When place names offend
Following a global trend, Quebec rids map of racist labels
Warning: This piece contains language some may find offensive.
Whitewater rafters who have navigated the last stretch of Quebec’s Riviere Rouge over the years may not have known it, but the ride’s thrills have been provided in part by rapids named with a racist slur.
The Nigger- Eddy Rapids — three sets of them stretched over about 3.5 kilometres of waterway — are believed to have been initially named by loggers who plied the Rouge. The names eventually made it onto official maps, and there they stayed while elsewhere in North America officials were wiping off such derogatory terms.
In a move that critics say was a long time coming, the Quebec commission responsible for place names has stripped the names from the rapids and from eight other geographic features named with the English or French version of the n- word.
Rachel Zellars, a PhD student in McGill University’s education faculty, pushed for the removal of the offensive names, which she says tainted the Quebec wilderness that she and her children enjoy.
“It has been a long, protracted process, and part of the reason for that is that the community surrounding many of these place names has insisted on the status quo,” Zellars, who is black, said in an interview this week. “These terms have been really normalized.”
The Quebec lakes, rapids, stream, river and hills now in search of new names reflect an increased sensitivity to offensive place names that is also seen in other parts of the world. New Zealand is in the process of renaming a mountain peak, a hill, and a stream that all have the n- word in their names.
In the United States, native groups continue their long- running battle to remove the word “squaw” from hundreds of place names across the country.
In his 2006 book Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame, Mark Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University, described the map as “a mediated portrait of the cultural landscape.” Though there are some people who resist all change, Monmonier said maps are meant to evolve, and historical purists can always find the original versions in archives.
To those who have been offended, change can be painfully slow, and coming up with replacement names is rarely simple. For example, the United States ordered in 1963 that hundreds of place names containing the n- word be replaced with “Negro,” which at the time was the accepted term. Now that “black” and “AfricanAmerican” have replaced “Negro,” many of the places renamed in the 1960s have undergone a second change.
While changes in toponymy tend to take time, in Quebec the pace has been glacial. In 1995, when a complaint about place names derogatory to blacks was brought to the attention of Quebec’s toponymy commission, the commission chose not to act, saying locals used the names and they had an “undeniable historic value.”
It would not be until last Sept. 25 that the commission would truly change its tune.
It has been a long, protracted process, and part of the reason for that is … these terms have been really normalized.
“Even if the words ‘ nigger’ and ‘ nègre’ have a long tradition of use, they can harm the dignity of members of the black community,” the commission said in a news release announcing that the place names had been “de- officialized.”
The federal database of geographical names shows that Quebec is the last province to deal with places names containing the n- word. Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia once had place names containing the slur, but the 16 names were all changed, beginning in the 1960s.
“I think there’s a kind of institutional racism that exists in Quebec, that is not necessarily unique to Quebec, but that allows these kinds of things to endure,” said Ted Rutland, a professor of geography at Concordia University. He and 13 other Montreal geography professors have echoed Zellars’s demand that black scholars play a central role in choosing the new place names.
With the n- word completely erased from Canada’s map, the next battle is likely to involve the word “squaw,” which originally was adapted from an Algonquin word meaning woman but soon took on negative connotations. There are still 27 official place names in Canada containing the term. Quebec has the most, with eight, followed by New Brunswick with seven. British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Prince Edward Island have scrubbed the word from their maps, while it does not appear Manitoba ever used it.
Robyn Bourgeois, co- ordinator of the indigenous women in community leadership program at St. Francis Xavier University, said the word “squaw” has no place on Canada’s map. She said “squaw” early on became twisted by colonial powers to portray indigenous women as dirty and sexually available.
Jean- Pierre Le Blanc, spokesman for Quebec’s toponymy commission, said there have not yet been complaints about Quebec’s multiple Squaw Lakes, but it may just be a matter of time. “There will probably be other words that generate complaints,” he said. “We hope to please everyone but it’s not always easy.”
And even when a name on the map changes, it does not mean that the slur automatically disappears. Pierre Cecire, 59, farms land backing onto a roiling stretch of the Gatineau River that until September was officially called Nigger Rapids. Cecire said that when the name was bestowed more than 100 years ago, it was not racist. “It’s been called that for 150 years,” he said.
There will probably be other words that generate complaints. We hope to please everyone but it’s not always easy.