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COLUMN: Champlain does not belong among oppressors

Guest columnist wonders if a new sculptor could match 'the strength and beauty' of original figures in a replacement for the priest component
2020-06-26 Champlain Monument tarp
A tarp was placed over the base of the Champlain Monument after it was vandalized. Nathan Taylor/OrilliaMatters File Photo

The following is a guest column by former long-time Orillia Packet & Times reporter/columnist Colin McKim.
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At the Champlain monument’s last known whereabouts, the tarped pedestal resembles a bandaged stump following a major amputation.

And for many, the loss of this remarkable work of art is felt as strongly as if a vital part of the community had been severed and removed.

I am well aware a wave of condemnation is sweeping across North America, targeting statues and other monuments to colonialism, white supremacy and exploitation. This quest to call out oppression and seek equality is noble and I support it fully.

Unfortunately, in their zeal, those fighting the good fight can sometimes miss the mark as they have in the case of Samuel de Champlain.

The French explorer does not belong in the rogues’ gallery of villains and oppressors. On the contrary he came to Huronia in peace, not seeking to enslave the population, claim territory or save souls.

He was an explorer, charting the land and waterways in the vain hope of finding a passage to the Pacific. He was also a fond observer of his Huron friends and allies.

In his illustrated journals he speaks with admiration of their crafts and artifice. He saw the weirs at The Narrows when they were still functioning as ingenious fish traps. And he noted that the aboriginals used a similar technique on land to hunt deer, driving the animals with loud drumming through the woods into a broad V-shaped fence.

Champlain and his men fought with the Hurons against their mortal enemy, the Iroquois, in an unsuccessful siege at their stronghold south of Lake Ontario.

Wounded in the attack, Champlain recuperated through the winter at Cahiague, the Huron’s largest village between present-day Orillia and Coldwater.

These and many other aspects of Champlain’s travels through this part of the world are well known to historians. It would have been wonderful if the British sculptor Vernon March had put a Huron chief on the same elevated perch as the famous explorer himself.

But when the monument was envisioned in the early 1900s the Huron no longer occupied these lands having been virtually wiped out by the Iroquois centuries earlier.

The representation of Champlain is somewhat a flight of fancy since March had no likeness of Champlain as a model. The costume and accoutrements including spurs is hardly the gear for canoe tripping.

If March was going for grandeur he succeeded, albeit with a swatch of foppishness. But I like the effect and find the 12-foot tall figure very uplifting. A real treasure. Knowing some of the history, it does not offend me.

I do see how the depiction of the bare-chested Hurons on the lower level, sitting at the feet of fur-trader on one side and literally being lorded over by a priest on the other might give pause.

I could accept the triad of the trader and the two muscular Hurons as realistic representation of a possible parlay. The two native men appear comfortable and unintimidated.

The fact the trader is standing does not in and of itself represent superiority. He may be standing because his butt hurts from sitting on a wooden canoe seat for hours.

So there is no reason, under the rules of political correctness or otherwise that this part of the monument could not be returned.

The priest with his Bible raised like a club is another story. Here I agree the scene could offend. And Champlain, as I noted earlier, was not bent on saving souls. That was the mission of the Jesuits, who came to these parts years later, after Champlain’s death.

On this side of the monument a depiction of a Huron chief standing over two French men, possibly squatting or sitting cross-legged might work. The chief could be offering them a deer carcass or some other gift. The point would be to counter-balance the threesome on the other side.

March has set the bar high for sculpted humanity. But hopefully a sculptor could match the strength and beauty of the figures he created.

Instead of turning away in distress, visitors will marvel at the magnificent manifestation of human enterprise .


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