Statue of Sir John A. Comes to Life Today

by Jeff Mahoney, The Spectator Hamilton

The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, November 1, 1997

If only Michael Carl O’Neil could do for some of our present-day politicians what he is doing for Sir John A. Macdonald.

Bring them to life.

O’Neil is a mime and as such has a natural fellow-feelings for things that can’t speak. So when he thought about the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Gore Park and its colourful history, he was curious about what would happen if that statue were to walk off its pedestal and mingle with the traffic.

So he made that hypothesis part of his busking act.

Today, on the 103rd anniversary of the unveiling of the statue in Hamilton, O’Neil will bring his mute characterization of our first prime minister to the Public Hanging ’97 art show in the Hamilton Eaton Centre.

He has taken his Sir John A. Macdonald through much of the country in the year since he has built it into his mime repertoire.

“I get many different reactions. One guy in Halifax gave me the finger. He said, “I’m French-Canadian and we don’t like Macdonald”.

“But another guy came up to me and hugged me around the shoulders and said what I was doing was wonderful”.

O’Neil has done his Macdonald statue bit in Hamilton, Ontario Place in Toronto, Kingston, Windsor, Orillia and even at theng of the Confederation Bridge between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

It takes him more than two hours to apply the makeup, prosthetics (nose and chin) and wig that transform his head into the likeness of Sir John A., with a complexion of stone. And he has a costume to complete the illusion.

He starts his routine by standing stone still on a kind of makeshift pedestal.

“People walk up and think I’m an actual statue. Then I’ll wiggle a finger or something and they stand back and wait to watch the next victim for a laugh”.

As his character takes on more life, O’Neil tries to give an impression of how Macdonald would react to today’s society, with a lot of stunned expressions, humour and social commentary tossed in.

O’Neil explains that the Hamilton statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was the first in Canada. And it has had quite a career.

It was indirectly response for killing the fire chief in Hamilton in the early part of this century.

“They were racing to a call and somehow the fire chief flew out of the wagon and hit his head on the statue and was killed”.

“They moved the statue after that”. It had been in the middle of the street”.

O’Neil also makes the Queen Victoria statue come to life. That routine he uses mostly on international audiences. He spends a good portion of his time in places like Singapore, Thailand and England, following a kind of buskers’ circuit.

He is thinking of adding some new characters to the act – George Washington, for instance.

O’Neil/Macdonald will be at the Public Hanging ’97 on the third floor of the Hamilton Eaton Centre today from noon to 4:30 p.m.

For more information, see O’Neil’s web site at http://www.netaccess.on.ca/~dodds/klassic/sirjohn.html.