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Yesterday, Montreal announced that it won’t reinstall a statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Mark that as another ten-tonne bronze paperweight destined for a basement, a plywood box in a storage facility, or, at best, more likely, a cultural institution somewhere.
The statue was brought down and beheaded late in the summer of 2020, and debate about what to do with it has continued ever since. Many believe the statue should be restored and resurrected on the site where it has stood since 1895. Others feel firmly it’s time to retire the oft-defaced bronze old fucker.
The city of Montreal struck an ad hoc committee (ah, bureaucracy) of urban affairs leaders, various cultural departments inside the city, and various institutional stakeholders to study what to do next.
Given that the protest that brought the statue down responded to police brutality on racialized people in the city, the city could start by pressuring the police to stop that shit. Given that will never happen, they opted to study what other cities are doing and have done when their own colonial heroes’ statues and monuments have come crashing to the ground under the tears of those on the fringes of urban communities.
In short, Montreal is opting to hide the statue for now. What happens after that, TBD, I guess.
Now.
Honestly.
It needs to be mentioned just how delicious this is for me.
Montreal debating its public art honouring Canada’s colonial heroes is, if not ironic and cruel (I mean, this could have all been theirs, right?), it is most undoubtedly hilarious. Had the French and English wars gone just a little differently up here in Canada, you bet your ass you wouldn’t be able to walk three blocks without seeing the Marquis de Montcalm hat, statue, or school. The French are…a lot. Think about how much they rub fucking poutine in our faces; imagine they won the war that settled Canada?
Montreal is one of Canada’s oldest cities, and just typing out the word Montreal gives me the colonial heeby-jeebies. While Quebec City and old Montreal are cool in the, “wow, this shit is old,” and a “wow, this ain’t Regina,” kinda way, they’re also grim reminders of just how long the colonial project in this place now called Canada is. Quebec does a fine job of celebrating themselves and separating themselves from the pack; statues of old dead men are but just one way the Quebecois choose to flex their colonial prowess.
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Quick, Hide The Racists, The NDNs Are Coming
The trend of tying tow straps, thick braided ropes, and whatever else folks can manage to tie together to rip down the colonial paperweights of yesteryear has picked up steam in recent years.
In the wake of the devastating discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the former site of the Indian Residential School in Kamloops, BC, public displays of support for Indian Residential School Survivors (IRS), their families, and their communities ripped through the streets of towns and cities across Canada.
In Toronto, a demonstration supporting IRS Survivors gathered at Ryerson University (now named Metropolitan University). It ended their march at the feet of the statue erected in honour of Egerton Ryerson, one of the architects of Canada’s Indian Residential School systems. Within hours, the statue fell. It was covered in painted red hand prints, expletives, and other expressions of anger and frustration with Canada’s colonial past, present and future. The Mohawks at Six Nations have kept it for their own, and it is said to be at 1491 Land Back Lane.
The fight to remove Edward Cornwallis from the names of schools, churches, and other organizations in Halifax spans three decades. In 2018, a statue of Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax in 1749, a military leader, colonizer, and virulent racist, yes, even for 1700s standards, was removed from its location in a Halifax park and was put in storage.
In Winnipeg, a statue of Queen Victoria, fell to the hundreds of people who gathered on Canada Day in 2021, walking in support of Indian Residential School Survivors and the children who never made it home from these schools. Queen Victoria was on the throne at the advent of Indian Residential Schools and presided over Canada’s earliest days of confederation.
Indigenous Peoples, the diverse and racialized communities that now call Canada their home, will likely never run out of reasons to protest the bad folks who did bad things on these lands. Street names. Schools. Government buildings. Towns. The names of these people are everywhere.
Some argue that removing statues or other commemorative works will ensure that history is forgotten.
This is silly. Just plain silly.
As long as we aren’t puttin’ history itself into storage, history will be just fine.
The literal job of history is to ensure history is not forgotten.
History books hold the names of heroes, colonizers and maniacal dictators.
If we want to engage in a worthy project in this country, let’s start with history. Let’s name, out and articulate the crimes and the morally bankrupt roots here. Let’s collectively correct the record to reflect the truth here.
Correcting the record ultimately will assist in restoring Indigenous Peoples’ humanity in their homelands.
While monuments and statues have helped to shape the story of this place called Canada, I’m not convinced removing them helps to tell better stories.
Colonial propaganda should be called just that - let them stand, I say.
Let’s constructively engage with history.
Let’s get comfortable about being uncomfortable in this place, and then get on with it. Letting the statues and monuments stand is the equivalent of rubbing Canada’s nose in the mess it created. Maybe once its nose is rubbed in the mess, Canada won’t piss on the floors anymore.
There are dozens of Indigenous artists in Canada who create large-scale public art, perform live interventions in public spaces, and could have a hand in reimagining and responding to these figures in towns and cities across Canada.
Adorn the public monuments and colonial paperweights with QR codes that zap the inquisitor to a well-researched, fact-checked, and entertaining video, podcast, essay, or documentary that corrects the record for all brave enough to consider that better was always possible for this place called Canada.
Storytelling is the revolution.
Decolonial Low-Hanging Fruit
When filmmaker, Michelle St John and I set out to make the documentary Colonization Road in 2014, we didn’t do so to call to rename the street itself. But that’s what happened. The road in Fort Frances was renamed. And that’s fine, but that just wasn’t our purpose. Art is wonderful that way; once you release it out to the world, it’s not yours anymore.
More central to the film's point was that the colonization road system, free land grants, the Homestead Act, and the Indian Act were directly responsible for the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples of their lands, waters, and territory. The point I’m making in the film is Indigenous dispossession was very much by design, not by accident. This is what Canada must contend with the purposeful and brazen ways in which the tools of colonization formed this country.
The point of the film was that the land was stolen by design and that is fucked up and must be reckoned with.
Toronto renaming Dundas Street. Fort Frances renaming Colonization Road. Ottawa renaming the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway. The low-hanging fruit of Canada’s slow but steady project of renaming and replacing reminders of colonial and racist shitheads of yesterday is a distraction.
Lipstick on a pig.
Polish a turd.
Rename a road.
Who cares. Turns out. A lot of people do. I’ve been slammed for my take on the subject by policy wonks, administrators, and academics.
There’s just no proof hiding Canada’s ugly history will work. Germany doesn’t hide their genocidal history. Why is Canada?
I get emailed once every few months by Canadian media to comment on the renaming efforts of an Indigenous community, a student or activist group, or well-meaning and good-hearted Canadian people. My answer to these requests is always the same, “If Indigenous people are saying they need their names changed, just change the name. Get on with it. But. These colonial distractions don’t move the markers, do not represent reconciliation, and will not meaningfully transform the lives of Indigenous Peoples.”
We’ve got bigger work to do.
If we continue to be distracted by the straightforward work of changing the names of things, I fear we’ll reach the limits of leaders that believe their simple act of performative anti-racism, is enough. It’s not.
Undoing colonization, breaking down settler colonialism, and addressing the roots of racism in Canada will take more than a few public consultations and a new name on a few roads.
A Few Suggestions For The Colonial Paperweights Of Yesteryear
I see a real opportunity here with all of these colonial reminders falling to the grounds of the stolen lands in which they were erected. Let’s get creative.
Here’s what we could do with these things:
1. Billet out the statue to lonely white supremacists
Nowadays, I imagine being a white supremacist is lonely and tiring work. Gone are the days when you could gather in public with all your racist friends and plan how you'll “take your country back.” But fret not, my lonely enemies. Billeting out these colonial paperweights will give lonely white supremacists someone to hang out with. They can read poetry to it. They can listen to death metal or whatever the fuck they listen to with the statue. They can cry into the lap of the bronze figure of their choice. The best part of all this is that the statues don’t talk back — which is perfect for these delicate snowflakes whose shitty ideas fall apart when someone stands up to them.
2. Star attraction at a Canadian colonialism museum
It's not a thing yet, but you can imagine in a post-Canada 150, post-UNDRIP, post-reconciliation era that, we create a country brave enough to shine a bright light on the country we once were. I’ve got an idea. The Canadian Colonialism Museum and Fun Park. Imagine museum visitors exploring Canada's First Nations through virtual reality, complete with a bad drinking water taste test. We could build an arm of the museum that features the Queen Elizabeth, Sir John A. Macdonald, and Cornwallis statues, hell, collect ‘em all from coast to coast to coast while we’re at it and put the Madame Tussauds wax museum in Las Vegas to shame.
3. A goalie for NDN hockey tournaments across Canada
We're gearing up for the time of year across Canada where Native hockey rules rez life. A few of my cousins' teams are short a few players, and I think these statues would make great goalies. We could have some fun with it. We can change the rules a bit; it is rez hockey. What about an extra goal for a slapshot right in the nuts of Sir JAM? Or better yet, you get five goals if you take Cornwallis' scalp off with a slapshot. Who wouldn’t want to see a statue of Queen Elizabeth II play for the Pukatawagon Pirates in the Flin Flon Beer League Championship in the winter of 2024?
#1 & #3 😂😂😂😂😂
#2 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
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