Statue apology rings hollow

Re: “Reconciliation can be a learning process for us all,” comment, Aug. 29.

Wow. Now we have some new information from Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps on the statue-removal debacle.

It seems that the decision made by the “city family” was to “relocate” the statue. It was not. The decision was to remove the statue and place it in storage. The mayor was even quoted at the time, stating that there were no immediate plans to place it elsewhere.

It also seems that the reason the statue was removed was because it was “a barrier to Indigenous communities’ engagement with city hall.” But the original reason given was that it had to be removed because Indigenous community members had to walk by it in order to get into city hall.

Maybe this is semantics, maybe it is not. Clearly, though, the mayor has “corrected” the original version, given that the statue was located at one of the three entrances.

Regardless, this “apology” rings hollow. First, by referring repeatedly to the city family (which consists of the mayor, two like-minded councillors and representatives of the Indigenous communities) as the body that will continue to make the decisions, she continues to discount the rest of the community.

Second, a genuine apology would have consisted of putting the statue back and restarting the whole process, with appropriate engagement of the entire Victoria community.

Chris Lawson Victoria