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Christopher Dummitt: Vandals don't deserve a veto over Champlain statue

Removing Orillia monument is counterproductive to reconciliation

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If events in Orillia, Ontario are anything to go by, reconciliation in the Canada of 2026 seems to mean that if a few angry Indigenous protesters don’t want something to happen, they get a veto.

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The South African model of reconciliation was built on the idea of a single collective exercise of truth-telling, after which individuals and groups could live together in peace. Not in Canada. Not in Orillia.

Christopher Dummitt: Vandals don't deserve a veto over Champlain statue Back to video

It’s all about statues. Again.

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This time it’s a statue of the French explorer Samuel de Champlain that once stood on the waterfront in the little Ontario town of Orillia — the town Stephen Leacock made famous in his........

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