the hunt and knowledge from the school. Shot Close adopted the anglicized name “Frank” Red Crow and went on to be a successful rancher and Chief.Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada honours a woman who left Canada for greener pastures in New York City and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that has denied Canada the fundamental human right — the presumption of innocence — on the matter of the alleged “genocide” that took place at Indian Residential Schools; schools that turned out people like Senator James Gladstone, his daughter Pauline, who later married Dr. Hugh Dempsey, and Frank Red Crow. Dempsey documented much of the early days and important persons in the West.“In the Spring of 1896, Red Crow made a trip with Singing Before to see their son Frank at the industrial school. They were pleased to see that the boy, hair cut short and dressed in a grey uniform, could speak perfect English. His complete isolation from the Blood Reserve had helped to transform him into the kind of person whom Red Crow hoped would lead his people in the future.” The Bank of Canada is destroying and distorting Canadian history. I am grateful that the teller understood my passionate love for the Canada we once knew, and she let me have the ten-dollar bill that honours our heritage.
