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Let's talk about the statue at St Catharines City Hall. This is Private Alexander Watson. Watson lived in St Catharines for a time and died in 1885, fighting on the side of Canadian government in the Battle of Batoche, the deciding battle in the North-West Rebellion. #ourhomestc
The Rebellion was an uprising of Métis, Cree, and Assiniboine peoples, some fighting under the leadership of Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont under the Provisional Government of Saskatchewan; some fighting independently to protect their rights, their land, and their survival.
Watson was a militia volunteer in Winnipeg, and his regiment was called up immediately to combat the North-West Rebellion, itself a direct response to the genocidal treatment that Métis and First Nations peoples were suffering at the hands of James A MacDonald’s government.
Watson was injured on the last day of the Battle of Batoche and died a few days later. And the Battle of Batoche did put the Rebellion down. (Both Riel and Dumont fled but Riel surrendered himself a few days later, to be hanged in Nov of that year, Dumont took refuge in the US.)
In 1886, a citizen committee raised funds for the Watson monument, and it was originally planned for the family plot at Victoria Lawn Cemetery, but was installed instead on the lawn in front of city hall, at the citizens’ request.
It remains there, in plain view of a flagpole which regularly flies the Two Row Wampum, despite city council’s 2009 consideration of retiring the memorial, in part because of its problematic relationship to the North-West Rebellion. https://www.niagarathisweek.com/news-story/3259992-city-may-consider-retiring-deteriorating-memorial-statue/
The Watson statue has no place at our City Hall, nor does Watson continue to earn a hero's place in our civic identity. Quite the opposite: he is unknown, ignored, and an image of Canada’s ongoing genocide of First Nations, Métis, and Indigenous peoples.
Pull down the Watson monument and lead the city that St Catharines needs to be now, by publicly addressing the reasons Watson needs to go.
Sign the petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/st_catharines_city_council_remove_the_watson_monument_from_st_catharines_city_hall/?wUYdbqb&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=petition-1053183-remove_the_watson_monument_from_st_catharines_city_hall&utm_term=UYdbqb%2Ben
Sign the petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/st_catharines_city_council_remove_the_watson_monument_from_st_catharines_city_hall/?wUYdbqb&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=petition-1053183-remove_the_watson_monument_from_st_catharines_city_hall&utm_term=UYdbqb%2Ben
