This article originally appeared in the National Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Patrice Dutil, June 22, 2026
The forces of historical ignorance and vandalism have once again struck in Ontario. This time, the freshly spray-painted statue of Samuel de Champlain, inaugurated in Orillia in 1925 in honour of the 300th anniversary of his visit to the area in 1615 has been removed, even though most people apparently want it kept in place.
Champlain was once an integral part of the history of Ontario. He was an expert navigator, a brave commander of men, a courageous explorer, an extraordinary cartographer and, even better, a writer and deeply observant anthropologist who left the world with the best and most complete descriptions of the Indigenous peoples of the Ottawa Valley and Georgian Bay. Students learned about him in history classes.
The renowned American historian David Hackett Fischer concluded his massive biography, “Champlain’s Dream,” by hailing Champlain as the founder of a generous and humane colony, one of the great humanists of his day. That extraordinary generation included William Shakespeare, Caravaggio, Johannes Kepler and Galileo, to name but a few. But Champlain has largely been removed from Ontario’s curriculum.
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