On the evening of June 6th, protesters toppled the statue of Egerton Ryerson which stood on Gould Street on the campus of Toronto’s Ryerson University. Since that date, I have passed the site almost every day and have noted incremental changes. What follows is a photographic record of those changes, giving some indication of how the forces of officialdom have handled the situation.
When I visited on Monday morning (June 7th), workers had carted away the statue minus the head which protesters had first tossed into the lake and later stuck on a pike on Land Back Lane in Caledonia. At that time, the site itself remained open.
By the next morning (June 8th), workers had enclosed the plinth in a big plywood box. Presumably the university rationalized the move as a precautionary safety measure. People would climb up on the plinth and take selfies. Somebody might fall and hurt themselves.
There was a poster on official Ryerson letterhead that said: “The items place in memorial of the 215 Indigenous children have been respectfully temporarily relocated to the west of this site. They will be carefully returned once work is complete.” The items in question included shoes, children’s books, and plush animals. The adverbs are like a card sharp’s tell: respectfully, carefully. The university’s administration is walking on eggshells.
On the morning of June 9th, they had expanded the plywood to enclose the entire site. The same notice on official Ryerson letterhead advised that all the memorial items had been “respectfully” placed to the west of the site and would be “carefully” put back later.
Returning to the site the next week (June 15th), they had cleared away the plywood. The university has removed the plinth. But it has also removed all the memorial items. In addition, they have amended the official notice: “The items placed in memorial of the 215 Indigenous children have been respectfully moved into storage by the organizers for future installation.”
