Recommendations will be made by staff in early 2025 following public consultations. Pictured: Sir John A. Macdonald statue in Gore Park.
The City of Hamilton is continuing to move forward with its Landmarks and Monuments Review of statues that they call “potentially problematic.”
City staff just completed their online survey seeking community feedback on “high-priority landmarks and monument sites” and will now be planning in-person engagement sessions across the city in Fall 2024.
The city says that, after the review, “recommendations may include adding new landmarks and or moving / removing / re-interpreting / renaming existing landmarks in ways that support a more equitable, balanced, and inclusive representation of Indigenous peoples’ histories, contributions in Hamilton, and, in the spirit of reconciliation, contribute to the education of the greater public about the history of colonialism in Canada.”
As The Hamilton Independent previously reported here, in June 2023, the City of Hamilton installed warning signs at five different monuments across the city, including the Queen Victoria statue in Gore Park, the Sir John A. Macdonald monument site in Gore Park (the statue is in storage after being torn down by protestors, but the pedestal remains), the Augustus Jones statue at the fountain in Downtown Stoney Creek, the United Empire Loyalists monument at the Provincial Offences Courthouse, and the United Empire Loyalists monument at Dundurn Park.
The signs read: “The City of Hamilton is working together with the community to provide a broader and more inclusive view of the past which may challenge some to rethink what they held to be truths. There is more than one story here. Each of the stories associated with this monument must and will be told.”
The cost of the signs was reportedly $17,000 and they are said to be temporary while the city works to decide what additional action to take.
The city also identifies the Ryerson Recreation Centre at 251 Duke Street as “potentially problematic” even though it was already renamed the Kanétskare Recreation Centre.
The in-person engagement sessions this fall will focus on the Queen Victoria, Augustus Jones, and United Empire Loyalist monuments, while the Sir John A. Macdonald site will be discussed in yet another phase of consultations.
At the in-person sessions, the city says that participants will “watch an educational video that provides some Indigenous perspectives and context on the history of the Queen Victoria, Augustus Jones, and United Empire Loyalist monuments.”
After watching the video, participants will then be invited to share their feedback in a survey.
The video and survey will also be available online.
It is unclear who is making the educational videos and what perspectives will be shared.
Staff will then be reporting back to Council with the feedback and their recommendations in quarter one of 2025.
The City of Hamilton commissioned a review of monuments in July 2021 after the discovery of alleged unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia in May 2021.
In 2023, the city even hired two new employees to their Indigenous Relations Team specifically to lead the Landmarks and Monuments Review.
The complete costs associated with the review are unclear at this time.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
