The Toronto District School Board is barreling ahead with renaming three schools dedicated to Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, British politician Henry Dundas, and Canadian educator Egerton Ryerson.
In 2021, the TDSB voted to create a special committee dedicated to purging school names they deemed offensive and racist. In particular, the committee zoned in on historical Canadian figures associated with Canada’s British colonial ties.
The committee has now sent a recommendation to TDSB trustees to strip three schools of their names – Dundas Junior Public School, Ryerson Community School, and the Sir John A Macdonald Collegiate Institute.
The committee says that they are recommending the TDSB strip these schools of their names because staff and students belonging to minority groups allegedly feel offended by the legacies of these figures.
“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,” reads the recommendation.
In 2022, the same TDSB school renaming committee recommended that the Queen Victoria Public School, founded in 1887, be renamed due to the “racist legacy” of Canada’s monarch.
Queen Victoria Public School has been renamed to Dr. Rita Cox – Kina Minagok Public School.
The committee has been directed by the board to make school renaming recommendations that align with TDSB’s human rights and equity policies. The committee is also compelled to focus on the importance of “identity, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.”
The TDSB did not respond to True North’s requests for comment.
Macdonald was Canada’s first prime minister and primary architect of Confederation who set in motion the creation of Canada as we know it today. In recent years, Macdonald has received significant blowback from progressive activists who claim Macdonald’s legacy is irreparably tarnished by his policy towards Indigenous peoples.
However, other historians diverge from this view, pointing to the fact that residential schools became government policy in the 1830s, long before Macdonald’s premiership. Also, Macdonald is praised for his warm relationship with local Indigenous Canadians and his desire to expand voting rights to Indigenous peoples and women.
Egerton Ryerson was an early Canadian educator who was an advocate for universal, free public education and is credited for the creation of Ontario’s public education system. Ryerson’s accomplishments have similarly been distorted. In particular his involvement in Canada’s residential school system.
In 2022, Ryerson University’s board of directors voted to change the institution’s name to Toronto Metropolitan University to better reflect the “values and aspirations” of the school.
Henry Dundas was an 18th to 19th-century British politician who served as an important minister to Prime Minister William Pitt and was involved in the abolition of slavery. Dundas has raised the ire of the left for his role in delaying the abolition of slavery in the British empire, though he did so to preserve the abolition of slavery’s political validity and avoid driving the slave trade into the hands of a rival power.
The TDSB will begin the process of choosing a new name for the three schools once the renaming recommendation has been approved.
