Latest news with #antiRacism
BBC News
4 days ago
- BBC News
Colston statue toppling shows 'history isn't static'
For hundreds of years, Edward Colston was celebrated and honoured by many in his home city of Bristol, but an anti-racism protest held in the city on 7 June 2020 changed that in the most dramatic way. The toppling of his statue five years ago today made headlines around the world, forcing Bristolians to examine the legacy of the 17th Century slave years, his prominence in Bristol in the form of the city-centre statue and multiple locations bearing his name sparked controversy. Born into a merchant's family, Colston went on to build his own business in London trading in slaves, cloth, wine and found wealth through his work and later became an official of the Royal African Company, which held the monopoly in Britain on slave is believed to have transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas between 1672 and 1689. When Colston died in 1721, he left his wealth to churches and hospitals in Bristol. A portion of it was also used in founding two almshouses and a legacy continued to live on, with his name and face appearing on various city streets, buildings and memorials. The beginning of the end for Colston's close relationship with Bristol began thousands of miles away in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 25 May, were called to a grocery store to reports of a 46-year-old man allegedly paying for a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. That man was George police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Mr Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes during his arrest. Mr Floyd's pleas of "I can't breathe" as he died sent shock waves around the world - including towards Lives Matter protests sprung up across the world, calling for an end to racism and police Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his lifeChauvin was convicted of Mr Floyd's murder along with three other officers - Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J Alexander Kueng - who were convicted of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. The Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol attracted an estimated 15,000 people who gathered on College Green before heading down to Colston Avenue, where the bronze statue was erected in honour of the slave trader in 1895. On the day of the protest, the figure was covered up with a canvas material. It had already been targeted by egg-throwers, but the canvas was later torn off by protesters saying they wanted to look Colston in the eyes. Shortly after the cloth was removed, three protesters climbed up to the statue and attached ropes to its head. To roars of celebration from the crowd, they pulled on the ropes and 30 seconds later the statue was on the ground. Many ran towards the fallen figure, jumping on it and kicking it. One protester placed his knee on the statue's neck, mirroring the actions of Chauvin during Mr Floyd's arrest. Other protesters climbed the empty plinth, chanting and holding anti-racism statue was later dragged the short distance over to the harbour, where it was dumped into the water. For many that was symbolic, as Bristol's waterways had plenty of links with the slave people - dubbed the Colston Four - were charged for their involvement in the toppling, but were later acquitted of criminal damage. The toppling of the statue was dramatic. Other change has been slower, but over the last five years, Colston's name has gradually started disappearing from the city. In fact three years before his statue was toppled, the city's largest music venue, Bristol Beacon - known formerly as Colston Hall - announced that it was considering dropping the link to Colston. Massive Attack, perhaps the most famous band from Bristol, had always refused to play the venue due to its name change proposal led to a debate, with bosses maintaining that the venue was named after the street it is located on, rather than the slave trader. There was no investment from Colston in building the of Bristolians were against the change, it should be noted, but on 23 September 2020, the Bristol Music Trust, which runs the venue, decided to go ahead with the schools in Bristol also implemented changes after the statue came School in Stapleton became known as Collegiate School, Colston's Girls' School became Montpelier High School and The Dolphin Primary School changed its logo from the Colston family crest. Karen Macdonald, head of public engagement on Bristol City Council's culture team, said the toppling was "symbolic".The statue was temporarily displayed at the M Shed museum in the city in 2021 after it was retrieved from the harbour. The council launched a public survey which more than 14,000 Bristolians responded to with "very clear wishes" of what they wanted for the statue's future. The majority of the responses called for the statue to be displayed in its damaged state, alongside balanced historical information and context about Colston's that is where you will find the Colston statue now, lying on its back in a glass case, surrounded by the real placards left behind by the protestors. Ms Macdonald said: "There is value in listening to different viewpoints and coming to an understanding, even if you can't agree with each other. "This isn't erasing history, this is recording history. History isn't something that can remain static and preserved - that moment was history in action. "It wasn't about lumps of cast metal," she added. Nothing has replaced the toppled statue, the plinth is still it does now feature an updated plaque reflecting Colston's involvement in slavery and telling the story of that dramatic day in June.
Forbes
31-05-2025
- General
- Forbes
James Baldwin's Top Books, Ranked And In Order
American writer James Baldwin during an interview with Harlem Desir, founder of SOS Racisme, a ... More French anti-racism group. James Baldwin's books didn't just capture the American moment; they exposed it with a clarity that made the literary establishment flinch. Baldwin didn't compromise. Ever. That may be why America hesitated to fully embrace him. He refused the safe confines of literary convention, transforming every form he touched: novels with the rhythm of scripture, essays with the pulse of fiction and plays and poetry that preached in secular tones. His writing style fused biblical cadence with surgical clarity: at once prophetic and forensic, lush and spare. Baldwin's prose carried the conviction of a heretic who still remembered the heat of belief. At 14, he was Harlem's boy preacher, delivering fire-and-brimstone sermons at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. By twenty-four, he had walked away from the church—and from America—haunted by the sting of spiritual exile. That estrangement deepened as a gay Black man in a nation that demanded his silence and a literary world that preferred him sanitized. Baldwin refused both. He turned that rejection into agency, repurposing the sermons that once offered salvation into blistering literature that forced America to reckon with its own damnation. American novelist and activist James Baldwin addresses an audience in a church. Baldwin is most remembered for The Fire Next Time, Giovanni's Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain, works that didn't just challenge American complacency but shattered it with language as bruising as it was redemptive. His Malcolm X screenplay became the clearest metaphor for Baldwin's relationship with American institutions: praised for his vision, then discarded for its truth. When Hollywood altered his script into an unreleased documentary, Baldwin did what he always did—he published it himself as One Day When I Was Lost. In 1948, Baldwin fled to Paris not as an expatriate seeking adventure, but as a refugee from a country that demanded his silence in exchange for his survival. Yet exile became his greatest strategic advantage. From the safety of Parisian cafés, he could see America with the clarity that only distance provides and the intimacy that only love makes possible. He returned not as a foreign correspondent but as a native son armed with uncomfortable truths, speaking with the authority of someone who had loved America enough to leave it and cared enough to come back and tell it the truth about itself. To know Baldwin is to read him in order and trace the evolution of a writer who never stopped sharpening his pen or holding up the mirror. James Baldwin wrote six novels, seven essay collections, one short story collection, two plays and a screenplay. Ranking his work is inherently subjective because Baldwin wrote to disrupt, not to be categorized. But some works have proven more essential than others for understanding both the man and the nation he never stopped diagnosing. Below, I rank Baldwin's most impactful works, not by literary prestige, but by how urgently they speak to America's unresolved wounds. Baldwin's 'The Fire Next Time' is a non-fiction book composed of two essays written at the height of America's segregation era, yet they remain among the most urgent moral reckonings in American literature. The first, 'My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,' is Baldwin at his most intimate and searing. Addressed to his 14-year-old namesake nephew, it reads like a father's urgent whisper: survive this country that was built to break you. Baldwin exposes the psychological foundation of American racism: White Americans require Black inferiority to sustain their own sense of superiority. But even when he exposes that violence, he refuses to abandon hope. In the second essay, 'Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,' Baldwin turns inward. The boy preacher from Harlem who once fled to Paris has returned as a reluctant prophet, confronting a nation that has not changed and a self that has. His conversation with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad becomes a turning point. Baldwin is offered a clear path: Black separatism, but instead, he chooses something far more radical—the agony of hope. He demands that America become worthy of the love he refuses to withdraw. He loved America the way a parent loves a wayward child: with rage, yet tenderness. Baldwin delivered the moral blueprint for a Civil Rights Movement, one that demanded change, not reform. 62 years later, that challenge remains. Who should read this: Readers struggling to understand racial injustice will find Baldwin's clarity as necessary now as it was in 1963. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Baldwin's first essay collection established him as one of the most important Black intellectuals of his generation, one who was honest and refused to offer blind allegiance. Across 10 essays that blend memoir, cultural critique and social commentary, Notes of a Native Son introduced the style that became his signature: using personal experience to interrogate national failure. The title essay draws a line between the death of Baldwin's stepfather and the 1943 Harlem riot, bridging the gap between private grief and public rage. In 'Stranger in the Village,' Baldwin reflects on his time in a remote Swiss village, where the locals had never seen a Black man. The piece contrasts European racial innocence with America's violent history, showing that Black identity in the U.S. is shaped by intention and confrontation, not detachment. The collection also marked Baldwin's public break with Richard Wright. In 'Everybody's Protest Novel,' he criticizes fiction that reduces Black life to suffering or symbolism. In 'Many Thousands Gone,' he revisits Wright's Native Son, arguing that Bigger Thomas, as a character, risks reinforcing stereotypes rather than dismantling them. Baldwin respected Wright's courage but resisted the idea that rage alone could define Black life. The Modern Library ranked Notes of a Native Son among the top 20 nonfiction works of the 20th century. Who should read this: Writers learning how to transform personal experience into universal insight or readers interested in the relationship between individual psychology and social systems. Where to read this: Beacon Press James Baldwin Baldwin's debut novel redefined the coming-of-age story by grounding it in Black Pentecostal Christianity in 1930s Harlem. The semi-autobiography follows 14-year-old John Grimes, who is struggling with his identity as the stepson of Gabriel, an abusive Baptist preacher whose checkered past affects how he treats John and his mother, Elizabeth. Though the novel itself happens over the course of 24 hours, Baldwin employs sophisticated flashbacks that span 70 years to show how slavery's trauma has scarred successive generations of the Grimes family. There is a lot of emphasis on the American South, showing how the family's migration north carried their wounds with them and how geographic escape couldn't heal generational damage. Baldwin understood that trauma doesn't respect geography; it travels in the blood. The novel's religious framework allows Baldwin to examine questions that secular language couldn't address, and John's conversion experience on the church's 'threshing floor' functions as both religious awakening and psychological breakthrough—spiritual transformation and self-acceptance become inseparable. The biblical allusion to Matthew 3:12, where John the Baptist describes Jesus separating wheat from chaff, becomes Baldwin's metaphor for John Grimes's own sorting of salvation from eternal condemnation. Baldwin drew heavily from his own childhood while avoiding mere autobiography to create multifaceted characters. Who should read this: Anyone who grew up in strict religious households and struggled with identity or readers interested in how historical racial trauma can affect Black families. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Baldwin's Giovanni's Room is one of his most discussed novels because it represented his most daring departure, not from American soil, but from its expectations. Set in postwar Paris, the novel centers on David, a young American torn between the life he promised Hella and the ill-fated love he finds with Giovanni, an Italian bartender. The room at the novel's center is Baldwin's most loaded metaphor. Cramped, dark and steadily decaying, Giovanni's room, where the two men have their affair, traps David and Giovanni in a love that cannot speak its name and a shame that clings to the walls like rot. Dim, airless and increasingly filthy, the space becomes the physical embodiment of David's repression and Giovanni's despair. The novel is narrated in retrospect on the eve of Giovanni's execution and traces David's psychological unraveling as he fails to reconcile his desire with the expectations of masculinity. There are no Black characters in Giovanni's Room, which is a decision that stunned critics at the time and distanced Baldwin from the literary establishment that had already begun boxing him into the role of a 'race writer.' At the time the book was published, scholars believed that whiteness inherently meant heterosexuality and Blackness meant homosexuality. But Baldwin's point was clear: the act of repression, which is the cost of denying one's identity, goes beyond color. After the book was published, Baldwin's author photo was removed to obscure the fact that this bold, intimate, and unsparing novel about white gay men had been written by a Black man. It remains one of the most important novels ever written about sexual identity, exile and the high cost of emotional cowardice. Who Should Read This: LGBTQ+ readers seeking a serious literary treatment of same-sex relationships from the pre-liberation era and readers who are interested in how internal conflict drives narrative. Where to read this: Penguin Random House. James Baldwin knew exactly what he was doing when he titled his 1974 novel after a blues song. The story is simple enough to fit on a police report: Fonny Hunt, 22, a Black sculptor, is wrongly charged with rape while his pregnant fiancée, Tish Rivers, fights to prove his innocence. But Baldwin decided that simple stories expose the most complex truths about institutional power and bias. Baldwin structures the story around Tish's voice, letting her 19-year-old perspective carry the weight of institutional betrayal and injustice. She moves between the present crisis while remembering the past joy and showing how love develops, even when there is surveillance. Yet Baldwin refuses to let racism eclipse the love story at the novel's center. Tish and Fonny's relationship develops from childhood friendship into intimacy, and their physical connection is considered beautiful rather than shameful. If Beale Street Could Talk concludes without resolution; Fonny remains in prison as Tish prepares for motherhood, though their child represents proof that Black love creates futures despite every effort to prevent them. The novel's contemporary relevance became undeniable after Barry Jenkins' 2018 film adaptation, and audiences recognized the same patterns of institutional misconduct. This may be Baldwin's most direct political novel, one that uses intimate storytelling to expose systemic violence. Who Should Read This: Readers seeking to understand how personal relationships survive under systemic pressure. Where to read this: Barnes & Noble Baldwin's Another Country is a train wreck, overstuffed with ideas like a jazz improvisation spiraling off-key. The novel follows a group of Black and white, gay and straight, men and women—artists, lovers, misfits—trying and failing to love each other cleanly in a country that has never been honest about what love costs. The novel opens with the suicide of Rufus Scott, a gifted Black jazz drummer tormented by racism, poverty and shame. His tragic death pushes the story outward, tracing the impact of Rufus's absence on the lovers and friends he left behind, and Baldwin makes it clear that trauma does not stay contained. Instead, it spreads and affects outward. Every interaction in Another Country is charged with the awareness that something important has already been lost and maybe was never possible to begin with. What follows, subjectively, is Baldwin's most ambitious storyline—formally messy, emotionally volcanic and at times maddeningly undisciplined. James Baldwin in Paris with friends. At some points, the plot sprawls, but this formal messiness serves Baldwin's purpose. The novel's emotional register shifts constantly—from tender to savage, from lyrical to clinical. Baldwin captures the exhaustion of people trying to love across lines that America has drawn in blood. When Ida says to Vivaldo, 'You don't know, and there's no way in the world for you to find out, what it's like to be a Black girl in this world, and the way white men, and Black men, too, baby, treat you," the statement carries the weight of centuries, but Baldwin doesn't let it end the conversation—it begins one. Baldwin was trying to write the Great American Novel at a time when no one believed a Black, queer writer could do so, and he nearly pulled it off. The book is replete with interracial desire, bisexual longing, friendships strained by race, gender and class and the righteous anger of a generation trying to invent new ways of being human. To put it in perspective, Baldwin wrote about the price of denial in this book because every character in the story is running from something, whether it's their history, identity or accountability, and no one goes away scot-free. The novel is imperfect, but its imperfection feels earned and at times even necessary. Baldwin was attempting something unprecedented: a Great American Novel that refused to center whiteness or heterosexuality, written at a time when no one believed a Black, queer writer could claim that territory. Every character pays the price of denial—whether denying their sexuality, their racism, their complicity, or their pain. Decades later, Another Country stands as Baldwin's most ambitious gamble: forcing American fiction to confront the messy, painful, necessary work of learning how to love across the chasms this country has created. Who Should Read This: Readers who want to understand how Baldwin wrote about queerness and interracial relationships in 1962, when both were largely unrepresented in American literature. Where to read this: Barnes & Noble If Baldwin's first essay collection, 'Notes of a Native Son,' introduced him as a sharp observer of American life, 'Nobody Knows My Name' is where he starts aiming straight for the jugular. These 13 essays were written at the cusp of the civil rights movement, and they all show Baldwin testing and trusting his voice both as a keen observer and a truth teller. The writing is tighter, colder and more overt because he is no longer just describing the wound but also tracing it back to the hand that made it. The centerpiece is 'The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,' Baldwin's patient takedown of Norman Mailer, and, by extension, white liberal self-deception. And even though Baldwin doesn't cancel Mailer, he expresses his disappointment all while asserting that Mailer didn't mean any harm, because we know what comes next: good intentions that still manage to distort Black pain into aesthetic currency. His warnings about performative allyship feel eerily prescient, especially in a post-DEI era. Writer James Baldwin candid portrait session circa 1965. In 'Fifth Avenue, Uptown,' Baldwin walks through Harlem without flinching. There's no nostalgia, no romanticism, just one of the most damning portraits of structural neglect in American literature and Baldwin's observations on inequality, poverty and the visible filth lining Harlem's streets. In 'East River, Downtown,' he turns his gaze to the white bohemians of Greenwich Village, people who believe they've opted out of America's racial hierarchy. Baldwin's response? Not quite. His analysis also calls out how these well-meaning liberals construct theories about racial superiority while remaining trapped by the very systems they claim to reject. Even at his most scathing, Baldwin never pretends he's above the system he's critiquing. In 'Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,' he admits to the temptation of escape—of leaving the whole mess behind—but concludes that there's nowhere to go. The honesty costs him something. And he knows it. Some of the essays feel like sketches for The Fire Next Time—a few ideas half-formed, a few punches not fully landed. By the end, it becomes clear that Baldwin is not writing solely for readers, but rather because silence is no longer an option. Who Should Read This: Anyone tired of watching difficult conversations about race fizzle out before they begin. Where to read this: Penguin Random House James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues weaves together addiction, jazz, pain and estrangement to tell a story that is ultimately about how fragile, yet resilient, complicated family relationships can be. What keeps the storyline engaging is the conflict and silence between two Black brothers who love each other deeply but have never learned how to say it. But Sonny's arrest is just a trigger for the unnamed narrator because the real short story unfolds in pulses of memory, confession and sound. As the older brother tries to make sense of Sonny's life, he is forced to confront the pain in his own: the death of his daughter, Grace, the trauma of their childhood and the rage of watching your people suffer while the world moves on. The story spans just a few conversations, a walk through Harlem, and one unforgettable live performance—but in that small space, Baldwin discusses grief, race, masculinity, generational guilt and the high cost of survival. Sonny, a musician and recovering addict, becomes what Baldwin once described as 'the artist as disturber of the peace.' His drug use, volatility and music are all expressions of resistance, misunderstood by a society and a brother that values control and respectability over emotional depth. Readers soon learn that what makes Sonny's Blues so haunting is that the narrator isn't cruel—he's simply been taught not to feel anything and does not listen until it's too late. In the final scene, as Sonny plays jazz in a Harlem nightclub, his brother finally hears the music not as noise, but as testimony. The performance is chaotic, mournful and defiant. In it, the narrator doesn't just recognize Sonny's pain—he recognizes his own. At the very least, Sonny's Blues is about the lives we live beneath the surface, the stories our bodies carry, and the reality that sometimes, the only way to speak is to play. Who Should Read This: Readers trying to understand or relate to estranged family members they love, or anyone navigating a complicated relationship. Where to read this: Oxford University Press Baldwin's most unforgiving collection yet is eight stories that read like psychological autopsies of American racism. If you think you understand how hatred works, think again. In this collection, Baldwin maps out the exact neural pathways that turn children into monsters. The centerpiece, "Sonny's Blues," might be the greatest short story ever written about art as survival. A Harlem teacher watches his jazz-pianist brother battle heroin addiction and finally understands that some people don't use drugs to escape reality but to help them face it. When Sonny finally plays, pouring his pain into bebop, it feels like catharsis. But the real gut punch is the title story, told from the perspective of Jesse, a white Southern deputy who can't get aroused until he remembers the lynching his parents took him to as a child. Baldwin forces you inside the mind of a torturer and shows how racism doesn't just destroy its victims but creates monsters out of its perpetrators. The story ends with Jesse lost in a violent fantasy, his pleasure inseparable from Black pain. There's a rawness about this collection that makes readers understand that this isn't literature as therapy or politics as entertainment, but rather, it's Baldwin performing surgery on the American soul without anesthesia. Every story here is a map of desperation—heroin, music, violence, sex or God. Some paths offer release and others leave ruin in their wake. Who Should Read This: Readers who are ready to confront the psychological cost of racism, not just for its victims, but for the people who enforce it. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Bottom Line James Baldwin didn't just write about America—he performed emergency surgery on it. His prose cut through decades of self-deception to expose what lay beneath, and he forced a nation to see itself clearly, and what he showed us was so disturbing, we're still trying to look away. His work remains one of the most important of the 20th century, not because it's beautiful, but because it's true—and the truth, as Baldwin knew, is the one thing America has never been able to handle. What Should You Read First For James Baldwin? For newcomers, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955) is a great starting point. This seminal collection of essays has a personal twist to it that is complete with intelligent social commentary, laying bare the difficulties of race, identity, and belonging. Baldwin's reflections on his father's death, the Harlem riots and his experiences in a racially divided America provide a visceral understanding of the Black experience. Following this, "Giovanni's Room" (1956) offers a daring exploration of love, sexuality, and isolation. Set in postwar Paris, the novel follows the life of an American man grappling with his sexual identity, challenging societal norms and expectations. Baldwin's eloquent prose and unflinching honesty make this work a poignant examination of the human condition. What Are Famous Quotes By James Baldwin? 'Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.' - James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk) 'Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.' — James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son) 'The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.' — James Baldwin (The Devil Finds Work) Was James Baldwin LGBTQ+? Baldwin never allowed himself to be constrained by labels, yet his identity as a Black queer man shaped everything he wrote—and how he moved through the world. In novels like Giovanni's Room, Baldwin wrote openly about queer love and longing, long before such stories were welcomed in the American literary canon. In 2021, he was inducted into the LGBTQ Victory Institute Hall of Fame.
CTV News
27-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Hoarding covering Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park to be removed
Hoarding covers the statue of Canada's first prime minister John A. MacDonald outside Queen's Park in Toronto. (CTV News Toronto) TORONTO — Hoarding that has covered a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald on the grounds of the Ontario legislature for the past five years is set to soon be removed. The statue of Canada's first prime minister has been boxed up since 2020, when it was vandalized. The monument was one of many to be targeted across the country amid anti-racism protests and as Canadians grappled with the history of residential schools. A man places flowers on a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald after demonstrators threw pink paint on it at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday, July 18, 2020. A man places flowers on a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald after demonstrators threw pink paint on it at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday, July 18, 2020. The man said it was disappointing to see the statue vandalized and the flower were to show his respect to Sir John A. CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio Macdonald is considered an architect of the country's notorious residential school system that took Indigenous children from their families in an effort to assimilate them. Progressive Conservative and Liberal members of a non-partisan board of the legislative assembly agreed earlier this month on a motion to remove the hoarding after the statue is cleaned. Speaker Donna Skelly says the statue should be ready this summer and she welcomes both supporters and protesters to come to Queen's Park. Government House Leader Steve Clark says a legislative committee has been tasked with looking at how to respect Indigenous representation at Queen's Park amid a project to rehabilitate the building. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 27, 2025. Allison Jones and Liam Casey, The Canadian Press
CBC
27-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park to be uncovered after 5 years
Hoarding that has covered a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald on the grounds of the Ontario legislature for the past five years is set to soon be removed. The statue of Canada's first prime minister has been boxed up since 2020, when it was vandalized. The monument was one of many to be targeted across the country amid anti-racism protests and as Canadians grappled with the history of residential schools. Macdonald is considered an architect of the country's notorious residential school system that took Indigenous children from their families in an effort to assimilate them. Progressive Conservative and Liberal members of a non-partisan board of the legislative assembly agreed earlier this month on a motion to remove the hoarding after the statue is cleaned. Speaker Donna Skelly says the statue should be ready this summer and she welcomes both supporters and protesters to come to Queen's Park. Government House leader Steve Clark says a legislative committee has been tasked with looking at how to respect Indigenous representation at Queen's Park amid a project to rehabilitate the building.
CTV News
27-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Hoarding covering Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen's Park to be removed
Hoarding covers the statue of Canada's first prime minister John A. MacDonald outside Queen's Park in Toronto. (CTV News Toronto) TORONTO — Hoarding that has covered a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald on the grounds of the Ontario legislature for the past five years is set to soon be removed. The statue of Canada's first prime minister has been boxed up since 2020, when it was vandalized. The monument was one of many to be targeted across the country amid anti-racism protests and as Canadians grappled with the history of residential schools. A man places flowers on a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald after demonstrators threw pink paint on it at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday, July 18, 2020. A man places flowers on a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald after demonstrators threw pink paint on it at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday, July 18, 2020. The man said it was disappointing to see the statue vandalized and the flower were to show his respect to Sir John A. CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio Macdonald is considered an architect of the country's notorious residential school system that took Indigenous children from their families in an effort to assimilate them. Progressive Conservative and Liberal members of a non-partisan board of the legislative assembly agreed earlier this month on a motion to remove the hoarding after the statue is cleaned. Speaker Donna Skelly says the statue should be ready this summer and she welcomes both supporters and protesters to come to Queen's Park. Government House Leader Steve Clark says a legislative committee has been tasked with looking at how to respect Indigenous representation at Queen's Park amid a project to rehabilitate the building. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 27, 2025. Allison Jones and Liam Casey, The Canadian Press
