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The Statuesque Cow
When I was a young ne’erdo- well, I courted and subsequently married a girl from Woodstock, Ontario. And the hightlight of any visit to Woodstock (apart from the courting itself) was a walk to the statue of the world’s champion butterfat producer, the cow known as the Springbank Snow Countess.
The Countess lived in Woodstock from 1919 to 1936. During her abbreviated lifetime (she died during a heatwave after calving) she produced some 9,062 pounds of butterfat. The Holstein Friesian Association of Canada was moved to create the monument after her death. Life-sized, and set on top of a modest plinth testfiying to her glorious ouput, the statue now sits at the entrance to town, set back from the street and somewhat overshadowed by a busy McDonald’s and the nearby Toyota plant.
So it came as a shock to read the other day about a statue of a cow in a new subdivison development in Markham. My first reaction was “How dare they? Woodstock has cornered the market on cow statues!” Upon mature reflection, however, I now realize that there is probably no market in cow statues to corner, and therefore nothing to stop Markham from erecting its own cow memorial.
The force behind the Markham project is Helen Roman-Barber, the daughter of the late mining magnate Stephen Roman. It is erected on the site of a farm once owned by her father. One of his hobbies was breeding show cattle, and the statue is homage to his champion cow.
And, I must say, a very impressive champion cow. Her official name was Brookview Tony Charity. Roman bought her in 1985 from a farmer in Port Perry, paying a record $1.45 million (a little shy of the $US262 million the PSG soccer team just paid Barcelona for the Brazilan star Neymar, but still a lot). This appears, however, to have been a good ivestment. According to the online magazine thebullvine.com, Charity tops the list of the eight greatest North American show cows of all time. The author says there is “no comparison” to her. “Never defeated in her class”, she was “incredible perfection.” Just as well she never had to compete head to head with the Countess.
The Markham sculpture, however, is not an ordinary cow statue, if there is such a thing. Finished in polished chrome, it is raised up on stilts to a height of eight metres. An up close visitor will therefore get a good view of the cow’s undercarriage, and an approaching visitor will be able to spot the monument without difficulty. Valued at $1.2 million (close to what her father paid for Charity), donated by Roman-Barber and installed at her expense, it is getting a decidedly mixed reaction from its neighbours. “We don’t like it. It scares the children,” said one resident. An 11-year old is reported to have said “I think it’s strange to see the cow’s butt every morning,” Sightseers are now flocking to see the sculpture, and there is pressure on Roman-Barber to relocate it.
But Roman-Barber is sticking to her guns, and insisting that the rightful place of the statue is right where it now stands—on Charity Crescent, which was right where Charity spent her time between show gigs. She points to approval by the appropriate levels of government and advance disclosure of her plans to purchasers. And besides, “To us, history is important, the most important,” she said.
Maybe she has a point. Perhaps it’s time we started to mark history a little more by the creatures who help the people who end up atop statues. Just look at all the problems they’ve been having in Halifax with the statue of Edward Cornwallis—the founder of Halifax, now reviled for his genocidal treatment of the Indigenous population. If Halifax had a statue of a cow from a breed dating back to Cornwallis’s day instead of Cornwallis himself, maybe the controversy wouldn’t be quite as sharp.
More than defusing controvesry, cow statues can also create buzz. For instance, there is an event called “Cow- Parade” that originated in Switzerland in 1998 and was first held in North America in Chicago in 1999. Dozens of artist-decorated cow sculptures, mostly sponsored by local businesses, will appear overnight, attracting (so the theory goes) tourists and recouping costs by being auctioned off at the end of the season. (This event was the inspiration behind Toronto mayor Mel Lastman’s infamous “Moose in the CIty” project). It has subsequently been held in such locales as Denver, Kansas City, Manchester England, Santa Catarina Brazil, Perth Australia, Bilbao Spain and Toulouse France; and has spawned a number of knockoff attempts.
We’ve come a long way from the Countess’s sedate statue to Charity’s eight-metre chrome form and multitudinous pop up cows. But as the local icon of my spouse’s hometown, she’ll always enjoy a place close to my heart. And 9,062 pounds is a lot of butterfat, by any measure.
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