Calls to rename street gather pace
TORONTO — Renewed focus on Canada’s legacy of anti-black racism has given fresh voice to calls for public officials to consider renaming monuments honouring the guardians of colonialism, including a street that stretches through much of the Greater Toronto Area.
Those seeking to rename Dundas Street, which crosses Toronto and numerous other southern Ontario cities, argue that street names and monuments should reflect present-day values rather than glorify the likes of Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery by 15 years.
“People take for granted that street names don’t matter, but they do because they speak about our values,” said Melanie Newton, a history professor at the University of Toronto. “They inscribe historical realities of power and privilege into the landscape that we move through every day.”
She said such statues, schools, buildings and streets send a message not only to those who have been put on the margins, but to those who do the marginalizing.
“The argument that these monuments are there to remind us of inequality is nonsense,” she said. “These monuments are there to remind people that whatever change happens, the kind of power and privilege that these people represent is still the foundation of the state and its structures and of the order of society.”
As for the lack of knowledge about his role in perpetuating slavery in the British Empire, Newton said it’s a symptom of a broader problem.
“It is not just an act of violence against black students or Indigenous students — everybody is being miseducated about the origins of their own country in ways that impoverish us all,” she said. “That we can walk down a street like Dundas and not realize what a terrible thing it is? We should not have to do that.”
The issue of renaming streets and removing statues in Canada is hardly new. For instance, a statue of Halifax founder Edward Cornwallis, who put a bounty on Mi’kmaq scalps, was the subject of months of protests before eventually being removed from a city park in January 2018. Later that year, Victoria city council removed a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, who was also an architect of the residential school system.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said it’s time for another national conversation on the topic. “It’s a conversation we need to have with racialized Canadians, with Indigenous people in Canada,” she said. “It’s a conversation we also need to have with historians and think very hard about what messages we want to be sending to Canadians today.”
Likewise, Toronto Mayor John Tory said it was something that should be discussed and carefully considered, as an online petition calling for Dundas Street to be renamed garnered thousands of signatures on Wednesday.
Its organizer, local artist and activist Andrew Lochhead, said he was inspired to start the petition by a similar movement in Edinburgh, Scotland, where there have been calls to tear down a statue of Dundas.