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Statue of Egerton Ryerson toppled at university after rally for residential school victims

by Techbondhu about 5 hours ago 172 Views 0 Votes June 6, 2021

A statue of Egerton Ryerson at the university named for him was toppled on Sunday after a demonstration in honour of the 215 children whose remains were discovered at a former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.

The statue, on Gould Street on the Ryerson University campus, was doused with paint and smashed during the demonstration that began earlier in the day at Queen’s Park. Toronto police were on the scene.

As the bell tolled 8 p.m. from the Kerr Hall clock tower, people surrounded the fallen statue which had been pulled down a short time earlier. Members of the crowd were chanting and taking photos around the statue and now empty base, both of which were covered in graffiti referencing the 215 lost children and the role of government and churches in residential school atrocities.

Supporters at the site said they were relieved to see the statue, a point of contention for years, come down.

Kayla Sutherland, who stood on top of the empty base and said a prayer, said she saw the removal of the statue not as an act of aggression but as a ceremony, saying it would be a positive memory for her.

Sutherland said her grandmother went to a residential school, and she has never been able to access records about the school or what happened there.

At one point, a man showed up and started taking photos or videos of people who were dancing in celebration. He was quickly surrounded quickly by demonstrators demanding he delete the content, and appeared to be chased away from the scene.

Jamie Drakes-Lindsey, who goes by the name Monikwa, said they weren’t there to see the statue falling, but they cried when they saw it on the ground.

Drakes-Lindsey had been camping out at the statue for the last four days, they said, protecting the shrine of children’s shoes at the base representing the 215 whose remains were found in Kamloops.

Some demonstrators said a “wind” or “tornado” took down the statue, indicating they would not share more details.

The statue and the name of the university itself have become flashpoints because of the role of Ryerson, a 19th-century educator, in the shaping of Canada’s residential schools system. The system, which lasted for more than a century until the last school closed in 1996, saw tens of thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families and made to attend church-run, government-sponsored schools. Thousands of children died at the schools, where physical and sexual abuse were rampant.

In the wake of the discovery of children’s remains in B.C., a letter from university faculty called for Ryerson’s name and statue to be removed.

“We, Indigenous faculty at Ryerson, sign our names to this letter, with the hope we are finally heard, both by the university community, who we ask to join this campaign, and by the university administration, who we ask to recognize that the time to remove the statue and rename our school is now,” the letter said.

Last month, a separate letter from Indigenous students called for removal of the name “Ryerson” from email signatures and other documents, instead calling the school “X University.”

On Tuesday, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde called on all governments to seek “thorough investigations into former residential school sites and to take any and all action available to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions.”

https://techbondhu.com/statue-of-egerton-ryerson-toppled-at-university-after-rally-for-residential-school-victims/