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The statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, will be removed from outside Victoria city hall, says Mayor Lisa Helps.

She said the city does not propose erasing history, but rather taking time to tell that chapter of Canadian history in a thoughtful way.

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Photo by ADRIAN LAM / PNG

The statue will be stored until an more contextual way to display it is worked out.

Helps says the recommendation to remove the monument to one of Canada’s Fathers of Confederation is part of the city’s reconciliation process with First Nations.

In an online statement, Helps calls Macdonald a “key architect of the Indian residential school system.”

“We will remove the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from the front doors of city hall so that the family members and other Indigenous people do not need to walk past this painful reminder of colonial violence each time they enter the doors of their municipal government,” she said.