Swastika Trail residents hold their ground
Town councillors vote to keep street name
It’s been year of name-changes and statue-removals, but in the small Ontario township of Puslinch, residents have voted not to rename one of the most controversial streets in Canada.
On Wednesday night, despite opposition from local organizers and the Jewish group B’nai Brith Canada, Puslinch town councillors voted four to one not to change the name of Swastika Trail. The small lakeside road, located just off near Highway 401 northeast of Cambridge, was named just before the rise of Nazi Germany, at a time when the swastika was still known in Canada largely as a symbol of good luck.
In September, after some locals raised concerns, Puslinch councillors began a push to change the name — and had even offered $500 to the Bayview Cottagers’ Association, which controls the privately owned road, to do so. But in the end they bowed to the association’s wishes, after its members voted 25 to 20 in a November secret ballot to stick with Swastika Trail.
The name has been disputed before, but this latest go-round was a particularly bitter fight.
The name change was championed most vocally by two Swastika Trail couples, Jennifer and Jim Horton and Audrey and Randy Guzar. The quartet argued that having Swastika Trail as an address raised uncomfortable questions from house guests, online retailers and anyone reading their drivers’ licenses.
“I should not have to explain or defend my address when I show my governmentissued identification,” Jennifer Horton wrote in a submission to town council.
Residents have disputed the name purely for logistical reasons, as well: confusingly, Swastika Trail is the name of one component of a continuous road with sections that go by three different names; the other two sections are Travelled Road and Cedar Trail.
Others, however, accused the campaigners of bringing misinformation and “fear” to the neighbourhood.
The road’s name wasn’t linked to Nazi Germany “until a few residents started a smear campaign in the news and social media actively trying to associate my street with the Nazi Party and all its negative connotations,” resident Natalia Busch wrote in a December editorial.
Councillors also heard from a delegation of anti-name change residents at their meeting Wednesday, the general theme of their argument being that their street was named after the Sanskrit symbol, and that they shouldn’t have to rename it just because it had been coopted by Adolf Hitler.
In a letter, resident Jack Ward argued his Second World War-veteran father returned from Europe “unwilling to let any tyrant, especially Hitler, dictate his life ever again.”
“From retirement to his death, his address was 25 Swastika Trail, and he never felt ‘shamed’ by it,” wrote Ward.
Counter-submissions, in turn, held that the evil of the Nazis vastly outweighed any goodwill the swastika may have once symbolized.
“For those of us who quietly live our lives within the shadow of family trauma and destruction due to the Nazis, the name of a street in our community which reflects the darkest times of our families’ lives is offensive and unacceptable,” a Puslinch resident whose parents survived the Holocaust wrote in a submission to council.
Those campaigning to rename Swastika Trail appeared to be motivated in part by the renewed prominence of the swastika as a hate symbol, particularly given the attention paid to recent neo-Nazi demonstrations in the United States.
“This is something we have to worry about as a society with all those pictures of hate crimes going on,” pro-name change resident James Horton told 570 News this week.
The efforts also come amid a worldwide movement to remove names and symbols associated with past injustices. In Canada alone, Ryerson University, Parliament Hill’s Langevin Block and various buildings named after Sir John A. Macdonald have either had their names changed their name in 2017 or been the subject of calls to do so.