Two Queen Victoria Statues Vandalized in Montreal

The following video and communique was originally published on Sub.Media.

May 18, 2018, Montreal – Days before the outdated and insulting Queen Victoria holiday, two landmark statues to Queen Victoria in Montreal were vandalized last night.

The Victoria Memorial in downtown Montreal (erected in 1872) as well the bronze statue on Sherbrooke Street (erected in 1900) at McGill University were both sprayed in red paint.

This action is rooted in opposition to colonialism and imperialism, and a dislike of the parasitic British monarchy (and all monarchies). We are also directly inspired by the recent vandalism (with green paint) of the same Queen Victoria statues in advance of St. Patrick’s Day this past March by the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade.

These statues represent, to quote the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade, “a legacy of genocide, mass murder, torture, massacres, terror, forced famines, concentration camps, theft, cultural denigration, racism, and white supremacy.”

The Queen Victoria statues should come down and be placed in a museum as a historical artifact. Public statues and monuments should not represent oppression. The presence of Queen Victoria statues in Montreal is, to again quote the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade, “an insult to Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities.”

These statues are also insulting to people who represent the progressive struggles of the Irish, as well as Québecois. However, we denounce the far-right anti-immigrant racist souchebags in Quebec who coopt the legacy of the patriotes, but actually represent neo-fascist ideas.

Important context: our action last night contributes to a tradition of targeting colonial symbols and monuments for vandalism and eventual removal: Cornwallis in Halifax, John A. Macdonald in Kingston and Montreal, the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa, the resistance to racist Confederate monuments in the USA, and more.

To once again repeat the words of the Delhi-Dublin Ant-Colonial Solidarity Brigade: “Our action is a simple expression of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist solidarity, and we encourage others to undertake similar actions against racist monuments and symbols that should be in museums, not taking up our shared public spaces.”

— Communiqué by the Henri Paul* Anti-Monarchy Brigade

* Henri Paul was the driver of the luxury Mercedes with Lady Diana that crashed in Paris in 1997. Every member of the British monarchy deserves a drunk French driver!