Vancouver School Board will remove Cecil Rhodes sign
Posted June 24, 2019 8:16 pm.
Last Updated June 24, 2019 9:21 pm.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A sign honouring a controversial figure will permanently be stripped away from a Vancouver school.
Vancouver School Board Trustees voted unanimously to permanently remove a sign commemorating Cecil Rhodes, widely considered the grandfather of apartheid in South Africa.
RELATED: Vancouver school covers sign honouring controversial historical figure in effort to ‘find a way forward’
The sign, located at L’Ecole Bilingue Elementary School near Oak and 14th, was temporarily covered up earlier this month.
Trustee Jennifer Reddy, who initially made the motion to have it removed, says the plaque is harmful to students and community members.
“We should be rushing to take it down and to protect our students, staff and parents from the inevitable confusion when they realize their school has lionized this terrible man and obliged them to play in the shadows of his name,” she said at the meeting.
Sadie Keen was part of a delegation calling for the removal of the sign, and says it has no place in Vancouver.
“There was no justification for putting it up and keeping it up in this day and age, particularly in a system, in the school district such as Vancouver,” she says.
On June 11, school administration decided to cover the sign to “allow time to support and engage with the school community about how historical wrongs should be recognized.” pic.twitter.com/tn1dWckHCc
— Mike Lloyd (@llikemoyd) June 24, 2019
In the coming weeks, the board will develop a reconciliation plan for students, and will remove all physical references of Rhodes from school property.
The sign came from an architectural element saved from a heritage school building that was originally named after him.
The school’s Parent Advisory Council asked the board last year to have the sign removed.
– With files from Mike Lloyd and Hana Mae Nassar
