Sir John A. Macdonald (The Makers of Canada)

What it is

This is a 1908 biography of Sir John Alexander Macdonald by George R. Parkin, published in London and Toronto as part of the series The Makers of Canada. The series was edited by Duncan Campbell Scott, Pelham Edgar and William Dawson Le Sueur. The preface says that Macdonald is generally assigned the foremost place among the statesmen Canada has produced. The copy in the archive is one of a limited set of numbered sets.

Why it matters

The preface shows how Macdonald's reputation had been shaped by 1908. It says that his Canadian contemporaries and British observers both regarded him as a leading statesman, and it links his importance to the building of the Dominion. Series books like this one helped teach Canadians who their founders were, so the work reveals as much about the early twentieth century as about the nineteenth.

Look closer

• Who decided that Macdonald deserved the foremost place among Canadian statesmen, according to the preface?
• Why would a series about the makers of a country choose which people to include?
• Which of Macdonald's critics, such as those in the 1886 speeches, are absent from this praise?