Lanes to be named after women, gays
Titles set to honour unrecognized contributions
The streets of Vancouver’s West End are fixed with names like Haro, Denman, Broughton, Bute, Bidwell and Robson as well as many other early male explorers and pioneers.
Like much of the rest of the city, it is a neighbourhood named largely after white Anglo-Saxon men.
But now Vancouver plans to christen some of the unnamed street-wide lanes that run through the neighbourhood after prominent women, AIDS activists and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
The city’s civic asset naming committee recently designated 11 unnamed lanes to be given titles in response to a new West End Community Plan adopted by council that will see many of those roadways become frontages for infill development.
Rosemary Brown (1930-2003), the first black Canadian woman to be elected to any provincial legislature, will have a lane between Harwood Street and Beach Avenue/Pacific Street named after her.
Suffragette Helena Gutteridge (1880-1960), the city’s first female council member, will get a lane between Robson and Haro.
The lane that runs between Barclay and Nelson streets will be named ted northe lane after northe, (1937-2014), a leader in the LGBTQ community.
Eight other names, including early Hawaiian settler Eihu and his wife Mary See-em-ia, the granddaughter of Chief Capilano, impresario and Polar Bear Swim originator Peter Basil Pantages, lifeguard Kathleen Cather, AIDS activist Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, writer and poet Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake, seniors advocate Kathleen (Kay) Stovold and beauty school founder Maxine MacGilvray will get a lane between Burnaby and Harwood streets.