The legislative grounds in Winnipeg will soon feature a statue of a mother and child bison—Manitoba’s provincial symbol. The bison sculpture will replace the historic Queen Victoria statue that was toppled and defaced by protesters in the provincial capitol three years ago.
The announcement, first delivered in the NDP government’s Nov. 19 throne speech, was confirmed by Premier Wab Kinew at a press conference the same day.
“The bison is our provincial symbol. The legislature is the people’s building,” Kinew said. “And I think that having a bison mother and child on the front of the legislature is a way to invite people down.”
The bison mother and child pair is also meant to acknowledge the history of residential schools and the “bond between parent and child that were harmed in that era,” Kinew said.
It will still be some time before the bison sculpture is complete. Artists must still be commissioned to come up with design ideas, Kinew said.
Once complete, the bison statue will occupy the space once filled by the historic Queen Victoria sculpture.
The statue was toppled by protesters on Canada Day in 2021 during a demonstration over the deaths of indigenous children at residential schools. Many Canada Day events were either cancelled or scaled back that year, after mass unmarked graves were alleged to have been found at former residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have yet been found.
The statue was toppled on Canada Day in 2021 in the aftermath of an announcement in May of that year by Kamloops First Nation Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc, saying that ground-penetrating radar had detected the remains of 215 indigenous children buried on the site of a former residential school. The movement that followed saw other statues toppled around the country, as well as many church burnings.
After bringing the statue to the ground, the protestors lopped off its head and splashed it with red paint. A statue of Queen Elizabeth was also toppled during the rally.
The Queen Victoria statue was deemed to be beyond repair by the former PC government and was never replaced. Kinew suggested the sculpture may still be used in the future.
“I think it’s important that we preserve the statue and what took place in the living memory of our province,” Kinew said.
“There’s questions of protocol, there’s questions about curatorships and caring for the statue. And I want this to be presented in a historically relevant context, which means talk about the statue of the Queen, who she was, and what it represents.”
The government is currently talking to museums to potentially host the defaced statue, but nothing is set in stone, Kinew said.
“We don’t have a specific landing place for this yet.”
