
Gassy Jack statue in Vancouver’s Gastown toppled during women’s memorial march, video shows
Global News
Critics have said Gassy Jack is a symbol of oppression against Indigenous people, noting he was 40 years old when he married a 12-year-old girl from the Squamish First Nation.
The statue of John Deighton, more commonly known as Gassy Jack, was toppled Monday afternoon during the annual Downtown Eastside Women’s Memorial March.
Video shared online shows ropes being placed around the statue and then it falling while people crowded around cheer.
The statue stands at the edge of Gastown, the neighbourhood in Vancouver named after him.
It has been the subject of controversy before.
An online petition demanding the statue be removed garnered more than 23,000 signatures.
Critics have said Gassy Jack is a symbol of oppression against Indigenous people, noting he was 40 years old when he married a 12-year-old girl from the Squamish First Nation.
Documents in the City of Vancouver archive show interviews with local pioneers conducted by the city’s first archivist Major James Skitt Matthews.
In volume five of his seven-volume books, Early Vancouver, Matthews interviewed two pioneers about Deighton’s Indigenous wife, Quahail-ya, and later interviewed Quahail-ya herself.