Ontario township to remove statues of past prime ministers after consultation
Posted July 6, 2021 3:52 pm.
Last Updated July 6, 2021 4:02 pm.
A community in southwestern Ontario says it will scrap a project involving statues of past prime ministers in an effort to encourage community healing and cohesion.
The Township of Wilmot says councillors voted unanimously on Monday night to discontinue the Prime Ministers Path and remove four remaining statues of former prime ministers from the site in Baden, Ont., near Kitchener, Ont.
A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was removed from the site last August after the township decided to consult with the public about the project.
Councillors recently reviewed recommendations by an Indigenous advisory firm that said the project should be discontinued.
The township says the Prime Ministers Path project included statues of Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Lester B. Pearson and Kim Campbell.
Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, is considered an architect of the country’s notorious residential school system that took Indigenous children from the families in an effort to assimilate them.
Cowessess First Nation last week said that ground-penetrating radar detected 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, not long after the discovery of what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in Kamloops, B.C. and 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school in Cranbrook, B.C.
