Not one formal complaint about Toronto coat of arms before its removal

Article content

This time, the City of Toronto didn’t need a single complaint.

Article content

City Hall has begun removing Toronto’s pre-amalgamation coat of arms from display even though, as a recent access-to-information request by the Sun reveals, the city has zero complaints on record.

Article content

“Despite a thorough search, no complaint records were located related to the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto coat of arms,” a brief statement from the city clerk’s office said.

“Why am I not surprised?” asked Stephen Holyday, councillor for Ward 2, Etobicoke Centre. He said he’s heard “never a hint” of anything negative about the old Toronto coat of arms.

As the Sun has reported, the Etobicoke coat of arms was removed from display at the Etobicoke civic centre in January after perhaps as few as four complaints from the public in the nearly 50 years before its removal. Those complaints used words such as “offensive” or “racist” but did not specify what was objectionable about the image.

Article content

Article content

The old Toronto coat of arms sports an aboriginal figure on its left, as is the case with the Etobicoke symbol.

But Holyday said while that symbol was rarely seen by the public except for visitors to the Etobicoke civic centre, the old Toronto coat of arms is “prevalent in many places that are full of people every day,” such as in a prominent carving at Union Station and a stained glass work at Old City Hall.

Weeks after the Etobicoke symbol was removed from the west-end civic centre, a stone sculpture of the old Toronto coat of arms was taken off the exterior of a fire station in Regent Park. The fire chief’s office told the Sun in a statement that the work had been done under the purview of staff at the strategic protocol and external relations unit of the city clerk’s office.

Article content

Municipal staff told the Sun in brief emailed statements that “former symbols” were being removed under a city ban on “Indigenous-themed imagery” and as part of “the city’s commitment to truth, justice and reconciliation.”

The old Toronto coat of arms was replaced with a new image in 1998 meant to represent the megacity. Holyday brought up the symbol at an executive committee meeting late last year, questioning why the Etobicoke coat of arms was drawing sudden scrutiny from councillors while its old Toronto counterpart went unnoticed.

He admitted he didn’t think then that the pre-amalgamation coat of arms would be the next to go.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure that people listened very carefully to what I had to say,” Holyday said. “I’m not sure the committee members were terribly interested in hearing an argument in support of something that they were opposed to.”

Your favourite logo’s lost? Where’s that errant emblem? If you know of an old city symbol that was recently removed, the Sun wants to hear from you. Email us at missingTOsymbols@postmedia.com with your tip.

Article content