Calls are multiplying in Canada so that a statue of Montreal and a street of Toronto in honor of historic figures considered racist, are unbolted or renamed.
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Canadians join their voices to a concert of similar protests observed in several major cities around the world in the wake of the anti-racist movement revived in the United States by the death of the African-American George Floyd at the hands of the police.
Thousands of people have signed an online petition demanding the removal of a bronze statue of Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, which sits on Canada Place in Montreal. Another request to rename Dundas Street - a politician opposed to the abolition of slavery - in Toronto.
" It is also time for Canadians to reconsider the meaning of our public monuments, and their effect on the legacy we want to correct, " said one of the petitions. The Macdonald statue, installed in downtown Montreal in 1895, has been vandalized several times in recent years.
Forced enrollment in residential schools
His government is accused of trying to assimilate indigenous peoples by forcibly recruiting them into boarding schools, where the use of their languages was prohibited, a policy qualified by “a cultural genocide ” by a commission of inquiry in 2015. Centuries later, several thousand aboriginal people in Canada still live in extreme poverty and experience violence. Montreal does not plan to remove the statue, said Wednesday Valérie Plante, mayor of the city, hoping rather the opening of a public " dialogue " on the issue.
In Toronto, Mayor John Tory formed a task force to examine a possible name change to Dundas Street taking into account " important and relevant historical issues ". 18th century politician Henry Dundas opposed the end of slavery and delayed its abolition in the British Empire. Renaming a major artery poses " practical challenges ," said John Tory.
Montreal renamed one of its streets a year ago to give it a Mohawk name in homage to the city's indigenous heritage, instead of that of a controversial British colonial general. In 2018, a statue of Macdonald was removed from the site of the provincial legislature in Victoria, British Columbia.
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