Victoria councillors elect to remove John A. statue

VICTORIA Victoria councillors have recommended that the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, be removed from the Pandora Avenue entrance to City Hall on Saturday.

Councillors meeting as the committee of the whole Thursday morning voted 7-1 to remove the statue erected in 1982 and put a plaque in its place. Coun. Geoff Young was the lone dissenting vote. Coun. Ben Isitt was absent.

The vote was to be ratified at a council meeting Thursday night.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said if the city is sincere about reconciliation efforts, the statue must be removed, put in storage, and its future discussed, so that Indigenous people are not forced to encounter a painful reminder of colonial violence each time they enter City Hall.

Councillors Young, Pam Madoff and Chris Coleman questioned why councillors were not informed about the statue’s removal until Tuesday, the abrupt timing, and the lack of wider public consultation or communication.

Young said he sympathizes with the negative impact the statue has on Indigenous people, but said the public deserved to be included in the discussion of the statue’s removal and relocation.

Madoff questioned how the mayor could talk about “careful, conscious, collaboration” and then without notice put the item of the statue’s removal on this week’s committee agenda, giving councillors little time to respond to some residents’ concerns.

“The concern I have is the timing of this and the way the public has been made aware of it, which has made it unnecessarily contentious,” she said. “Reconciliation is about the broader community, about all of us.”

Madoff suggested there is more value in telling the whole story of our history rather than simply removing the art and statues to do with parts of our history that we regret. She was concerned about the statue remaining in a warehouse to be forgotten.

The concern I have is ... the way the public has been made aware of it, which has made it unnecessarily contentious.

The decision to remove the statue is the first concrete action by the “city family,” made up of the mayor, councillors Charlayne Thornton-Joe and Marianne Alto, and representatives of the Esquimalt and Songhees nations, as part of city’s reconciliation program.

Macdonald was a key figure in the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, he was also the architect of the residential school system and referred to First Nations parents as “savages,” recommending removal of their children. Both the Songhees and Esquimalt nation support the statue’s removal.