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Queen Elizabeth II statue to be unveiled at Ontario legislature by end of the year

The statue will cost about $1.5 million to build, Government House Leader Paul Calandra’s office told CTV News (Courtesy: simplysimon30/ Instagram)

A bronze statue of Queen Elizabeth II is set to be installed at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

Construction has already begun but the finished product will not be in view until its completion, which is projected for the end of the year. 

The statue will cost about $1.5 million to build, Government House Leader Paul Calandra’s office told CTV News.

Artist Ruth Abernethy, who has designed statues of noteworthy Canadians, like Margaret Atwood and John A. Macdonald in the past, previously completed a sculpture of the late queen depicted sitting on a throne, her robes draped over its armrests.

(Courtesy: Ruth Abernethy)

The new statue is inspired by the queen as she appeared in an address to the Canadian parliament in 1977, and was commissioned in 2016, with the queen’s approval. Once completed it will stand permanently in Queens Park at about 150 per cent life size, CTV News reported.

The statue will be unveiled just over a year after Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96 on Sept. 8, 2022.

She was the longest reigning British monarch and second longest reigning monarch of any royal family, preceded only by King Louis XIV of France; she served for 70 years.

Statues honouring bureaucratic figures and royalty have not always been received warmly by some Canadians.

The British royal family’s historically complex ties to Canada and beyond are riddled with acts of discrimination against Indigenous peoples and minority groups. Nonetheless, as a Commonwealth country Canadian citizens are considered subjects of the British Monarchy to this day. 

In recent years, statues of royalty and politicians linked to colonialism, slavery and acts of racism have been repeatedly vandalized in protest of the glorification of colonial history.

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