EDMONTON -- A more than century-old statue of Canada’s first prime minister was pulled down and damaged in Montreal on Saturday, and the vandalism caught the eye of Alberta’s premier.
Protesters demanding defunding of police toppled the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, which was also decapitated from the fall.
The statue was busted into pieces and then spray-painted.
No arrests were made, and police said the protesters were mostly peaceful.
Macdonald statues have been damaged or defaced across the country, as people draw attention to mistreatment of Indigenous and other marginalized peoples in the 19th century.
Jason Kenney responded to what happened to the statue in a series of tweets, calling the protesters a "mob" from the "extreme left."
"If the City of Montreal decides not to restore Wade’s statue of Macdonald to where it has stood for 125 years, we would be happy to receive it for installation on the grounds of Alberta’s Legislature," Kenney said in a tweet.
The Montreal protest was one of several held across the country on Saturday as protesters called for police budgets in some of Canada's biggest cities to be slashed and reallocated to community groups. Similar events were held in Toronto, Calgary and Halifax.
