City Hall dumped 140-year-old Columbus artwork in woods

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City bureaucrats ordered a 140-year-old stone carving depicting Christopher Columbus to be removed from display and hidden in a wooden area in Scarborough’s Guild Park in 2021, the Toronto Sun has learned.

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According to emails obtained in a freedom-of-information request, the decision came at about the same time that a volunteer group was directed by city staff to scrub from the internet any of its references to Columbus or the stone that depicted the 15th-century explorer.

“They are setting it in the ‘forest’ a few metres from the base,” Barb McLean, of the city’s economic development and culture department, wrote to colleagues in an October 2021 email. “There was not enough time to change the plans without delaying the removal.”

McLean, in an email two days earlier, wrote to the same group: “The idea is to carefully lay it in the trees. I have thought about this and I think it could lay in the trees behind the Clark Centre (for the Arts) with the remaining pile of stones there.”

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McLean added that a member of the Friends of Guild Park group suggested taking down a monument can be “an emotional thing for people,” but she replied that she wanted it “removed with little fanfare.”

McLean also expressed concern that dumping it far into the woods, as was ultimately done, would require the permission of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority or the city’s forestry officials.

“We don’t want it to look like it was removed by vandalism,” McLean added. “If it is found in the trees on its own even years from now, it might cause a stir.”

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Guild Park, near the Scarborough Bluffs, is billed by the city as a “sculptural sanctuary” where old architectural treasures are put out to pasture, such as stone depictions of the pre-amalgamation Toronto coat of arms recently featured in the Sun.

The Columbus artwork is part of a series of 17 stones that also features depictions of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, as well as other prominent figures such as the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. The stones were featured for decades on the exterior of what was called the Richmond Building in London, Ont., which was torn down in the late 1960s.

While the stones have long been in the park’s collection, they only began to be put on display in October 2020, starting with the Columbus, Victoria and Edward stones. Complaints followed about Columbus, the emails state, but the single example cited in the documents did not specify a problem with the stone, simply saying it should be “replaced with work by an Indigenous artist.”

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McLean, then a senior project co-ordinator for the city’s capital assets unit, wasn’t much more detailed in her criticisms of Columbus, saying “the concept of ‘discovery’ is highly problematic” and predicting some would be “hurt” by the sight of the artifact.

McLean has since retired, a city spokesman confirmed.

In a statement this week, Russell Baker, the city’s manager of media relations and issues management, told the Sun the stone was “temporarily removed from its base” three years ago “and relocated to another location in Guild Park while city staff take steps to add an interpretative plaque with the stone structure.”

“While details are still being finalized, the city is planning to consult with the Guild Park stakeholders group to develop an interpretative plaque. Once the plaque has been installed, the stone portrait will be returned to its original location,” Baker added.

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But the 2021 emails make no mention of the move being anything but permanent – and they show City Hall wanted the Columbus stone out of sight both at Guild Park and on the internet.

Julie Frost, manager of arts and culture services at the economic development and culture department, directed the president of Friends of Guild Park to take a video off the internet and restore it only after any mention of Columbus had been cut.

In a brief statement to the Sun, Friends of Guild Park referred all questions to city staff.

Interestingly, Frost had months earlier appeared to minimize any concerns about the Columbus stone.

“With the city’s emphasis on decolonization, I hope we don’t find ourselves faced with a situation where we’re asked to remove profiles of historic figures like Victoria, Edward and Columbus. It’s hard to predict the response to this content in 2021,” Frost’s colleague Jo Ann Pynn wrote in July of that year.

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A few weeks later, Frost wrote that she agreed with Pynn but wanted a “strategy” for such additions.

“I, like you and my arts east team, have great concern about the potential for these initiatives to blow up in our faces and it will be my front-line staff who will have to manage the ‘wakes (sic),’” Frost wrote.

The city declined to make Frost available for an interview.

McLean saw things differently. Regarding Victoria, the queen who oversaw Confederation, she wrote in September: “There is a sense, in the prominent placement, either side of and at the head of the main path stretching out from the estate home, of the queen of the empire surveying her lands. This could be interpreted as a problematic placement to choose in a time when we are trying to engage in truth and reconciliation.”

Was your favourite statue or stone carving tossed in the trash, left in the woods or dumped in the lake? If you know of an old city symbol that was recently removed, the Sun wants to hear from you. Email us at missingTOsymbols@postmedia.com with your tip.

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