On the weekend Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol, England, toppled a statue to Edward Colston, a slaver.
We have our very own slaver statue, which keeps an eye on the Confederation Building.
No doubt, like myself many of you thought that the effigy on Prince Philip Drive was a rendition of a slender Viking, but no, it’s actually a homage to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese voyager who visited our shores and captured 57 indigenous people who were then sold into slavery.
As the murder of George Floyd causes us all to look around us, into ourselves and examine our collective and individual responses to and collusion in discriminatory acts surely it’s clear that removing the Corte Real statue, as a start to our own anti-racist movement, is essential.
No doubt that there are other examples of historical figures who were guilty of similarly heinous acts and I suggest that the provincial government should begin a process of cleansing our public spaces of other representations of the evil that men have done but, for now, please remove Senhor Corte-Real from his plinth forthwith.
Bill Radford
St John’s
