MONTREAL Police has been accused of accompanying a Black Lives Matter march and rally with 200 “mostly young” protestors that ended in the toppling of a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald.
The event on August 29 saw the statue of the Glasgow-born Prime Minister that been in place since 1895 toppled.
Eyewitnesses told Politicalite that the local police made “no attempt” to intervene in its destruction, so Why did the police stand down?
The Coalition for the Liberation BIPOC, organized the rally. They were joined by BLM activists as they pulled down the already graffitied statue. The aim of the Indigenous and black rights groups was to defund the police and remove statues such as the one of MacDonald. His government forcibly tried to make Indigenous people assimilate.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante didn’t issue orders for police to prevent the statue’s destruction and no arrests were made. She later gave lip service to being concerned about vandalism and violence. Unlike the mayor, the Premier of Quebec, François Legault, would like to reverse the mob attempt to erase history by restoring the statue – “Whatever one might think of John A MacDonald, destroying a monument in this way is unacceptable.” We must fight racism, but destroying parts of our history is not the solution. Vandalism has no place in our democracy and the statue must be restored.”
There is a reason why Montreal’s mayor never acted to stop the statue from toppling – she was elected by “activists” and they are her power base. Last September we took a carriage horse tour of Old Montreal with the carriage-house owner Shanna and her mare Princess. Shanna said, “It’s the last year for carriage rides here. The mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, made a deal with the RSPCA that she would end carriage rides if they gave her their votes to get into office, which happened in 2017. Now she won’t renew our licenses and all rides stop on Dec 30.”
It turns out that there was no valid justification to end the carriage rides – there were only a few minor accidents and no fatalities, unlike with cars, pedestrians and bikes. No one alleged abuse in any court cases. Shanna explained, “The previous mayor, Denis Corderre, left us alone and was more pro-carriage horse but not this one.” Needless to say carriage rides were very popular with tourists, but Mayor Valérie Plante paid no attention to their importance economically. She only sought to appease the activists to be elected.
Now that Montreal’s mayor has made the city less civilized, and unsafe, how can she expect tourism and business to rebound when the pandemic eventually ends?
