WARMINGTON: New statue is turning heads while reminding that cancelling history cancels freedom

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It’s a head turner! You are certainly not going to miss seeing this.

Called Moments Contained, this nine-foot-high (2.7 metre) bronze sculpture on Dundas St. West at McCaul St. outside of the Art Gallery of Ontario, is Toronto’s newest statue.

“A celebration of shared humanity, Moments Contained is one of popular British artist Thomas J Price’s public sculptures that challenges assumptions about the purpose and expectations of monuments,” says the AGO, who unveiled it Thursday evening, adding it’s “an object of great beauty” that the artist hopes “is a gesture he hopes can lead to greater empathy and connection.”

The AGO describes this fictional woman with “a serene expression” and “her feet firmly planted on the sidewalk, she appears outwardly confident, but the hands she hides in her pockets are visibly clenched, suggesting a tension between her inner thoughts and outward expression.”

Said Price: “I want people to recognize themselves and feel valued.”

Following years of tearing them down, statues are back in favour in Canada again. In June, the boarding around the Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen’s Park were finally removed after five years, and just this wee,k Wilmot Township voted to restore its Prime Minister’s Path, including putting back up its Macdonald statue in Baden.

But with a caveat.

“Relocating the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald to a more discreet area of the park, accessible by personal choice rather than public prominence,” is how they decided to do it. It won’t be front and centre at city hall as it once was.

They will put him back up, but he will be hidden. Toronto did the same thing with the British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill statue at city hall – moving him from Queen St. to the far corner of Nathan Phillips Square, where few would ever go.

It’s the same approach they take at Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The monarchs and Macdonald statues are tucked away, way in the back of the property where few people ever walk, while imperfect Liberal prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King, Sir Wilfred Laurier and Lester B. Pearson are prominently displayed.

But it’s certainly better than having these historic figures in storage or even destroyed and disappeared like the statue of Egerton Ryerson, whose head was taken out of town and displayed on First Nation’s land, but is now unaccounted for.

None of these statues should ever have been removed or vandalized. They represent our history.

This new one on Dundas St. West is up front and on display for all to see and comment on, and in a free society, this is a positive thing, which is what Price was going for. His works have created a stir in both Rotterdam and London — which have knockoffs — and this is expected to be a talker in Toronto. The AGO said it’s “the first public artwork to be acquired by the museum’s Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora” that was “made possible by the generous contributions of a group of donors, the majority of whom are from Toronto’s Black and Caribbean communities.”

Said Curator of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, Julie Crooks: “With his monumental gestures, In Price creates space for discussion and for beauty.”

Meanwhile, at noon on this Friday, Toronto is kicking off its celebration of “Emancipation Month with Black Liberation Flag-raising” at city hall lead by Deputy Mayor Amber Morley, Chair of the Confronting Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee who “will raise the Black Liberation Flag tomorrow at Toronto City Hall as August is proclaimed as Emancipation Month in Toronto.”

The city in a news release said “the Black Liberation Flag will fly on August 1 at all Toronto Civic Centres, and the Toronto Sign (at city hall) will be lit daily through the month of August in red, black and green.”

Mayor Olivia Chow has “proclaimed August 1st Emancipation Day since 1998 and Emancipation Month in August since 2019” and also “proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015 to 2024).”

Remembering and savouring our history is as important as trying to discourage those who want to cancel or rewrite history. Macdonald, Laurier, Ryerson, McGill, Dundas or whoever should not be judged for words or actions from their time by today’s standards, but should be remembered for their contributions, while their legacies can be debated.

Things seem to be on a better footing in this regard as more statues are going up and more are being reinstalled.

Special thanks need to go to Toronto lawyer Mark Johnson and his Save Our History group, the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, historian and author JDM Stewart and Wilmot Township Mayor Natasha Salonen who have all been working hard to not only restore Macdonald’s name and historic place but restore the importance of history itself — good, bad, celebratory or not so pretty. The point is that statues across the country are better at getting conversations going than statues in storage sheds.

The Sir John A. Macdonald statue at Queen’s Park and the decision made in Baden are hopefully the beginning of a domino effect that will see Kingston, Picton, Montreal, Hamilton, Charlottetown and Victoria follow suit and put their statues back up as loud and proud as the AGO has done with this new towering one at the AGO.