Park board considers renaming landmarks

Goal is to continue reconciliation

Some Vancouver landmarks may be getting new names after the park board voted Monday to identify traditional Indigenous place names within park jurisdictions as the next step toward reconciliation.

Up for renaming are the west-side beaches Spanish Banks, Jericho Beach, Locarno Beach and Kitsilano Beach, as well as communities around the edges of Stanley Park.

“I’ve been told all along the banks of Burrard Inlet there were either communities or gathering places or food-collecting places and many of them would have names,” said park board chairman Stuart Mackinnon, who put forward the unanimously approved motion.

Mackinnon said it was important to recognize that First Nations people had place names long before and that these spaces today reflect and celebrate the region’s original inhabitants.

The park board will work with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to identify traditional place names and find appropriate ways to recognize them.

Stanley Park would not be renamed, said Mackinnon.

“The response we had from the Squamish people was that there was no reason to rename it because it never had a name. It was a forest.”

Mackinnon said he was impressed by the English and Aboriginal language signs on the Sea to Sky Highway erected for the 2010 Olympics, as well as the bilingual street signs at UBC.

The park board has a “colonial audit” underway that looks at how Indigenous people were affected and dispossessed of what later became city parks.

Other public spaces in Vancouver have also been renamed as part of reconciliation efforts, including the plaza outside Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s north plaza.

The recommendations will be submitted to the park board’s naming committee.

Commissioners will vote on the final names.

There was no reason to rename (Stanley Park) because it never had a name. It was a forest.