Wilfrid Laurier University’s board of governors voted earlier this month in favour of abandoning a project to erect life-sized statues of Canada’s 22 past prime ministers on its campus.
The decision, based on the findings of an advisory committee, came seven months after the project was initially commissioned. Laurier had teamed up with a local citizens’ group to erect the statues in time for Canada’s 150th anniversary.
“The board responded favourably to the report, and from what I understand, the majority of comments that came in were around not keeping the statues,” said Laurier associate professor Kim Anderson, one of the key voices amongst those opposing the erecting of the statues.
“I was thinking [of] Indigenous people and our history—the role of Sir John A. Macdonald in implementing residential schools, starving out Indigenous peoples in the west, Louis Riel—all those things made it inappropriate,” she said.
Other reasons opponents of the project cited were concerns on the value of physical statues as a means of commemoration.
“There were people talking about how it’s an outdated form of commemoration,” Anderson said. “Diversity Offices [thought] it wasn’t respectful of the sense of inclusion and welcoming that they work hard to promote.”
Shelby Blackley, the editor-in-chief at The Cord, Laurier’s student newspaper, analyzed the statue project’s nixing at the university due to the number of people upset.
“The reasoning is pretty vague, aside from, ‘people were upset, Laurier didn’t want people to be upset, so they went back on their decision,’” Blackley said. “It wasn’t until multiple sides started in favour and against [it] that the administration realized they needed to take a step back and really decide what’s best for Laurier.”
The project had only completed one statue, Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, which will be moved away from its current location.
Laurier is now beginning the process of internal discussions in fully ending the project.
