Lauren Beck is the Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter, professor of visual and material culture studies at Mount Allison University, and the author of Canada’s Place Names and How to Change Them.
Christopher Columbus was aware that the places he christened in and after 1492 already had names. Missionaries among Wendat communities in the 1600s tried to learn the Indigenous place names of what would become “southern Ontario,” while proceeding to rename the same places after saints anyway.
We have inherited a host of names that have whitened and masculinized the Canadian landscape, with Yonge-Dundas Square (named for two 18th-century British male aristocrats) being a double whammy. In the town of Sackville, N.B., where my university is located, only 18 per cent of commemorative street names refer to women, and always only by their first names – all were the sisters and wives of male landowners and developers (the commemorative streets named for men in Sackville always use their surnames). None of the street names celebrate people of colour or Indigenous people.
The City of Toronto’s decision to remove the name Dundas from certain landmarks is a welcome change as the world continues to grapple with the historical and present-day impacts of colonization. It’s also an example of an important step that most Canadian municipalities, including Sackville, have not yet taken: adopting a municipal place-name policy.
This summer, my research lab surveyed Canadian municipalities and concluded that only about 4 per cent have a place-name policy. Among those that do have them, the priority level for dealing with problematic or dated names varies widely. Many policies contain some language about not implementing derogatory names, but most also state that existing names will not normally be changed, which effectively maintains the status quo.
Changing names to reflect today’s values may seem like a can of worms. But for all the anxiety about “tradition,” it’s worth pointing out that the ”historical” argument for keeping current place names as they are often runs into a conundrum – after all, the original Indigenous place names have a much older and deeper history.
One of the reasons we have so many names of the problematic variety in Canada is because naming policies, which did not emerge here until the late 1800s, were historically developed and administered by powerful white men, and the national guidelines for naming have changed little in the interim. The Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC) continues to recommend that the “names of pioneers, explorers and historical events connected with the area” are suitable categories for new names. “Names from Indigenous languages” are also deemed appropriate, but it’s “usually approved in a single language form in the Roman alphabet.”
As my lab surveyed the landscape of municipal naming policy, three important findings emerged. First, when establishing a policy, municipalities usually consult those of others, or those of its province or territory. As a result, municipal policies echo each other’s language about commemorating “historical figures,” not changing existing names, and so on. This feedback loop reinforces the status quo while leaving diversity and inclusion efforts for new subdivisions, new streets and parks, and so on.
Second, and unsurprisingly, there exist broad inequalities in policy priorities (you can search through them in an online catalogue developed by my team at placenames.cemvc.ca). About 15 per cent of policies commit to addressing colonial names, 17 per cent to dealing with the gendered nature of names, and 18 per cent to eradicating racism, yet 42 per cent identify “historical figures” as a naming priority, which more often than not results in repeating the status quo.
The final take-away is that municipalities urgently need place-name policies that will help them become more inclusive communities – so we created one, which you can find alongside our online database.
What’s next is in our hands. As citizens, we must demand that our municipalities implement more inclusive naming policies. If there are names in your community that you find objectionable, search for your municipality’s place-name policy in our database. If there is no policy, send your councillor or alderperson a link to our report and ask them to lobby for the adoption of one. Reach out to your child’s teacher and suggest they undertake a class project through which more inclusive names can be researched and proposed to your municipality.
Municipalities have significant latitude when it comes to implementing policy and determining how places within their jurisdictions are named. The Dundases, Ryersons and Macdonalds of Canada are rightfully becoming unmoored from the landscape. For those who worry we will forget lessons from the past, look to Germany and Spain – their landscapes have been cleansed of names associated with past dictators, yet the history of what happened there has not vanished from public consciousness.