[1][2][3][4] The novelist Graeme Gibson draped the flag of the United States around the statue in a 1970 protest against the sale of Ryerson Press to the American publishers McGraw Hill Education for $2 million (equivalent to $15,691,517 in 2023).

[5] The statue attracted significant criticism in the 2010s due to Ryerson's role in the creation of the Canadian Indian residential school system.

In 2018, a plaque was officially installed on the statue that contextualizes and acknowledged Ryerson's involvement in the history of the Canadian Indian residential school system.

[6]Beneath this text are the following two quotations: "Let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children" – Chief Sitting Bull "For the child taken, for the parent left behind" – Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada[7] In July 2020, three people were arrested for splattering pink paint on the statue – in addition to two others of John A. Macdonald and King Edward VII at the Ontario Legislature – as part of a demand to tear down the monuments.

[9] On June 1, 2021, following the discovery of 215 soil disturbances at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the statue was vandalized again, this time with red paint.