Four statues of former Canadian leaders were added to the Prime Minister’s Path project in Wilmot, Ont., on Saturday. Not everyone was pleased.
The contested project, now run by Createscape Waterloo Region, held an afternoon unveiling with the leadership of Wilmot Township at a municipal park by Castle Kilbride in Baden, a small community west of Kitchener.
“Obviously we’re very happy that [the project] has found its footing once again,” Don Bourgeois, chair of the board and president of Createscape Waterloo Region, told CBC News.
“Our purpose is to help create public art that has that emotional attachment, but also gets people… to have discussion about the future of Canada, the history of Canada, of art and what art is about.”
The four new statues depict Sir John Abbott, Sir John Thompson, Sir Mackenzie Bowell and Sir Charles Tupper. They join statues of Sir John A. Macdonald, Kim Campbell, Sir Robert Borden, William Lyon Mackenzie King and Lester B. Pearson.
Around a dozen protesters attended, decrying the project as insensitive and poorly conceived.
Project’s rocky path
The Prime Ministers Path project was first proposed in 2013. The project aimed to honour former Canadian leaders with 22 bronze statues placed in a park to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.
The project faced controversy from the beginning, however, with Kitchener councillors rejecting the idea of having the statues at Victoria Park in 2014 and Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University backing out of the agreement to put the statues at the school in 2016.
The statues would later find a home at Castle Kilbride in the village of Baden that same year.
By 2020, the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was put in storage after a public call for it to be removed for his role in the residential school system. The project was then cancelled by the township’s council in 2021, leading to the removal of the statues.
Last April, Wilmot council voted to proceed with the project. The vote involved giving Createscape Waterloo Region custody of the nine statues it owns, as well as entering into an agreement with the group to display the statues in municipal parkland for the next 20 years.
The project now includes an added educational component, with the Six Nations of the Grand River playing an important role, Bourgeois said.
“The Six Nations [of the Grand River] will be involved in making sure that our website, which will include historical educational materials, reflects the issues that resulted from decisions of the prime ministers over the last century and a half,” he said.
But the addition of an educational component is not enough, said Benny Skinner, who uses they/them pronouns, and led Saturday’s protest.
“If you actually take the time to learn about the prime ministers, the history of who they are and what they’ve done, and you learn proper authentic history that includes Indigenous peoples history, what you’ll realize is that this is an extremely insensitive and poorly thought-out project,” they said.
Indigenous people included ‘from the beginning’
The project has been criticized as insensitive to Indigenous people since its inception.
When Wilfrid Laurier University declined to host the statues in 2016, opponents of the project said there had been insufficient consultation and celebrating the country’s past prime ministers would be culturally insensitive given the university is built on land that traditionally belonged to Indigenous people.
Bourgeois insists that Indigenous perspectives have been taken into account.
“They were included in a sense right from the beginning, that issue with respect to how Canada, through the prime ministers’ leadership, have dealt with First Nations was part of the discussion,” Bourgeois explained.
“But clearly, we failed to communicate that properly. We failed to do it in a fashion that was sufficiently collaborative.”
That has changed, he said: “Today, thankfully, we’re down on a different path.”
But Skinner, who was co-lead for the consultancy the last time there was a community engagement for the project, said concerns raised during consultations were not heeded.
“They’re looking for an Indigenous person to check off that it’s fine so that they can continue to do this project the way that it is,” Skinner said.
“None of the Indigenous people I have spoken to, in the hundreds, about this project, want this project on these lands.”
Sculptor Nathan Scott believes it is important to highlight all aspects of Canadian history. He sculpted the four newest statues in 2019, referring to them as “the unfortunate four” for what he sees as their limited achievements in office.
“I’m a proud Canadian. I love our history,” he said. “It wasn’t always done perfectly. It’s the good, bad and sometimes there’s ugliness to it, but it’s who we are.”
“And if we don’t have history, if we try to erase it, who are we? Who are we at all?”
13 statues to go
Future changes to the project could yet win over opponents, Skinner said. They proposed changing its name, moving it to a hidden area so people don’t have to see it and better collaboration with Indigenous people.
For his part, Bourgeois said the educational aspect of the project will remain important. This includes hosting educational symposia where the history and work of each prime minister will be discussed.
For now, the long-term goal remains completing the remaining 13 statues, he said.
Though Canada has had 24 prime ministers, Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney won’t be included in the current project — to avoid it becoming “a little bit too political,” Bourgeois said.
