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

2025/02/12 Leave a comment

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

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Gee: Toronto District School Board should reconsider the decision to rename three schools

2025/02/11 Leave a comment

Agree:

…None of this seems to have made the slightest impression on the TDSB, Canada’s biggest school board. A report that went to the board’s governance and policy committee on Jan. 27 noted that, under a section of the “Revised Naming Schools, Teams and Special-Purpose Area Procedure,” the TDSB was undertaking a “proactive critical review of school names.” Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald are the first three to be sentenced to deletion.

The report says that for some students, the names might act as “a potentially harmful microaggression.” It goes on: “Having to enter school buildings commemorating such individuals may even contribute to mental-health triggers which negatively impact students, staff or families’ ability to effectively participate in the school environment.”

It may not occur to the kids rushing to gym class in Dundas Junior Public that they are the victims of microaggression (if they even know who Dundas was), but the TDSB is going to protect them from it all the same.

As for the cost of making new signs, plaques and team jerseys with whatever name is chosen to replace the three forbidden ones, well, not to worry. The report says that the changes “will be implemented within the existing budget framework.”

What the board seems to have missed is that the climate on historical erasure is changing. Most people don’t much like being called settlers in their own country, even if they accept that great crimes were committed against its original inhabitants in the process of settlement.

A reaction against all this is one reason that Pierre Poilievre of the Conservatives has been leading in the opinion polls and that the abysmal Donald Trump is in the White House again.

Decent countries acknowledge their past sins while also celebrating their virtues. It is a balancing act, hard to get right. Schools are a good place to learn it. They should be teaching students about residential schools and slavery, Expo 67 and Terry Fox. They should be showing them that history is more than a simple story of heroes and villains. They should be asking them to debate the record of names like Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald, gathering all the evidence and weighing the good against the bad.

What they should not be doing is stripping those names from their front doors.

Source: Toronto District School Board should reconsider the decision to rename three schools

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