Statue of Edward Cornwallis

Statue of Edward Cornwallis

Location	Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (in storage)
Designer	J. Massey Rhind
Opening date	June 22, 1931
Dedicated to	establishing Halifax and British rule of law
Dismantled date	January 31, 2018

The Statue of Edward Cornwallis was a bronze sculpture of the military/political figure Edward Cornwallis atop a large granite pedestal with plaques. It had been erected in 1931 in an urban square in the south end of Halifax, Nova Scotia, opposite the Canadian National Railway station. Cornwallis was the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (1749–1752) and established Halifax in 1749. A Cornwallis Memorial Committee was struck in the 1920s and a statue was raised to pay tribute to Cornwallis and to promote tourism.

Since the 1980s the existence of the statue has generated significant controversy. To the Mi'kmaq First Nation, the first residents of the area, the statue symbolized the injustices they had suffered through the colonial period, and up to the present day. To many other Nova Scotians, the statue represented the founding of the city and had local historical value. According to historian John G. Reid, the conflicting viewpoints centred on the issue of historical memory, that is, "how the past should be publicly remembered."^[1]

In 2018, after several public protests at the site, the statue and pedestal were removed on order of the Halifax Regional Council, citing safety concerns and concerns about the statue being vandalized and placed in storage. In 2021, the park was renamed "Peace and Friendship Park".^[2]