Is This Massive Chrome Cow Statue Too Scary for the Toronto Suburbs?
Some of its neighbors think so.
Meet Charity, Perpetuation of Perfection. She’s a cow made out of solid chrome. She’s about twenty feet tall. Her neck is festooned with a sharp-looking garland of metal maple leaves. And she’s giving her new neighborhood, the Toronto suburb of Markham, something to chew on.
Markham residents have a beef with tall cow sculpture & would like it moo-ved. Is this udder-ly another case of NIMBYism? pic.twitter.com/uFbamQCf2f
— Steve Russell (@RussellPhotos) July 27, 2017
The bovine behemoth, which the CBC describes as “life-sized” and “raised two [stories] high on stilts,” is receiving a less-than-warm welcome from her new neighbors. “Many gathered this week to demand that the recently installed artwork be removed immediately,” the outlet reports.
Big (free) chrome cow sculpture ‘scares the children,’ say some residents of GTA suburb: https://t.co/tf2bVh9nj7 pic.twitter.com/F5srhKOZY9
— Andrew Foote (@amkfoote) July 28, 2017
Complaints focused on everything from its aesthetic (not “austere” enough) to the potential danger it poses to kids playing nearby. An 11-year-old neighborhood resident, Chloe, expressed a more specific beef: “I think it’s strange to see the cow’s butt every morning,” she told CBC News.
“It’s not a small cow”: Markham residents have beef with towering sculpture https://t.co/LyE58ktAp6 pic.twitter.com/Kk8uTJHvht
— Metro Toronto (@metrotoronto) July 27, 2017
Charity, Perpetuation of Perfection—which is modeled after an award-winning local Holstein named Brookview Tony Charity—almost didn’t make it to Markham at all. A donor attempted to give the statue to the neighborhood way back in 2015, but the local public art committee turned it down. After the donor promised to pay for the statue’s maintenance and installation, the city council reversed that decision.
The ruminant resistance will have an opportunity to make their feelings known in a more official way at the next city council meeting, in September. In the meantime, they’ll have to learn to live with someone who’s a little different than they are.
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