Isabella I of Castile

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

The Snowdon monument to medieval murderous Isabella I of Castile seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

For 65 years a small slab has stood at the entrance to Macdonald Park, a dynamic green space at Snowdon’s western edge. Alongside footpaths, swing sets and dogs, stands the tribute to the monarch who brought the inquisition to Spain, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were tortured and expelled.

The stone was dedicated in October 1958 by 18 consuls in Montreal on the 466th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America, itself a few months after the Alhambra Decree expelled Spain’s practising Jews. Not only did Isabella oversee torture, massacre and forced conversion of hundreds of thousands, but survivors were given a deadline to convert or leave. Over half of Spain’s Jews were forcibly converted with 40,000-100,000 expelled from Spain.

It’s been 18 months since Borough Mayor Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, recently named Plante administration point-person on racism and discrimination, welcomed a suggestion by a resident and Snowdon councillor Sonny Moroz to remove it, asking Moroz to follow up.

It was radio silence at Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante’s office, which had no comment more than a year ago, other than suggesting a query to Montreal’s media relations department which never responded to The Suburban. Moroz said he made his third official request to remove the statue last January. “I asked that they just remove it and leave the flower bed because residents want to keep that.”

While the green grass grows around the grey slab for yet another season, at April borough council resident Shloime Perel asked, “should not the Queen Isabella monument at Macdonald Park be given to a museum on the history of Montreal and replaced by more positive and uplifting sculptures?”

Moroz said there’s another “hiccup,” stating that initially, “after checking, apparently we have the right as a borough to just remove it, according to the borough mayor’s previous chief of staff.” But Moroz says that information was later proven incorrect, “so we are waiting apparently for a move forward,” which he says is to go through a centre city heritage committee, but he will “continue to work to get to the next step,” asking Katahwa or the services to clarify.

Katahwa said “the information that the councillor from Snowdon gave us” was incorrect. “I had a conversation with my colleague responsible for culture and heritage and she said to me absolutely not; there’s a policy of the city of Montreal where there’s a whole process to be able to do such a gesture. It seems small because it’s really a small monument… but it’s still a gift from the government of Spain to the city of Montreal so we cannot without asking or without consulting anyone remove that, even if we agree on the reason why people are asking us to do that.” n