In an era defined by the renaming of historic streets and the toppling of statues of great Canadians, one small community is reaffirming its commitment to celebrating Canada’s history.
The statues were set to be placed along a public walkway on the park ground of the national historic site of Castle Kilbride, a charming 19th century Italianate villa built for James Livingstone, the “Flax and Oil King of Canada.”
The project was well underway by 2020, with a number of statues installed including Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Kim Campbell.
The township of Wilmot was not sheltered from the culture war crossfire, with the Macdonald statue being doused with red paint in June 2020. Later that month, a rally was held demanding that the statue be removed.
In July 2021, council went a step further by removing all of the statues and putting them in storage, calling this “a symbolic action for the Township to move forward on reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and work towards community cohesion and healing.”
The township’s decision did not take place in a vacuum, but was part of a frenzy of statue toppling that took place across Canada from 2020–2021.
There are tentative signs that this trend may be in the very early stages of a reversal. In October 2022, a brand new Wilmot Township council was elected, which quickly greenlit a community engagement process to establish the future of the Prime Ministers Path.
A July 29 public notice from the Wilmot council pledges that the local government will begin “reinstalling the statues at the current site, including the four currently in storage.”
There are some caveats.
Notably, the statue of Macdonald, which has been the principal target of criticism and vandalism, will be placed in “a more discreet area of the park, accessible by personal choice rather than public prominence.”
Additionally, future funding for project expansion will be sourced “through private donations, partnerships, or grants” rather than taxpayer dollars. This means the installation of new statues will have to be funded by the local community itself, or perhaps by national or provincial non-profits seeking to promote Canadian history.
The decision to make the Macdonald statue more discreet is unsurprising given the intense debate that has surrounded Canada’s first prime minister—a debate that stretches much further back than the statue toppling frenzy of 2020–2021.
Relocating Macdonald’s statue does undeniably constitute a concession in the face of activists who seek to cancel Canada’s historical figures. That being said, Wilmot is the first community in Canada to re-erect a Macdonald statue, and that can be taken as a positive sign.
In a time period in which municipal budgets across the country are stretched thin, such fiscal restraint can be understandable, though it'd be best if federal and provincial governments helped out with such projects to preserve Canada’s heritage rather than fund activist groups. A model in which local citizens fund the erection of patriotic statues and monuments on land provided by municipalities would be easily replicated by cash-strapped local governments across Canada.
More fundamentally, regardless of the relatively minor concessions made, the decision of this small Ontario community to take its statues out of storage and re-erect them in public is a dramatic rebuke to the forces which seek to cancel Canadian history.
This may reflect the very beginnings of a salutary trend in which local governments re-affirm and honour this country’s heritage, rather than erase it.
