Alexander Wood robbed of dignity again
10 June 2021. Photo https://twitter.com/DumaPalette.

Photo https://twitter.com/DumaPalette.

First they tore down the statue of Egerton Ryerson. Now they want to tear down the statue of Alexander Wood. Tearing down statues is the summer’s hottest dance craze.

For those of you who don’t know, Alexander Wood was a magistrate assigned to the area now known as the Church-Wellesley Village, back in 1797. He was a businessman, a member of the militia, and a city magistrate. In 1810, a woman known as Miss Bailey told Wood that she had been raped by a soldier, and although she couldn’t identify the man by face, she did manage to scratch his dick. Wood’s job was to examine the genitalia of several suspects. It is not known if the assailant was ever found. 

As a result, soldiers were miffed and took to branding Wood a ‘molly’. There seems to be no evidence that the investigation was improperly conducted, nor was it even established that Wood was indeed a homosexual. Nevertheless, the nickname ‘Molly Wood’ stuck. He may not have been gay, but he was certainly treated like one. 

Back in 2005, then BIA chair Dennis O’Connor decided it would be a nice thing to commemorate the village, and the gays who live in it, with a statue honouring this person, who owned property here and whose streets bear his name. O’Connor contacted sculptor Del Newbigging, who created a statue that made Wood look heroic rather than humiliated, rescuing the reputation of the first guy in Canada to be called a fag. The project cost $200,000 and was met with great fanfare.

Now, the Church-Wellesley BIA, the same organization who erected the statue, want to tear it down. There is a sort of good reason. Their press release breathlessly announces that, “Information has come to light that Alexander Wood spent years as the Treasurer and was a founding board member for the Society for Converting and Civilizing the Indians and Propagating the Gospel Among Destitute Settlers in Upper Canada”. Yikes. I’m sure Wood himself was happy to get the job, likely a big career advancement at the time. But woke politics ignore any context of the past. All the same, in light of current First Nations issues, we really have no choice but to remove the statue. 

They lost me with the next paragraph, though. You know how Coco Chanel once gave the best advice, which is to remove one thing before going out the door? Well, the BIA would have looked better in public if they had removed one thing before issuing the press release. “We would also like to acknowledge the problem of the myth of Alexander Wood using his position of power to sexually assault soldiers. This is especially relevant at a time when sexual assault and harassment is coming to light in Canada’s military.” 

Good Lord. Girls, if it is a myth, then don’t put it in a press release. After all, aren’t you doing the same thing to poor Alexander Wood all over again? Back then, he was called a molly by his detractors to shame him and rob him of whatever dignity he had. Now the BIA, who really should know better, are accusing him of ‘sexual assault’. Was it ‘sexual assault’ when the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office took pictures of Michael Jackson’s cock and balls back in 1993?

So goodbye Alexander Wood statue, whose base hosted many a crashed-out crackhead. We’ll miss you, but I have an idea for a replacement. In honour of the BIA’s ‘sexual assault’ allegations against a dead man, we should just replace the statue with a giant dunce cap.