The Canadian Press
MONTREAL–A commemorative plaque honouring a former president of the Confederate States of America has been removed from a Hudson’s Bay Co. building in downtown Montreal.
Spokeswoman Tiffany Bourre told The Canadian Press in an e-mail the plaque of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederate states during the Civil War, was taken down Tuesday evening.
A statue of Davis was removed in Louisiana last May.
The Montreal plaque had been there since 1957 and was supplied by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to “honouring the memory of its Confederate ancestors.”
Bourre did not specify why it was taken down, but many people had been calling for such a move in the wake of Saturday’s violence in Virginia, where the fate of a statue of Davis’ best-known general–Robert E. Lee–had become a flashpoint.
Hundreds of white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and others converged on Charlottesville, Va., ostensibly in an effort unite right-wing factions in the city.
Rally participants clashed frequently with counter-protesters.
A man linked to white nationalist groups has been charged with murder and other counts after a fatal hit-and-run that killed a woman and injured 19 others.
