New working group to include Wilmot community members in Prime Ministers Path decision

A new community working group in Wilmot Township will help decide the future of a sensitive political project that has been in and out of debate for years. 

The Prime Ministers Path Engagement project started in 2013 as a means of honouring 150 years of confederation. Private citizens raised money with the objective of erecting bronze statues of 22 former Prime Ministers in Waterloo region. 

The project's history is a long one, with over 10 years of public review, criticism and now revamping. 

In March, Wilmot Council voted to move forward with a new group that would "help shape the future of the path," according to its website. 

"This created a lot of division in our community a few years ago," said Wilmot Mayor Natasha Salonen. "Certainly a hope of mine out of it is that there can be some community healing."

She said there are a few goals for the new working group: to get a broader set of opinions and outlooks on the project, but also to make sure that the storage of the current statues don't continue to eat up the township's tax dollars. 

"There's certainly a tax implication on it, granted, not astronomical. However, every penny counts when it comes to our budgets," Salonen said.

Those interested in being a part of the process were to submit an expression of interest application that would make or break their spot in the first meeting on Dec. 3. 

In addition to that, the Prime Ministers Path Engagement Team is also opening the floor for public discussion of the project with five tea circles from December to April that will allow members of the community to voice their opinions on returning to the project. 

Wilmot Township has hired LURA Consulting to facilitate public discussion on the issue. Some public meetings have already been held throughout November, and there will be more in the coming months.

One of the upcoming engagement opportunities, one of many tea circles, will be as soon as Dec. 12. 

LURA Consulting's Prime Ministers Path Engagement co-lead, Denise Soueidan-O'Leary, said that the goal is to make sure as many voices as possible are heard.

"People on both sides, who wanted the path to remain, those who wanted it down and all the folks in between, are feeling alienated or disengaged from the process," Soueidan-O'Leary said. 

"So the hope here is to be able to create opportunities for people to be listened to so that they feel like they have a say in the process."

The tea circles, she said, are to create an open environment that doesn't feel like a referendum but a more community-based gathering that will allow for "a place of reflection and having everybody's thoughts and ideas shared" moving forward with decisions about what to do about the path. 

A history of controversy 

The Prime Ministers Path story starts with the question of where to put the statues. Initially, Kitchener's Victoria Park and Wilfrid Laurier University's Waterloo campus were considered as hosts but backed out amidst opposition and, in the university's case, a petition against the project because of the contentious history of many of the Prime Ministers. 

By 2016, Wilmot Council approved the installation of the statues in front of Castle Kilbride in Baden. It would become the Prime Ministers Path. By 2018, five statues were installed. 

But public backlash would lead to a review of the project and its ultimate demise by 2021, when First Peoples Group compiled a report that advised for the removal and discontinuation of the path. 

This was sparked primarily by the vandalism of the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, whose involvement in the formation of residential schools was a problem for opponents of the project. 

Now that the gatherings are underway, Soueidan-O'Leary hopes that by early spring, LURA Consulting's recommendations will be finalized and shared with the council.