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The TDSB — the most important public college board in Canada — embarked upon a proactive evaluation of the names of all colleges underneath its purview
Printed Jan 29, 2025 • 6 minute learn
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Sir John A. MacDonald Collegiate Institute in Scarborough is among the Toronto colleges headed for a reputation change. Picture by Jack Boland/Postmedia/File
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The Toronto District Faculty Board (TDSB) will change the names of three public colleges commemorating Henry Dundas, Egerton Ryerson and Sir John A Macdonald.
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In October 2024, the TDSB — the most important public college board in Canada — embarked upon a proactive evaluation of the names of all colleges underneath its purview.
To this point, three colleges have come up: Dundas Junior Public Faculty, named after the 18th-century politician, Ryerson Group Faculty, named after the Nineteenth-century Methodist minister, and Sir John A Macdonald Collegiate Institute, named after Canada’s first prime minister.
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“This recommendation is based on the potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-indigenous racism and their connection to systems of oppression,” says a report from board employees.
The proposed identify adjustments come after years of controversy and political wrangling over the names of every thing from universities to LRT stations to public colleges, establishments typically named after main figures in Commonwealth or Canadian historical past who’ve since develop into controversial.
Patrice Dutil, a professor within the division of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan College, known as for a “moratorium” on renaming colleges, schools and universities.
“These renaming vendettas are based on cheap hearsay and educators — especially educators — owe it to the population that elects them to consult the historical record and make better decisions. The TDSB is not doing its homework, and the provincial government should be calling it to order,” stated Dutil, who lately printed a ebook on Macdonald.
Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald have all been subjected to debate amongst historians and activists, not nearly their legacies, however whether or not they need to nonetheless be celebrated. It’s a debate that, at occasions, has gone past the college membership or the pages of educational journals and ended with the vandalism of statues.
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Lynn McDonald, a former member of Parliament and fellow of the Royal Historic Society, stated in an interview that historic errors — notably within the case of Ryerson, she stated — had been the explanations given for identify adjustments.
“If there were a good reason to change the name, they should. They should say that, but that’s not what they say. They give false accusations as the reason for changing those names,” McDonald stated.
There are villains on residential colleges, however neither Ryerson or Macdonald are amongst them
On Monday, the board’s coverage and governance committee advisable that the faculties’ names be modified, and referred the choice to the complete board. James Cowan, who’s on the advisory board of the Canadian Institute for Historic Training and sits on the board of administrators of Canada’s Historical past, stated choices made by college boards can result in youngsters being “misinformed” and “indoctrinated.”
“What’s so egregious about it is this is an organization that oversees our education system, and so if you would expect any group in society to be interested in facts and accuracy, you would expect the people that we’re trusting to educate our children,” Cowan stated.
Macdonald is a controversial historic determine as a result of, whereas one in all Canada’s founders, liable for the Nationwide Coverage and building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he additionally oversaw a interval of crippling hunger amongst Indigenous individuals on the Canadian prairies. Macdonald’s authorities, in 1885, was additionally liable for the imposition of the Chinese language head tax, meant to stop Chinese language immigrants from coming to Canada and in 1883 started the system of residential colleges in Canada.
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Ryerson’s identify has already been stripped from what’s now Toronto Metropolitan College. Ryerson, although credited with creating the public-education system in Ontario, can be charged with being one of many chief architects of what would develop into Canada’s system of Indian Residential Faculties. Nonetheless, the faculties turned obligatory in 1920 lengthy after he had died.
“There are villains on residential schools, but neither Ryerson or Macdonald are among them,” wrote McDonald in an e mail.
Dundas was accountable partially for the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. Nonetheless, critics cost that Dundas’s slow-and-steady strategy to the difficulty was anti-abolitionist, favouring the financial system over releasing slaves, and preserved the transatlantic slave commerce.
In July 2021, the Metropolis of Toronto, started the method to rename Dundas Road and, in December 2023, renamed Yonge-Dundas Sq. to “Sankofa Square,” in recognition of Dundas’s controversial historical past.
The TDSB, in its employees report, argues that altering the names of colleges is in line with the Reality and Reconciliation Fee’s Calls to Motion and that for minority college students, attending colleges “commemorating individuals who had an explicit role in perpetuating their community’s cultural genocide or other types of systemic violence, such as sexual and gender-based violence and religious persecution serves as a potentially harmful microaggression.”
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Sean Carleton, a historian and Indigenous research scholar on the College of Manitoba, argues that the aim of historical past is to be taught from the previous, and never merely lionize these from our historical past.
“In this moment, what people are doing (is), with new information reevaluating the symbols that we choose in society to, convey our values,” stated Carleton in an interview. “Many individuals 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.
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“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 these debates,” MacMillan stated, as quoted by the Canadian Institute for Historic Training.
A number of different college boards have beforehand eliminated names from colleges. In 2021, the York Area District Faculty Board voted to alter the identify of an elementary college in Markham, Ont., that was named after Macdonald. It’s now known as Nokiidaa Public Faculty. Nokiidaa is the Ojibwe phrase which means “let’s work” or “let’s all work together.”
Along with Ryerson College altering its identify, the legacy of Ryerson was additionally faraway from a Brantford, Ont., elementary college. That faculty is now named after Edith Monture, the primary Indigenous woman to develop into a nurse in Canada and the primary Canadian Indigenous woman to serve within the U.S. army.
In Ottawa, the Nationwide Capital Fee, which oversees federal lands within the Nationwide Capital Area, renamed the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to Kichi Zībī Mīkan, which suggests “Ottawa River path.”
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A number of different colleges across the nation — and different public establishments and areas — have additionally had their names modified, generally with controversy. In Alberta, some colleges bearing the identify of Jean Vanier, a Catholic thinker, had been renamed after revelations that Vanier was a sexual predator. An LRT station in Edmonton named after Important-Justin Grandin, one other architect of the residential college system, was additionally modified.
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