Monumental Panic: Reconciliation, Moral Regulation, and the Polarizing Politics of the Past

Abstract

In 2018, the City of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada removed a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from the grounds of City Hall. As Canada’s first prime minister, Macdonald is both revered for the role he played in Confederation and vilified for enacting and promoting racist if not culturally genocidal policy initiatives aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures in the last part of the 19th century. Set in the context of truth and reconciliation politics playing out across the country, this article explains the removal of the monument and the social reactions it provoked, using the sociologies of moral panic and moral regulation. By focusing on one city council’s efforts to interpret and act on the moral imperatives associated with political reconciliation in post-colonial Canada, insights are provided into some of the practical challenges and potential contradictions that municipal governments can encounter when they adopt idiosyncratic strategies to atone for historical injustices in non-transitional democratic nations.