St. Catharines committees losing members due to upcoming show

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Published September 15, 2022 at 1:20 pm

Liam Coward, who sits on the St. Catharines LGBTQ2S+ Advisory Committee has resigned from all of his city committees as a show of solidarity with Vicki-Lynn Smith and Erica Williams. (Photo: Facebook)

A member of the St. Catharines LGBTQ2S+ Advisory Committee has joined the two members of the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee who resigned over their belief that City Council shrugs off their concerns.

Liam Coward, who sits on the St. Catharines LGBTQ2S+ Advisory Committee, resigned yesterday (September 14) to show support for both Vicki-Lynn Smith and Erica Williams, who had earlier quit the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee.

At the heart of the matter was council’s decision to allow puppeteer Jeff Dunham’s comedy act to the Meridian Centre on November 20.

Initially, the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee has asked city council to shut down the performance that has faced criticism in the past for portraying characters that rely on racial stereotypes, including a dead terrorist named Achmed and a talking jalapeño on a stick named José, complete with sombrero.

In the end, Merritton Councillor Greg Miller, who also serves on the committee, brought a motion to cancel the show to the table but in the end, he only got support from St. Patricks councillor Karrie Porter.

Chair Anti-Racism Advisory Committee Saleh Waziruddin told local radio station 610-CKTB that Smith and Williams stepped down from the group but it wasn’t so much council’s decision on the Dunham show but rather how council handled it.

Waziruddin told the radio station, “It’s the not the actual decision not allowing the Dunham show that led to the resignations, but the way the issue was discussed and handled was the last straw for issues that had been building up for a while about whether the advisory committee was being listened to or believed.”

Coward was far more scathing in his letter of resignation, insinuating the committees were simply created to give council and the city the appearance of caring for all members of the community.

“I have often felt that the way these committees are treated by some staff and councillors amounts to tokenism and hollow allyship,” he said.

He added he felt the initiatives the committees put forth only made the city and council look good “rather than enact real systemic changes. Pursuing equity for the sake of appearances is not enough. Substantive change will only happen if council sets aside its own biases and out perspective and genuinely listens and acts upon what the members of these committees are telling them to do.”

When council initially decided to let the Dunham show go on, Waziruddin, said any comedy that relies on racism isn’t funny. “What people need to understand is there’s a lot of harm caused by these kinds of so called ‘comedy’,” he said.

“Other people will hear it and think it’s okay to be racist and misogynist and homophobic.”

Waziruddin added that recent acts of hate vandalism within St. Catharines, including the vandalism at Harriet Tubman Public School, show that the issue of racism is one not to be ignored in the city.

For his part, Miller, who brought the Dunham motion to council, noted, “Unfortunately, this was a predictable result of Council’s attitudes and words about some of the Anti-Racism Committee’s requests and I raised this possibility last month during a Council meeting.”


Puppeteer-ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s comedy show first became popular in the 2000s but recently, people have been criticizing it for relying on racial stereotypes.

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