Statue inscription position in bad taste

Published Monday August 25th, 2008

Letter to the editor

A letter was hand-delivered to the Mayor of Miramichi approximately one month ago regarding the statue of the founder of Chatham.

I quote the following from that letter: "The Statue of the founder of Chatham, Mr. Peabody, situated in Waterford Park, although a fitting tribute, is in bad taste and I trust you will see that the people responsible correct the error with no cost to the City of Miramichi"

The problem is the artist, Jeremie Giles, or the persons responsible for procuring the statue, totally ignored the language laws of New Brunswick and Canada.

The language laws, as I understand them state, "The language of the majority shall be on the left or above the minority language." This is not the case with this statue, the language of the majority in N.B. (English by approximately 70 per cent) being on the right. The only exception to this rule would be in the province of Quebec, where French is the majority language.

The mayor has not responded, so I assume nothing will be done to correct the problem. Is this another case of attempting to rewrite history?

If we continue to ignore rules, then why do we have rules.

I for one will not rest until this error is corrected. I find it ignorant and offensive.

That's the way I see it.

Sincerely,

Ted Ross

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Dear Mr. Ross - with all due respect, given all of the problems in this world that we are facing, is this really the one that you think we should "not rest until it is corrected"? Surely there are more important things for us to worry about... no?

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phil b., ottawa on 25/08/08 01:34:06 PM AST

As any artist would commission work for such a client, I expect he was given explicit instructions on what to put, and where. Perhaps it was an oversight, but I doubt it. Did the artist take it upon himself to decide the placement of inscription (Giles?). Maybe, but not likely. Or, a little closer examination might reveal the real issue here (who gave the instructions...en francais??). Does it take anything away from the statue, or what it represents? Hardly! Should it be fixed? What would our French counterparts do? Ted makes his case in point...you'd never get away with such a faux pas in Quebec! Or, dare we say, in the Acadien Penninsula! No, not even Frank P. himself could manage that one! But, if we're going to agree here on making rules, than we should also be in agreement to live by them...one and all! Had any of the wording been mis-spelled English or French, this would be a no-brainer! Do the right thing here and have this error corrected. Ce vous plas?

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A. Anonymous, Miramichi on 25/08/08 07:21:44 PM AST

This is by far the most inane thing I have ever seen printed in the opinion section.

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Ben D., Riverview on 25/08/08 09:15:15 PM AST

Why would we argue about this in a newspaper? This province pays a language commissioner who knows all the rules about our French speaking bilingual province. Present the problem to him and get an official ruling. Thanks.

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