Winnipeg yanks ‘key to city’ from convicted sex-offender Nygard

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This article was published 24/11/2023 (698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s honorary key to the City of Winnipeg has been rescinded due to his sexual assault conviction in Ontario.

In 2008, former mayor Sam Katz awarded the symbolic key to Nygard.

Over the past few years, Nygard has faced dozens of allegations of sexual assault that span multiple decades.

On Nov. 12, Nygard was found guilty of four counts of sexual assault linked to incidents from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. Multiple women testified they were sexually assaulted at Nygard’s Toronto headquarters after being invited to the site for reasons like tours and job interviews.

On Thursday night, several hours into a lengthy city council meeting, Coun. Markus Chambers asked Mayor Scott Gillingham for an update on the status of the civic honour given to Nygard.

“In 2008, the mayor of the day presented the key to the city to former businessman and fashion mogul Peter Nygard. Mr. Nygard’s recent court proceedings, including his conviction, coupled with his pending legal troubles, call into question the trust and honour the key to the city represents. What measures are being taken to preserve the honour and dignity the key to the city represents and the trust and honour to all others who have received a key to the city and have maintained the virtues by which the honour was bestowed?” Chambers asked the mayor.

Gillingham confirmed he had asked that the honour be removed.

“We do take this very seriously and the key to the city is the highest honour that we can bestow on someone. And so, in light of the guilty findings (for) Mr. Nygard, I’ve asked that the protocol officer strike his name from the list of key-to-the-city recipients,” he said.

On Friday, Gillingham’s office said the mayor asked for Nygard’s name to be stricken from the list of people who received the honour on Thursday, which has now been done.

The city confirmed this is the first time the honour has been rescinded.

Questions about whether Nygard should retain the honorary key were raised in February 2020, when then-mayor Brian Bowman said the businessman should lose the distinction if the charges against him were proven in court.

“The allegations that have been made are pretty grotesque. They are allegations. And if they’re proven in court, then I would request (the key) back,” Bowman said at the time.

Charges against Nygard that were laid in other jurisdictions, including Manitoba, Quebec and New York, are pending. He has denied the allegations.

This isn’t the first honour he has lost.

In 2020, the Manitoba community of Deloraine renamed a park that for years was named after Nygard, the town’s most famous former resident. The decision to rename Nygard Park as Prairie Sentinels Park came in the wake of dozens of rape allegations against its previous namesake.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

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Joyanne Pursaga
Reporter

Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne.

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