Queen’s Park is getting a statue of Queen Elizabeth II. An MPP calls it money misspent

After years of delays, and her death last September, a bronze statue of Queen Elizabeth II is going up at the legislature. But not without controversy.

Thestar.com
Aug. 1, 2023
Rob Ferguson

There’s a new queen coming to Queen’s Park.

After years of delays, and her death at age 96 last September, a bronze statue of Queen Elizabeth II by Ontario artist Ruth Abernethy is going up at the legislature. It will be unveiled by year’s end with taxpayers now footing the $1.5-million tab.

“It has been a while,” Abernethy says with a nod to a process that began almost a decade ago when former premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government agreed to give the statue -- proposed by a group called the Canadian Royal Heritage Trust -- a home.

But that private fundraising effort fizzled and the COVID-19 pandemic ensued, leaving the project in limbo with the statue in storage and the artist unpaid, until earlier this year when the province decided to commit the cash.

While the original plan had been to install the Queen Elizabeth statue in 2017 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation, work on the site didn’t begin until a couple of weeks ago.

That’s when a backhoe appeared on the west front lawn of the legislature beside the new visitor’s centre entrance. A large, deep square pit was dug, as if for a swimming pool.

Concrete was soon poured as the base for a granite pedestal on which the seven-metre statue, depicting Elizabeth at 150 per cent life size on the Canadian Senate throne, will rest by the end of the year. It will mirror a statue of her ancestor Queen Victoria on the east front lawn.

Paul Calandra, minister of legislative affairs and house leader for Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, says the sculpture came to his attention last year, leading him to circle back with legislative officials and Abernethy.

“The government decided that it had to step in and make it right with both the artist and the foundry but, more importantly, I think we’re always in tune to honour her majesty on the grounds of the legislature,” adds Calandra, who also serves as minister of long-term care.

“Given that there had been previous approval, we didn’t feel it necessary to relitigate this particular one.”

The decision was made by the legislature’s Board of Internal Economy, which consists of Calandra and New Democrat MPP John Vanthof (Temiskaming-Cochrane), who was vacationing out of the country and not available for comment. The board is chaired by Speaker Ted Arnott.

However, one MPP is speaking out against the effort, saying the money would be better used to find the unmarked graves of Indigenous children at former residential school sites, or to honour their loss.

“Where is the monument to that?” asks New Democrat Sol Mamakwa, a member of the Kingfisher Lake First Nation who represents the northwestern Ontario riding of Kiiwetinoong. “I don’t know if we really need to construct a statue for Queen Elizabeth.”

Two years ago, Premier Doug Ford committed $10 million over three years to identify and commemorate the burial sites of Indigenous children who died in Ontario residential schools -- an amount Mamakwa at the time called “a drop in a bucket.”

On Monday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford announced another $7.1 million for an “Indian Residential School Community Engagement Fund.” The money will provide supports for survivors and their families, such as help with mental health and addictions services, research and public education while burial investigations take place. Applications can be made until Sept. 5 at the Transfer Payment Ontario website.

One statue in particular has become a sensitive subject at the legislature, where the 1894 sculpture of Canada’s founding prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald was covered in a tarpaulin and boarded up after several incidents of vandalism in 2020.

Laying at its feet are dozens of small shoes placed there in silent protest over the unmarked graves at residential schools often run by churches and Macdonald’s role in creating the educational system that -- until the last such school closed in 1996 -- saw about 150,000 Indigenous children removed from their homes and forced to attend. Thousands never made it back to their parents as a result of horrible and heartbreaking mistreatment.

Debate on the future of the Macdonald statue continues with a legislative committee of MPPs reaching out to First Nations and others for ideas to give it a more complete historical perspective.

“Queen Elizabeth, in my opinion, represents the start of reconciliation in this country,” Calandra says in defence of her statue, noting she is the longest-serving British monarch at 70 years.

Others like Mamakwa say she is part of a royal establishment that for too long turned a blind eye to mistreatment of Indigenous people and broken treaty obligations with the Crown.

A year before he became King Charles III, the queen’s eldest son Prince Charles on a 2022 trip to Canada acknowledged “we must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past reconciling and striving to do better.”

While the project began as a way to spotlight the monarchy and the role it plays, Abernethy says “I don’t dwell on the royal family. I think it’s important to note this particular one was a tribute to Queen Elizabeth.”

“This is not a tribute to empire I think that is significant,” adds the artist, who spoke with Queen Elizabeth in 2010 when her sculpture depicting legendary Canadian musician Oscar Peterson sitting at a grand piano was unveiled at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Until the pedestal is ready, the Queen Elizabeth statue remains at a foundry in south Etobicoke awaiting its final coating.