Council could bring Markham cow sculpture on stilts down to earth; mooove it

YorkRegion.com
Aug. 15, 2017
Tim Kelly

Could Charity, Markham's controversial high-flying cow sculpture on stilts, be on the move?

It's a possibility. Either that or the Cathedraltown Charity Crescent stainless steel bovine that towers some eight metres in the air amid nearly two dozen homes could be lowered to ground level.

It will come down to a reconsideration at Markham city council when the sculpture reappears on the agenda next month after it was discussed at a special city council meeting last week.

Meanwhile, a delegation of at least three city councillors, led by Deputy Mayor Jack Heath and including Ward 2 Coun. Alan Ho (in whose ward Charity is installed) and Regional Coun. Nirmala Armstrong, will try to sit down with the sculpture's donor, developer Helen Roman-Barber, to see if a compromise can be reached before development services committee meets Sept. 25.

Armstrong spoke about council's reconsideration of the statue after it was approved back in April 2016. That approval came despite two previous rejections of the sculpture by Markham's public art advisory committee.

"There are options we can look at," Armstrong said. "Option No. 1: we remove it. Option No. 2: we relocate it. Option No. 3: we take it down from the stilts. We have to be creative. From my understanding with the mayor, he has been speaking with the donor and nothing came out of it."

Ho concurred with Armstrong about the options: "We will ask her (Roman-Barber) to relocate the sculpture or take it down to the ground."

“We (council) didn’t have all the information about the sculpture when we voted on it. Reading all the articles, we didn’t have all the story. We didn’t know what the Markham public art advisory committee had done, so in the public interest, we would want to review this,” Armstrong added.

Ed Shiller, spokesperson for Roman-Barber, when asked about moving the statue in the wake of revelations the cow didn’t live in Markham, said: “What does it matter? The cow was an important part of Romandale Farms. The statue is there because Cathedraltown owes its success, its existence, in part to the contribution Charity made to Romandale Farms.”