Against romance in general and, in this case, inappropriate names for ponds
Only an ogre could be against naming a pond in south Ottawa “Proposal Pond” after the incredibly sweet story of the Listers, who got engaged there. I am that ogre.
Here’s the er, proposal, as presented to the public for public comment until mid-December: “In 2015, longtime resident of Deerfield Village, Greg Lister, proposed to his then-girlfriend Andrea by carving the words to the proposal into the snow that covered the ice of the pond in Fawn Meadow Park.
“Since their engagement and wedding, the Lister family has called the pond in Fawn Meadow Park ‘proposal pond’ and have made new memories there with family and friends.”
Lister tells a story anyone who’s proposed marriage can relate to. The couple had been out on a skate the previous week, in pristine conditions. They love snow and the outdoors in winter and he decided he was going to make the most of his chance when his girlfriend was due over for dinner a week later.
“I had a limited time in advance to go out and shovel some words in the snow,” Lister says. “I spent three hours carving those words out in the snow on the pond. And that evening, after dinner, I took her on a walk in sub-zero temperatures, and it led to the pond. I carved out little Xs and Os on the pond along the way. But she didn’t really clue into what was happening, until we got there.”
Even then, the snow was deep enough that the words were hard to make out.
“As she got further into the message, she realized what was going on. I got down on one knee,” he says.
Coun. Diane Deans put the idea forward after Lister wrote her a letter asking whether it would be OK if he put in a little informal sign by the unnamed pond himself.
“They got back to me and said, ‘There’s a whole process for naming something commemoratively and there would be community input in that process’,” Lister says.
If Lister had just gone and done it, of course, probably nobody would have minded. It’s making the name a permanent part of Ottawa’s history that’s problematic. The city gets a lot of inappropriate naming suggestions. Many are about death: People want places and buildings their late loved ones happened to like named after them. Most are delicately filtered out by city staff before they reach the publicconsultation stage, because politicians aren’t brave enough to anger families by saying no. They give out proclamations to practically any passing pop singer — they’re not going to say no to the faces of grieving relatives.
The city’s policy on commemorative namings provides cover: if you want to name something after a person, he or she has to be historically significant somehow, even if only in the neighbourhood, or have donated a lot of money toward the thing being named. The policy talks about “excellence, courage or exceptional service” to the community. “Extensive” and “extraordinary” come up, too. Most people don’t qualify.
“I was one of the first residents to move into Deerfield Village. So there’s that attachment and that history. There’s been many skates that have been done on that pond. I’ve gone out and shovelled the pond and a lot of people have been out skating on it with me,” Lister says.
Because it’s specifically meant to deal with inappropriate requests for public commemorations of people, the policy is silent on criteria for commemorating events.
When we were new parents, my wife and I were so cautious about deadly allergies that we introduced peanut butter to each of our sons’ diets at picnics by a playground in Billings Park in Alta Vista. You’d be able to see the CHEO emergency room from there if not for the trees. I had to look up the actual name of the place just now; we call it Peanut Butter Park as a joking nod to our own fretfulness and the kids have picked the label up. It amuses us.
But who cares what amuses me? These are my memories, shards of my family history. They are not everyone’s memories. The Listers’ engagement story is adorable but it’s their story, not Ottawa’s story. Millions of marriage proposals have been delivered here, most of them awww-worthy.
One idea: the Listers could sponsor a tree and get a little plaque beneath it — the city’s fallback recommendation when someone’s loved ones want to memorialize him or her but a full-blown naming isn’t suitable.
If we don’t reserve the honour of permanent names on public things to commemorate our shared history or to express our gratitude for a personal gift to everyone’s good, it’s not much of an honour.