TORONTO Historians told CTVNews.ca that white supremacy is linked to the legacy of Sir John A . Macdonald Canada s first prime minister, a champion of residential schools and whose government starved Indigenous people in order to expand railways but that connection is whitewashed when defenders lionize him. A public letter entitled “In Defence of Sir John A. Macdonald and His Legacy,” released Monday signed by 149 people, including some prominent figures and former politicians, argued that Macdonald’s discrimination against Indigenous Peoples has to be weighed “against an impressive record of constitution and nation-building, his reconciliation of contending cultures, languages, and religions, his progressivism, and his documented concern for and friendship with the Indigenous Peoples of Canada.”