The relocation of a 635-kilogram bronze statue of Sir John A. Macdonald and the possible co-governance of Beacon Hill Park and Victoria’s shoreline are just some of the reconciliation conversations the city is planning for 2019 and beyond.
“The intention going forward is to have a wider community conversation and reconciliation dialogue, including about the statue and where it should go,” said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps.
The Macdonald statue was removed from Victoria City Hall in August and remains wrapped and secured in a city storage facility.
As Canada’s first prime minister and MP for Victoria from 1878 to 1882, Macdonald shaped a strong democracy. But he was also an architect of the residential schools system that removed Indigenous children from their families and sent them to church-run boarding schools where they lost their culture and language.
“It’s a very polarizing issue,” said Shachi Kurl, of Angus Reid Institute, which surveyed Canadians on the matter. “It tends to set people’s hair on fire depending on which side of the issue they are on. It’s one Canadians have felt quite passionately about.”
A Victoria city committee — called the city family and made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous members — was appointed in June 2017 to address reconciliation efforts. It decided to remove the statue on the basis that it was a barrier to Indigenous people coming to city hall.
Removal of the statue was introduced on a city council agenda on Aug. 7 and approved two days later. Work to remove it began at 5 a.m. on Aug. 11, and an interpretive sign was installed in its place.
As crews prepared to take the statue away, a large crowd gathered. Some supported the decision to remove of the statue and others were against it, and over the hours tensions rose and arguments broke out.
Helps came under considerable fire for the intentionally quick process, and city councillors Pam Madoff, Geoff Young and Chris Coleman spoke out against the way the matter was handled.
“I know the original action was unsettling and it should be,” Helps said. “Reconciliation isn’t easy — if it feels easy, it’s not reconciliation.
“So there will probably be some more unsettling conversations and unsettling moments along the way over these next four years.”
Janice Simcoe, a member of the city committee that recommended the statue be removed, told the Times Colonist that the mayor showed “extraordinary courage.”
The statue’s removal takes away a painful reminder of the man who oversaw the introduction of the residential schools system, and the action hurts no one, said Simcoe, director at the Centre for Indigenous Education and Community Connections at Camosun College.
Helps would later apologize for the process of limiting public input and pledged to engage in broader consultations with the public on the statue, but maintained that removing it was the right decision.
“We heard so much during the whole uproar about erasing history and I think Indigenous history has been erased too long,” she said. “It’s been seen as something other than Canadian history.”
The Angus Reid Institute polled 1,500 Canadians online Aug. 21 to 24 and found that 70 per cent said the name and image of Macdonald should remain in public view compared with 11 per cent who said his name and image should be removed. The remaining 19 per cent were undecided.
“This is part of an ongoing story that really speaks to the divide over the ideals of reconciliation versus the ties many Canadians feel to their past and their reticence to see all aspects of a historical figure’s legacy associated with the negative aspects of their behaviour or actions with regards to Indigenous relations,” Kurl said.
Fifty-five per cent of Canadians in every province except Quebec disagreed with the removal of the statue, said Angus Reid pollsters. Only 25 per cent agreed, and 20 per cent were unsure.
A majority of respondents were of the opinion that “remembering the trauma of residential schools should not come at the expense of memorializing the country’s first prime minister.”
“The story we see from this is that people are vastly polarized over what they feel should happen with the statute of Macdonald,” Kurl said. “Those who supported its removal think it’s better off in a museum. Those who are opposed are far more inclined to say put it back where it was to begin with.”
Only six per cent said the statue should never be displayed again.
Helps said the fact she was re-elected in October shows “Victoria may be ahead of the country when it comes to the work of reconciliation, and as such, I think there’s a lot we can share with people across the country.”
Reconciliation and Indigenous relations are the second item in the city’s 2019 strategic plan.
“The reconciliation dialogues will include the entire community,” Helps said. “I see a wide community dialogue that begins in 2019 and will probably go for the entirety of the next four years.”
Helps said the country as a whole is grappling with reconciliation. “And what we need to grapple with as a community is what does it mean to be a city on somebody’s else’s homelands.”
One of the items in the city’s strategic plan is to explore co-governance of Beacon Hill Park and shoreline areas with the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.
“We are already starting that conversation by putting it in the strategic plan,” Helps said. “It would mean working more closely with the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, with the Lekwungen people, in terms of how we manage Beacon Hill Park and the shoreline areas because those are their territories. The whole city is their territory, so that will be an interesting conversation.”
Helps said with regard to the shoreline the strategic plan is looking at stewarding the natural areas.
“Indigenous people for centuries have stewarded natural areas,” she said. “We have a parks department and they are currently in charge and maybe we need to look at what co-governance of natural areas of the city would look like.”
She is hopeful there will be a different kind of dialogue and tone in the new year around reconciliation and the moving of Macdonald’s statue.
“Interestingly, the majority of the Indigenous members of the city family strongly feel the statue should go somewhere — the where to be determined.”
