B.C. MLA urges Canadian version of Mount Rushmore
A B.C. politician wants his province to carve one of its mountains into the world’s largest sculpture.
Although, unlike Mount Rushmore, MLA Laurie Throness figures it would be best to avoid controversy by not depicting a human likeness.
“I thought, for example, it could be a pair of uplifted hands so big that you could drive a number of tour buses onto the palms,” he told the National Post.
Of course, he noted, the final shape would be determined after a lengthy process of proposals and consultations.
Throness did not specify the location of the mountain sculpture, only that it shouldn’t be in his riding of Chilliwack-Kent.
As an anticipated tourism draw, Throness said the mountain would ideally be placed in a less trafficked region of the province.
“We would want to put the mountain where we would like tourists to go .... I would think somewhere in B.C.’s north or interior,” he said.
The proposed mega-statue is only item number 52 on Throness’ recently published list of 65 policy points that he wants the next B.C. Liberal leader to consider.
Also on the list are plans to widen the Trans-Canada Highway to six lanes, complete the Site C dam, freeze the carbon tax, crack down on noisy ATV riders and phase out the corporate tax.
However, the chief priority for B.C., said Throness, should be reforming addictions treatment.
“Legislate the goal of the Ministry of Health, and all provincial health authorities, to ‘cure addictions to drugs and alcohol’ rather than ‘helping addicts live positive lives,’” reads item number 17.
Throness was first elected to the B.C. legislature in 2013. Before then, he was a longtime political staffer for federal and provincial conservative politicians, including serving as chief of staff to then federal Aboriginal affairs minister Chuck Strahl.
He is under no illusions that any plan to completely reshape a B.C. mountain into an artificial form would be controversial.
“There’s protests about everything in B.C., but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a big good idea,” he said, adding that “everybody would light their hair on fire for a while, and then we would settle down and build something wonderful.”
Currently, the title for world’s largest statue is held by the 153 metre tall Spring Temple Buddha in Hunan, China. India is soon expected to take the top spot with a 182 metre statue of Indian independence leader Vallabhai Patel.
However, the closest analogue to Throness’s vision is the under-construction Crazy Horse Memorial located near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. If completed, it would transform an entire mountain into a likeness of the Lakota leader Crazy Horse.
In February, the B.C. Liberal party will be selecting a new leader to replace Christy Clark, who stepped down on July 28.
So far, no leadership candidates have declared themselves, and Throness has said he will not be running.