Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration 

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

For the record, letter from former mayors Crombie, Sewall and Eggleton, highlighting the false arguments used by advocates for the name change. Opportunity for new mayor Chow to signal that she has a broader perspective than the Dundas change advocates and is careful with taxpayer money:

Dear Mayor and City Councillors,

We, former Mayors of Toronto, request you to re-consider the decision to re-name Dundas Street.

We question the interpretation of the research leading to that decision and the practicality of carrying it out. Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was, according to a considerable amount of historic evidence, a committed abolitionist of slavery. His first achievement as an abolitionist was in 1778, when, as a lawyer, he took a appeal case in Scotland, of an enslaved person Joseph Knight, brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner. In court Dundas stated that he “hoped for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme Court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland.

Dundas has been faulted for his next act on the subject, in 1792. Then a British MP, he moved an amendment to a motion of William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade to make it gradual. Wilberforce’s motion of the previous year, 1791, had failed miserably, 163 to 88. With Dundas’s amendment, it at least passed in the House of Commons, the first anti-slavery motion to do so in Great Britain.

Unfortunately, the plan was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords. It would take a lot more than a British law to get rid of the slave trade and slavery, which Dundas understood. Yet even Wilberforce eventually came to see the necessity of intermediate steps: in 1823 he became vice-president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Dundas’s appointment, of John Graves Simcoe, also an abolitionist, as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) also promoted the anti-slavery cause. On arrival, Simcoe sought to get an abolition bill adopted, but there were slave owners in the House of Assembly and much opposition. The abolitionist attorney-general, John White, who presented it, then revised it drastically and it passed in 1793, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt an anti-slavery law. John White, not so incidentally, was defeated in the next election.

Dundas was also enlightened about French-English relations in Canada, notably requiring laws to be enacted in both languages, instead of English only. He also was responsible for Britain taking steps to reverse two decades of oppression of Black Loyalists in the Atlantic provinces.

In summary, it appears that Henry Dundas for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result. It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.

Therefore, we don’t see a valid reason to remove his name from the street. From a practical perspective, and given the City’s financial circumstance, there are more appropriate ways to spend $8.6 Million.

On behalf of David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton

(The letter was signed by Mr. Eggleton

Source: Breaking: Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration

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Gee: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

2023/08/09 Leave a comment

Yep. Waste of $$ with no material effect on removing barriers or improving inclusion:

“The City of Toronto is broke,” its new mayor, Olivia Chow, said last month, turning her pocket inside out theatrically to show there was nothing in it.

She is not far off. City hall is a staggering $1.5-billion short of what it needs to keep the town running for the next two years. Naturally, it is looking around for ways to save money. One obvious way presents itself. It could reverse a costly and misguided decision to rename a major street.

Dundas Street spans the city core, linking the east and west ends. It crosses the Don Valley, passes the Eaton Centre and travels through Chinatown, extending all the way into the suburban city of Mississauga.

It is one of the city’s oldest and best-known thoroughfares. The first governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, started building it in the late 18th century for military purposes. He named the road after the man who appointed him, Henry Dundas, a powerful Scottish politician who held leading posts in the British government.

Until recently, most Torontonians had no idea who Dundas even was. But during the global reckoning with racism that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, a petition circulated calling for Dundas Street to be renamed. Advocates said Dundas was instrumental in delaying Great Britain’s decision to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Two years ago, city council voted 17-7 to strip his name not only from the street but from other city assets such as Yonge-Dundas Square.

Now is a good time to revisit the decision. If Toronto wants to acknowledge the sins of the past, there are better ways than toppling statues and erasing names. One is to teach young people about shameful episodes such as the establishment of residential schools. Another is to honour pioneers in the fields of racial and social justice by naming streets, schools or parks after them. Yet another is to put up educational plaques acknowledging the misdeeds of the city’s early leaders.

Dundas, who never so much as visited Toronto, is not one of those. The case against him was murky to begin with. His critics say that in 1792 he delayed the abolition of the slave trade by proposing a parliamentary amendment that added the word “gradually” to a motion saying it should be ended.

His defenders say that was merely a tactical move to get an abolition bill of some kind through the House of Commons and smooth the path for a final decision to end the trade. The fact that the House of Lords was opposed to abolition and that Britain was fixated on its war with revolutionary France were much bigger factors in the delay.

They also point out that, earlier in his career, when he was Lord Advocate of Scotland, Dundas helped argue the case of Joseph Knight, who fought in court for his freedom from the plantation owner who had brought him to Scotland from Jamaica.

If Toronto erases a historic street name on the basis of such mixed evidence, then it is open season. Its downtown is positively littered with names from its past as a distant outpost of the British Empire. City staff identified about 60 streets named after figures “that are no longer considered to be reflective of the city’s contemporary values,” among them “at least 12 streets named after slave owners.”

A city report in 2021 said erasing Dundas’s name alone would mean, among many other things, replacing 730 street signs, changing 129 signs and 35 info pillars in the city’s wayfinding system and renaming three parks and two subway stations.

That is not to mention the hassle for the 97,000 residents and 4,500 businesses on the street. Sixty of those businesses have Dundas in their names.

The latest estimate of the cost is $8.6-million, no trifle at a time when the city is striving to find the money for things such as housing the homeless. Veteran city councillor Shelley Carroll told a local radio station that, simply put, “we don’t have the money to do it right now,” and she is one of those who voted for the change two years back.

Yet Ms. Chow – she of the empty pocket – is saying she wants to push ahead. She should think again.

Source: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

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