Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald schools to be renamed in Toronto: TDSB

Silly move, dumbing down history:

…Sean Carleton, a historian and Indigenous studies scholar at the University of Manitoba, argues that the purpose of history is to learn from the past, and not simply lionize those from our history.

“In this moment, what people are doing (is), with new information reevaluating the symbols that we choose in society to, convey our values,” said Carleton in an interview. “Many people are saying, ‘Can we not do better than naming a school after someone who advocated for a system of genocidal schooling?’”

If Canadians have these debates, Carleton argued, it could be something we could be proud of.

“The process of having that debate is actually healthy, as long as the people engaged in it are learning from the past and engaging meaningfully in that dialogue, rather than just trying to push the politics of like, you know, ‘Macdonald is a monster,’ or ‘Macdonald is a saint,’” Carleton said.

Renaming, however, has been criticized by some historians.

Margaret MacMillan, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto, has argued that the past cannot be changed by removing names.

“The past is something you can debate about, you can have different opinions about but, if we remove all traces of it, then we’re not even going to have those debates,” MacMillan said, as quoted by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education.

Several other school boards have previously removed names from schools. In 2021, the York Region District School Board voted to change the name of an elementary school in Markham, Ont., that was named after Macdonald. It’s now called Nokiidaa Public School. Nokiidaa is the Ojibwe word meaning “let’s work” or “let’s all work together.”

In addition to Ryerson University changing its name, the legacy of Ryerson was also removed from a Brantford, Ont., elementary school. That school is now named after Edith Monture, the first Indigenous woman to become a nurse in Canada and the first Canadian Indigenous woman to serve in the U.S. military.

In Ottawa, the National Capital Commission, which oversees federal lands in the National Capital Region, renamed the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to Kichi Zībī Mīkan, which means “Ottawa River path.”

Multiple other schools around the country — and other public institutions and spaces — have also had their names changed, sometimes with controversy. In Alberta, some schools bearing the name of Jean Vanier, a Catholic philosopher, were renamed after revelations that Vanier was a sexual predator. An LRT station in Edmonton named after Vital-Justin Grandin, another architect of the residential school system, was also changed.

Source: Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald schools to be renamed in Toronto: TDSB