BLM Painted A Bunch Of Toronto Statues Pink & People Have Been Arrested (PHOTOS)

This makes a statement. Statues were defaced in Toronto with paint because of the racist connections the people they're commemorating have. Police have even arrested some of the demonstrators.

On July 18, people showed up in Toronto and took a stand against monuments in the city.

The statue of Egerton Ryerson at Ryerson University was defaced with pink paint.

At Queen's Park, statues of John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, and King Edward VII were also covered in paint. These monuments also had "defund, disarm, dismantle, abolish" sprayed paint onto them as well.

At both locations, a sign was put up on the statues that said, "tear down monuments that represent slavery, colonialism and violence."

At 9:48 a.m., Toronto Police posted a tweet about a demonstration with about 30 or 40 people at Ryerson University. It said people threw paint on the statue on the university's namesake and put up the sign on it.

A Black Lives Matter Toronto event was happening there about defunding the police and the organization has since released a statement saying they disrupted the monuments alongside a coalition of artists.

"Much like the institution of the police, these statues are monuments that glorify the ugliest parts of our history and our present," said Syrus Marcus Ware, an organizer for Black Lives Matter - Toronto"

Then at 9:52 a.m., police tweeted that demonstrators were at Queen's Park and defacing statues using spray paint and buckets of paint.

After that, the service said that several people had been arrested there.

There have been calls to remove the statue of Ryerson from the university because of the role he played in Canada's residential school system.

His advice about how Indigenous peoples should be educated was used as the model for those schools.

A plaque was put up beside his statue back in 2018 that recognizes his involvement in the system and the "cultural genocide" that happened at the schools.

Macdonald introduced residential schools nationwide in 1883.

"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents who are savages; he is surrounded by savages … He is simply a savage who can read and write," he said in the House of Commons.

There has been an increasing amount of calls to change the names of streets, cities, holidays and sports teams because of their racist connections.

Newfoundland & Labrador has changed its provincial holiday Discovery Day to the June Holiday because it celebrated John Cabot discovering the province when Indigenous peoples had already been living there.

Jagmeet Singh called on the Edmonton Eskimos to change their name following the Washington Redskins doing the same.