The Taras H. Shevchenko Museum and Memorial Park Foundation owns a beautiful 16 acre park near Oakville, Ontario alone the Dundas Highway near the town of Palermo. In the center of the park the stately monument of Taras Shevchenko, cast in bronze, with its pedestal of marble is standing majestically against the blue Canadian sky.

A 3-metre bronze statue of iconic Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko, erected in an Oakville park named for him in 1951, has been chopped off at the feet by vandals and carted away.

The statue, a gift to the 500,000 Ukrainians then in Canada from Soviet Society For Cultural Relations Abroad and valued at more than $350,000, was the center of controversy at the time and for a while was under 24-hour police guard. Erected to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, it stood for more than 55 years atop a 70-tonne granite base in a 6.5-hectare park, which was surrounded by another 47 hectares of parkland along Sixteen Mile Creek that once was home to a children's camp. While the camp closed in 1998, many still visit the park to see the historical figure. When the statue was erected in 1951, around 40 thousand people attended its unveiling.