Not that we would ever make up the news, but this is the kind of news you could not make up. This month, Toronto City Council voted to rename Yonge-Dundas Square. This was done to rid the place of any association with the 18th Century Scottish politician Henry Dundas, due to his role in the transatlantic slave trade.
The next day, as part of the same meeting, Toronto Council voted to name a stadium after former mayor Rob Ford. Mr. Ford, who died in 2016, was not a slavery advocate, I’ll give him that, but nor was he worthy of being immortalized in bricks and mortar – or bleachers and turf.
The renaming of the downtown Toronto square outside the Eaton Centre (a mall originally named for a store that went bankrupt in 1999) follows growing awareness of Dundas’s role in slavery. Although an abolitionist, he had called for the phasing out of the practice, which delayed its end. That said, as The Globe’s Oliver Moore has reported, it has also been argued that had Dundas not introduced the word “gradual” into a 1792 motion to abolish slavery, the change would not have passed.
The future Sankofa Square is adjacent to Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University – a name change made in 2022 to rid the school of its connection with residential schools proponent Egerton Ryerson. TMU will pay to change the name of nearby Dundas subway station. The names of Dundas West station and the Jane/Dundas library will also change. This is certainly less daunting than the original proposal to rename Dundas Street itself – now off the table – which would have created expensive havoc.
There are so many other streets, landmarks and places named for Dundas – including an entire town that is now part of Hamilton. And he is hardly the only controversial namesake in a country that is full of such streets and landmarks. Start going down that road (as we have), and there is going to be a lot of work to do. The renaming will be endless. So why create more work and future expense by consciously naming something after a figure like Mr. Ford?
The selection of the name Sankofa Square, while admirable, feels like a missed opportunity. Sankofa is a Ghanaian term that refers to the act of reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past, enabling movement forward together, according to the council motion.
That’s lovely, but would it not have been more appropriate to name the place after a prominent Black Canadian? Or after an enslaved Black person?
The chair of the Yonge-Dundas Square Board of Management has resigned, saying neither the board nor the public had an opportunity to weigh in. In his resignation letter, Mike Fenton wrote that he was asked to provide a quote for the press release announcing the renaming with 30 minutes’ notice.
“The lack of a consistent, public review to evaluate this decision has been disjointed and lacking good governance,” wrote Mr. Fenton, making it clear he supported the plan to rename the square.
This strange rushing of things and questionable name selection is hardly the most egregious part of what went down that week, though, on the renaming front.
That’s reserved for the bizarre decision to rename Centennial Stadium after the bumbling, crack-smoking global joke who was Rob Ford.
“Rob by no means was a perfect human being, but he had a great heart,” said Councillor Paul Ainslie, who put forth the renaming motion. This is the bar for having something named after you? Having a great heart? (If, in fact, he did.)
Mr. Ainslie also noted that Mr. Ford had put in years of public service.
So? He was terrible at it. Embarrassingly terrible.
There are countless Toronto public servants, past and present, who are more deserving of this honour. Beginning with, perhaps, the people who clean the stadium’s bathrooms or service its scoreboard. I don’t know them personally, but I have not heard of them disgracing the city the way Mr. Ford did.
Why would Council go out of its way to add a flawed (I’m being kind here) person’s name to anything (at a financial cost) when eventually, one hopes, saner heads may prevail and decide it needs to be removed and replaced (at a financial cost)?
Putting the guy’s name on a sports venue where kids play only cements the future necessity of taking it off.
Tell me all about Rob Ford, mom. The guy this football stadium is named for.
Well, let’s Google him and see if we can find a video of him to learn more, Junior.
I certainly hope Toronto’s mayor and the councillors who voted in favour of bestowing this honour did not do so with the hope that the renaming would please, or appease, the late Mr. Ford’s big brother, Ontario Premier Doug Ford. I’m pretty sure there’s a name for that too.