Victoria to remove statue

A statue of former prime minister John A. Macdonald will be removed from the front entrance of Victoria City Hall as a gesture of reconciliation with First Nations, says the city’s Mayor Lisa Helps.

Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada and Helps said he was also a “key architect” of the residential school system.

The decision, which must be approved by council, followed a year of deliberations and consultation with the local Songhees and Esquimalt chiefs and councils, she said in a post on her campaign website.

“We will remove the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from the front doors of city hall so that the family members and other Indigenous people do not need to walk past this painful reminder of colonial violence each time they enter the doors of their municipal government,” Helps said.

Although Helps has an undergraduate, master’s and partially completed PhD in Canadian history, she said she is ashamed that she was unaware of the Father of Confederation’s role in developing residential schools.

Helps said the city does not propose erasing history, but rather taking time to tell that chapter of Canadian history in a thoughtful way.

The statue will be removed Saturday and stored until an appropriate way to “recontextualize” Macdonald is determined, she said.