Charlottetown council votes to remove statue of Sir John A. Macdonald
Posted May 31, 2021 5:16 pm.
Last Updated May 31, 2021 5:20 pm.
Charlottetown city council has voted to permanently remove a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from a downtown intersection as a response to recent revelations about Canada’s residential school system.
The decision today follows a vigil earlier in the day where demonstrators placed 215 pairs of shoes next to the statue of Macdonald, whose government introduced the residential school system in 1883.
The shoes were in memory of the 215 children whose remains were recently discovered at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
Charlottetown council had been planning to improve signage and add an Indigenous figure to the Macdonald statue but decided to remove it entirely as a result of the public outcry.
