Alexander Wood Statue (site)

From 2005 until 2022 a bronze statue of Alexander Wood stood at the corner of Church and Alexander Streets in Toronto's Church-Wellesley Village. Wood was an early-1800s merchant and magistrate who owned the land the area's streets were later laid out on. An 1810 sex scandal turned him into a queer folk figure, and the statue was promoted as one of Canada's first LGBT monuments. In 2022 the Church-Wellesley Village BIA, which had put up the statue, took it down. The decision followed research linking Wood to the society that funded the mission school that later became the Shingwauk Indian Residential School. The removal was contested, and the statue has not been replaced. There is little to see at the corner itself; it is a stop for people who know the story.