WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Recognizing history by naming laneways is the perfect way to nurture community
A trumpeter and trombonist led the parade, their notes hanging lazily in the air. Behind them, 150 eager history buffs and curious neighbours snaked their way through the streets and laneways of Toronto’s Little Italy in the west end.
It was a Mardi Gras-style procession to celebrate newly named laneways in honour of eight people who have left a legacy in the neighbourhood.
Street names reveal our civic and cultural identity. They conjure our history, memorializing stories as they adorn our maps. Most importantly, they can help create community.
But drive through cities and towns across the country and one thing becomes clear: most major streets were named decades ago, in eras when the contributions of women, people of colour and Indigenous people went mostly unacknowledged. Less than two per cent of Vancouver’s streets bear the names of women, for instance. Even fewer are named for people from racial minority groups. Renaming schools or monuments is a fraught process. Some Canadian residents — like those parading from street to street in Toronto — have seized on laneways as an opportunity to write their history onto their city and deepen their relationships with neighbours.
“We wanted to select individuals, families and organizations that spoke to the whole diversity and history of the neighbourhood,” explains Rob Vipond, political science professor at the University of Toronto and member of the Palmerston Area Residents Association, the driving force behind the laneway project.
Little Italy has long been a gateway community for immigrant families, and those immigrant stories are now enshrined in the names of its laneways. Huggins Family Lane, for example, honours one of the first black families to move to the predominantly white neighbourhood in the 1960s, while the Jewish Folk Choir Lane gets its namesake from the vocal group and community hub founded in 1925.
Toronto launched the laneway naming project in 2014, calling on communities to submit recommendations partly to help first responders navigate the city’s nearly 3,000 corridors in the event of an emergency. The initiative was quickly seized by groups eager to see their stories enshrined in asphalt, with laneways dedicated to a black civil rights lawyer, Indigenous leaders and immigrant icons.
In 2017, the City of Vancouver named laneways after Rosemary Brown, the first black woman elected to any provincial legislature, and Vivian Jung, the first Chinese-Canadian teacher hired by the Vancouver School Board.
Every city and town in Canada has trailblazers and pioneers who created community, fought to expand rights or paved the way for others. Their stories deserve to adorn our public spaces. And they can. Many municipalities, from Edmonton to Saskatoon 10 Halifax, are now accepting suggestions or applications to name laneways. Researching and submitting your suggestion is a great opportunity to learn the history of your community and share it with your neighbours. If your town or city doesn’t have this sort of initiative, create it. Write to your local representatives. Tell them about the person you want to memorialize.
Our built environment should revel in our history and diversity, making space and reflecting everyone’s experience. We can build the type of community that celebrates our shared stories.