Montreal will not be replacing a historic statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, after it was toppled from its downtown pedestal by far-left activists in 2020.
According to the City Council’s executive committee, the toppled statue will be displayed in another location and not at Place du Canada where it was originally located.
The statue was decapitated and knocked down by radical protesters as demonstrations for George Floyd were raging across Canada and the US.
At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “deeply disappointed” with the incident.
“We are a country of laws, and we are a country that needs to respect those laws even as we seek to improve and change them,” Trudeau said.
“Those kinds of acts of vandalism are not advancing the path towards greater justice and equality in this country.”
According to executive committee member Ericka Alneus, the city will redesign the statue and reinstall it with “context” elsewhere.
“The decision was not made to erase history, but to confront it with the values and preoccupations of our time,” said Alneus.
“We have the opportunity here to add elements that were missing from the story. The challenge will be to add the context that explains why the canopy is empty.”
Statues of Canada’s first prime minister and father of Confederation have been targeted across the country by the far-left.
In Hamilton, a statue of Macdonald was doused in paint at Gore Park.
Baden, Ontario also decided to move a similar statue into storage after facing pressure from left-wing activists.
In 2020, Trudeau accused “extreme right” groups of using the statue vandalism to allegedly sow division.
“We’ve seen, following that, people on either side of the spectrum trying to use these elements as a way of furthering debates,” Trudeau said.
“I think that we’re seeing, particularly on the extreme right, that they’re trying to start culture wars and divide Canadians on issues such as that.”
