After 3-year delay, Brampton finalizes design for Tamil monument to honour lives lost in Sri Lankan civil war
Tamil Genocide Memorial to be built in Chinguacousy Park by 2025, city says
Brampton city council has approved the final design for the Tamil Genocide Memorial, a monument the city promised three years ago that it would build.
The 4.8-metre tall stainless steel monument will be built in Chinguacousy Park in the Bramalea area to commemorate the lives lost in the Sri Lankan civil war — what many people in the Tamil community call a genocide. Canada's Parliament unanimously voted to recognize May 18 as Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day in 2022.
"It is an eye opener for the public," said Rathakrishnan Kandiah, president of the Brampton Tamil Seniors Association president. "They will become aware of the injustice that have happened to the Tamil people – that a genocide happened in Sri Lanka."
Mayor Patrick Brown promised to build a monument after a memorial in Sri Lanka was torn down in January 2021.
The destruction of the Mullivaikkal memorial at the University of Jaffna — erected in 2019 to honour the lives of Tamil civilians who died in the war — led to public outrage from many Tamil diasporas around the world including Brampton, which is home to roughly 12,000 Tamil people.
In response, Brown promised the community a monument in Brampton, and council passed a motion within days that would allow local Tamil groups to raise funds for a memorial in a public park.
"While there might be some people trying to 'whitewash' history in Sri Lanka and rewrite history — we can't stand for that," Brown said at the time of the announcement.
Community fundraising to pay for monument
The initial motion gave responsibility to build and maintain the monument to two local organizations: Brampton Tamil Association and Brampton Tamil Seniors Association. The two formed an organization called Tamil Genocide Memorial to raise about a $150,000 for the monument. The organization raised $102,000 by 2023.
Following a motion last November, the National Council of Canadian Tamils will have ownership of the monument and will be responsible for maintenance. The lease period has yet to be determined.
The monument will be funded by community fundraising, according to a city staff report, with no specified cost for the project.
A city staff member said the installation of the monument will take place in two phases, and the goal is to complete the first phase by May 18, which is the Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, and the second phase by May 2025.
"I'm putting my heart behind this project," Brown told CBC Toronto before the vote Wednesday.
Brown added that the project is "very personal" to him, given he was the first MP to speak about Tamil genocide in the House of Commons and Sri Lanka rejected his visa when he wanted to visit the country to see camps for displaced Tamils.
A 'frustrating' delay
After the announcement to build a memorial, Brown said his goal was to complete it by May of 2022, which he now calls "unrealistic."
The delay can be broadly attributed to three reasons: a delay in leadership of the project, a lack of funding, and a design change.
Nevertheless, delay has been frustrating for Coun. Martin Medeiros, who introduced the motion to build the monument.
"The community has been waiting for updates and I myself have been somewhat frustrated waiting to see what our next steps will be," Medeiros said.
Though the leadership of the project now lies with the NCCT, Kandiah from BTSA says his organization will support anyone who helps in the building of the monument.
"We would like it to be done at the earliest possible," he said.
A new design
The Tamil Genocide Memorial held an architectural competition and received over 100,000 design submissions. In September 2022, the city revealed the winning design — a plant-like structure on a water feature.
After that design faced opposition, the NCCT decided to revise the design to make it more "unifying", NCCT spokesperson Rugsha Sivanandan said.
"The new design represents the traditional ancestral and historical homeland of the Tamil people."
She says this monument will be a step closer to the acknowledgement of atrocities that many diaspora Tamils like herself have waited for their entire lives.
"We've heard very painful, traumatic stories of Sri Lankan troops killing tens of thousands of innocent Tamil children, women and men," she said.
"And unfortunately, as someone who has been brought up here, not just for me but many youth, share the sentiment of experiencing that intergenerational trauma and the need for the recognition and the accountability and justice."
The new final design will not only highlight the regions of Tamil homeland in the northeast of Sri Lanka, but the pillars surrounding it will have information about the violent riots that erupted since the country's independence in 1948.
Objections to the monument
In 2022, Brown was cleared in an ethics investigation for confronting a delegation from Sri Lankan Canadian Association to change the monument.
The delegation denied a genocide took place and wanted that to be reflected in the monument and commemorate "all lives lost" in the Sri Lankan war that lasted from 1983 to 2009.
Brown says he has received similar objections from the Sri Lankan High Commission.
The Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner Anzul Jhan told CBC Toronto the Sri Lankan government "categorically rejects" identifying the monument as a "Tamil Genocide Monument" because it believes it is "a distorted narration of reality."
"This has been communicated over and over again to the office of the Mayor, who chose to ignore by giving into pressure of a powerful vocal minority without taking into account the damage his office is doing to the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka by naming it as a 'Genocide' memorial in the heart of Brampton," Jhan said in an emailed statement.
"All communities were affected" during the Sri Lankan civil war, she said, and that should be represented in the monument.
"One of the stages of genocide is denial of genocide," she said. "It's actually the last stage of genocide and Tamil genocide deniers are actively working, and there is a deliberate attempt to destroy the monument."
Tamil people, who are a minority in Sri Lanka have faced violent persecution in the island country since its independence from the British Empire in 1948, including eruption of violent riots that killed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, according to the UN.
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