A plan to erect life-sized statues of all 22 past Canadian prime ministers at Wilfred Laurier University’s campus has prompted some students and faculty to speak out against the project.
The university agreed to place bronze statues in and around Laurier’s campus in June. The statues would help mark Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017 and provoke “discussion and awareness of Canada’s history and political leadership,” according to a statement by the school.
The project was started by a local group of citizens who offered to privately fund the statues.
Laurier’s senate voted to support cancelling the plan. The decision to uphold or cancel the project is up to the school’s board of governors.
The first statue, of Canada’s first prime minister John A. Macdonald, has already been installed.
Since the June announcement, a growing opposition movement has formed against the project.
An online petition created by Laurier professor Jonathan Finn encourages the school to stop the statue project. It currently has more than 1,200 signatures.
The petition states that memorializing each prime minister on land originally belonging to Neutral, Anishnaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples is “politically and culturally insensitive.”
Laurier professor Kim Anderson protested the statues by dressing up in a prisoner’s jumpsuit carrying a picture of an Aboriginal chief and sitting on one of the bronze chairs that are part of the Macdonald installation.
Canada’s first prime minister supported the residential school system, which removed Indigenous children from families and attempted to assimilate them into European culture.
Anderson said the project is “not acknowledging the violent histories that have gone on” in Canada.
“It [doesn’t] represent the campus or the type of education that we’re trying to encourage,” she said.
She noted the same project was rejected by Kitchener city council in 2013.
“It’s one thing I think to have statues of the prime ministers on Parliament Hill where you might expect to see them, that’s all part of the environment and what happened there,” she said. “But it’s another thing to have them on a university campus.”
Luisa D’Amato, a columnist at the Waterloo Regional Record and former instructor at the school, said she believes the statues deserve to be placed across the country.
“Many people would agree that the more evenly spread our heritage resources are across the country, the better,” she said. “Prime ministers may have done their business in Ottawa, but it was the business of the whole country.”
D’Amato also said the statues are being presented as a way to learn about Canadian history.
Laurier graduate Jennie Rideout is a member of the “Students Against The Statue Project,” a group formed by students, alumni, and community members to protest the statues.
Rideout said much of the planning for the statues happened behind closed doors.
“It wasn’t until the last senate meeting . . . that they opened it up to the public. A lot of students didn’t know about [the project],” she said.
Students and faculty have helped the group by putting up posters on Laurier’s campuses and writing letters of opposition to submit to the next senate meeting, according to Rideout.
Rideout also said the group has circulated a paper petition around the Waterloo campus for students and faculty to sign, which received a “couple hundred” signatures within a few days.
Despite much criticism, an online petition encouraging the statue project to continue has over 600 signatures. The petition argues the statues “will allow for a more thorough examination of past prime ministers, which will be the perfect [segue] to discuss exactly what each prime minister did wrong or right during their time in office.”
Mike Hutten, a second-year Carleton student, said he supports the idea.
“They are part of Canadian history,” he said. “I think that if we ignore the negative aspects of Canadian history, it will be very easy to forget [it], and also to repeat those offences in the future.”
Anderson said the next board of governors meeting will decide the future of the project.
“That hopefully will be the end of it, including the Sir John A. statue,” she said.
