Mysterious City of Calgary sign leaves some puzzled and others offended
Posted Nov 2, 2023 2:00 pm.
A controversial sign with instructions to make an ‘igloo’ to tackle the housing crisis in the city of Calgary was installed in Beaulieu Gardens, near Lougheed Park, but was removed as mysteriously as it surfaced — leaving some puzzled, and others offended.
“Well non racist, people would have just simply said, build a stone fort. But they had to appropriate an Indigenous piece,” Michelle Robinson, founder of the Native Calgarian podcast. “So that’s the problem there, is the lack of understanding that this is a serious issue for them to want to appropriate what they choose from Indigenous people.
“I mean, I used to make snow forts as a kid, but I never said it was igloo.”
It all started with users putting up pictures of the signage on social media and some influencers sharing it for awareness.
When CityNews asked the City of Calgary about it, they said, “We did not produce this sign.”
The city has also been clarifying to social media users that this sign doesn’t belong to them.
“But regardless of this The City of Calgary, this city, the society, just allows settler colonial racism to perpetuate and the truth is they can claim that’s not the city but I’ve seen on their own website them talking about igloos.”
If it doesn’t belong to the city, who does it belong to?
On the right bottom corner of the board reads BORE- Beyond Ordinary Reach Exhibits — an unknown artist or a group of unknown artists who are known to stir the pot using City of Calgary logos in signage to make fun of things around the city.
But, this time it seems they have crossed a controversial line.
“Understanding of the Indigenous but they don’t understand cultural appropriation so for them they just get angry when I mentioned that this is racist but that’s what I see,” Robinson said.
