CHALLENGE

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Description


In August 2020 the statue of John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, was toppled from its place within an elaborate, eighteen-metre-tall structure, erected in Montreal's Dominion Square (now Place du Canada) in 1895. This statue was one of many brought down across the world in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, as advocates for racial justice challenged the presence in prime public space of memorials to leaders whose careers had been marked by acts that were blatantly racist.

Macdonald's statue rests in a City of Montreal warehouse, with no plans on the horizon as to what should be done with the space where he once stood. In that context, the After Macdonald Group, made up of Montreal-based creators, researchers, and professionals with an interest in the public representation of the past, was formed in late 2020 to encourage reflection about how the space on or around the monument might be repurposed through the introduction of temporary installations. The names of the members of the group are appended at the end of this document.

For the CCA's 2021 Charrette, participants are encouraged to propose temporary artistic interventions that speak to Macdonald's legacy or questions of racial justice more broadly. In the sections that follow, participants are provided with more context about the career of John A. Macdonald, as well as some background regarding the particular focus for the Charrette upon the introduction of ephemeral interventions.

Macdonald

Montreal's monument to John A. Macdonald was only one of many that were installed in prime locations across the country as Canada saw the public celebration of the lives of men with power. This was the same turn-of-the-twentieth century process that included the erection of monuments to Confederate leaders in the American South, or to the slave trader, Edward Colston, in England.

In all these cases, powerful figures from the past were lauded in public space following campaigns by individuals who felt that their own position in society would benefit from shaping public memory. This connection between past and present was most visible when leaders in the Jim Crow South saw value in celebrating the memory of Confederate heroes as a tool for bolstering their dominance. In the case of Macdonald, his Montreal monument was championed by business leaders who profited from the transcontinental economy that Macdonald had supported through such tools as construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In the celebration of Macdonald, nothing was said about his overtly racist policies, which he had proudly introduced. In the case of Indigenous people, he advocated assimilation whenever possible, most notably through his role in creating Indian Residential Schools; and when assimilation was not possible, he was prepared to use the force of the state, as he did in orchestrating the execution of Louis Riel, the Métis leader of a rebellion in what became Saskatchewan in 1885. To highlight Macdonald's role in this action, protesters beheaded his Montreal statue in 1992, on the anniversary of Riel's hanging.

In regard to other Canadians of colour, Macdonald made no effort to assimilate, but rather turned to exclusion. In the case of Chinese Canadians, he introduced legislation that prevented those already in the country from voting, and brought in still other laws that restricted Chinese immigration by instituting a head tax. While men such as Macdonald are sometimes forgiven for their actions because they were "normal" at the time, in the case of his policies towards Chinese Canadians he was ahead of the curve. Historian Timothy Stanley has shown how "through all the debates on the franchise and Chinese immigration, Macdonald was the only member of Parliament to refer to the Aryan nature of Canada or to make claims about the biological incompatibility of East Asians and Anglo-Europeans." Given this record of racism, it is hardly surprising that Macdonald's monument became a magnet for racial justice advocates during the summer of 2020, as did memorials to Colston in Bristol, England and to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, in Richmond, Virginia.

L’art public éphémère

One response to the removal of monuments to the "heroes" of the past has been to propose their replacement with new, permanent structures, honouring more appropriate exemplars. However, in replicating the process of installing such timeless memorials, we would only be conveying the sense -- as had the old statues -- that our understanding of the past is fixed and unchanging.

In reality, as we have seen in the case of Macdonald, the generally accepted view of an individual can change over time, leading us to propose this Charrette which asks participants to propose temporary installations. Temporary is the crucial word here, one that has been embraced by the American art and architecture historian, Kirk Savage, who has seen ephemeral installations as a tool "to shift the way we think about the memorial landscape, to make it more of an open conversation rather than an impossible quest for some kind of immutable national essence ... More voices would find room for expression. A more open, democratic sphere of memory might flourish."
As it turns out, a model for such temporary installations can be found in London's Trafalgar Square, where four plinths were erected in the nineteenth century to celebrate figures whose lives spoke to a glorious imperial past. Three of those plinths support statues honouring a monarch and two military men. As for the fourth plinth, funds ran short, leaving it empty until 1988 when it became the site for an on-going, highly-visible series of temporary public art projects, now known as the Fourth Plinth Commission. Over the past three decades, various types of artwork have been displayed on the plinth, as well as more performative art, all of which have made the Fourth Plinth a major tourist attraction.

Invitation

In the context of our changing understanding of Macdonald's life and the advantages of creating ephemeral memorials, we invite proposals for temporary interventions to address the emptied plinth of the Macdonald monument and/or the site around it, and to challenge the idea of permanence of public memory. Interventions can speak to Macdonald's legacy in particular or to issues around racial justice more broadly, and can employ architectural approaches including time-based and performance media. Proposals must consider the positionality of the team: how do you justify your intervention? For whom do you claim to speak?

The After Macdonald Group

Dr Annmarie Adams, Professor, School of Architecture and Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University

Taïka Baillargeon, Assistant Director of Policy, Heritage Montreal

Dr Peter Gossage, Professor, Department of History, Concordia University

Sandra Margolian, Public Art Lead, Concordia University

Nadia Myre, Assistant Professor, Department of Studio Arts, Concordia University; Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts Practice; Director of the Kìnawind Lab

Juan Ortiz-Apuy, Assistant Professor, Critical Perspectives on Inclusion in 3D Art Practices, Department of Studio Arts, Concordia University

Dr Ronald Rudin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Concordia University; Convenor of the After Macdonald Group

Dr Ipek Türeli, Associate Professor, Peter Fu School of Architecture, McGill University; Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice

Laurent Vernet, Chercheur invité, Département d'histoire de l'art et d'études cinématographiques, Université de Montréal/ Public art consultant

Further Reading

On John A. Macdonald and His Monuments

After Macdonald supplementary drawings

Macdonald Monument 360 view

Hill, Charles C., George Wade's Monuments to Sir John A. Macdonald, Journal of Canadian Art History / Annales d'histoire de l'art Canadien , 2001, Vol. 22, No. 1/2 (2001), pp. 6-25.

CBC News, 30 August 2020: Activists in Montreal topple a statue of John A.Macdonald

Rudin, Ronald, "How Montreal Should Repurpose the Monument to Macdonald," Montreal Gazette, 8 January 2021.

Russell, Emily. "This Founding Father's Legacy Is Darker than Some Canadians Care to Remember," The World, 4 December 2018.

Stanley, Timothy. "John A. Macdonald, 'the Chinese' and Racist State Formation in Canada," Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Vol 3, No 1, 20 February 2017.

Stanley, Timothy, "John A. Macdonald' Aryan Canada: Aboriginal Genocide and Chinese Exclusion," Active History, 7 January 2015.

On the fall of monuments

New York Times, 11 June 2020: Protesters Topple Statue of Jefferson Davis on Richmond’s Monument Avenue

Washington Post, 7 June 2020: British Protesters Topple Edward Colston Statue

On Building Ephemeral Sites of Memory

CBC Radio, Unreserved, 2 October 2020: "Indigenous Women Stand Where Columbus Statue Once Stood in Powerful Photo" (audio file)

Gormley, Antony, One and Other (Performative Art on the Fourth Plinth)

Mayor of London, The Fourth Plinth

Phillips, Patricia. "Temporality and Public Art," in Critical Issues in Public Art," Art Journal , Winter, 1989, Vol. 48, No. 4, 331-35.

Savage, Kirk. "What Kind of Monuments Do We Want," +Art, 14 July 2020.

Young, James, "Memory and Counter-Memory," Harvard Design Magazine, No. 9.