Toronto’s royal statue from the graveyard of the British Empire
Adam Bunch, The Toronto Dreams Project |
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Toronto’s statue of King Edward VII isn't from Toronto — it's from India. Today it stands in Queen's Park, but it used to stand outside the ancient Mughal Red Fort in Delhi.
Toronto’s statue of King Edward VII isn't from Toronto — it's from India. Today it stands in Queen's Park, but it used to stand outside the ancient Mughal Red Fort in Delhi.
The statue was designed in the early 1900s by the British sculptor Thomas Brock (the same guy who did the huge Queen Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace) and shows the king riding his favourite horse, Kildare. When it was first finished, it was given a place of honour in a small park just across the street from the Red Fort. But imperial statues like this one weren’t very popular in India after independence: they were gathered together in a forgotten corner of Coronation Park, on the outskirts of Delhi.
Coronation Park is huge. Back at the height of the British Raj, it’s where the English threw lavish festivals to celebrate the coronation of their new monarchs. When King Edward was crowned, his durbar — which is what they called the parties — was absolutely massive. More than 100,000 people showed up. There were elephants and fireworks and parades. A whole city of tents was pitched in the park, complete with electricity and running water. People came from all over India. Even the king’s own brother made the trip halfway around the world.
But of course, British rule wasn’t all elephants and fireworks. It was a brutal regime. There were terrible abuses. Horrifying massacres. Bloody crackdowns on dissent. Finally, just a couple of years after the end of the Second World War, India gained independence. The British were sent packing. And the statues they had built to honour themselves were rounded up and shipped off to Coronation Park. King Edward and his fellow monarchs were left alone, forgotten in a dusty corner of the very same park where tens of thousands of people had once celebrated them. The BBC called it “the graveyard of the British Empire.”
Toronto, though, still liked the British. And we were looking for a good statue of a monarch on a horse. King Edward seemed like a perfect choice for Queen’s Park — he’d actually opened the park himself during a visit to Canada back when he was still just a prince. In the 1960s, we asked India for the statue and they agreed to give it to us as a gift. It was cut into three pieces and shipped to its new home outside our provincial legislature, where it still stands today. Now, it’s probably best known for being the target of frosh week pranks by University of Toronto students. But at its feet you’ll still find the very same plaque that was originally placed beneath King Edward and Kildare when they stood in a very different park nearly 12,000 km away.
By: Adam Bunch
With special thanks to Adam Bunch, creator of the Toronto Dreams Project, a series of fictional dreams written about figures from our city's past. Each one is printed on the back of a custom-designed postcard and copies are left in places related to that person or their dream. Follow Toronto Dreams Project on Twitter and Instagram to learn more about Toronto history.