Cars and pedestrians navigating the intersection of Dundas St. and Yonge St. in downtown Toronto on Aug 30, 2023.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Late last year, with little notice or public debate, Toronto City Council voted 19-2 to rename Yonge-Dundas Square, the busy gathering place opposite the Eaton Centre in the heart of downtown. The purpose was to erase the name of Henry Dundas, the prominent Scottish statesman, who stood accused of delaying the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Henceforth, council declared, Yonge-Dundas Square would be known as – wait for it – Sankofa Square. Toronto was mystified. Sankofa?
The word comes from Africa. According to the square’s official website, “Sankofa (SAHN-koh-fah) is a Twi word from the Akan Tribe of Ghana that loosely translates to, ‘go back and get it.’ “ The wider concept of Sankofa refers to the process of reflecting on the teachings of the past and applying them to the future.
All very nice, but what, most residents wondered, did that have to do with Toronto? The general response to the new name was surprise, incomprehension and outright derision. A poll conducted soon after the vote suggested that nearly three-quarters of Torontonians disapproved of the change. Nothing indicates they have grown any keener on it since.
So what is the city doing? Going right ahead anyway, of course.
This week, city council’s executive committee, led by Mayor Olivia Chow, voted unanimously to proceed. The full council will again consider the matter next week.
“This is a good day,” said the local councillor, Chris Moise, who has pushed for the change on the grounds it will help the city’s Black community feel acknowledged.
Is it, though? It’s certainly not a good day for civic democracy. Council is pushing stubbornly ahead even though it is clear most Torontonians think it made a bad call.
If it cared about what they thought, it would have owned up to its mistake and left the name as it was – or at least held a public competition to choose a name that someone had actually heard of. Why not Lightfoot Square, after the legendary singer who played Massey Hall around the corner so many times? Instead, it slipped the name change through when no one was looking and then closed its ears to the outcry.
It is not a good day for Toronto’s finances, either. Soon after Ms. Chow took office last summer, she said Toronto was “broke.” She was not far wrong. Even after raising taxes 9.5 per cent, the biggest increase in a quarter century, the city is struggling to pay for all its needs, from more housing to better transit.
Changing the square’s name and branding was supposed to cost $335,000. Now – surprise, surprise – that estimate has risen to nearly $1-million. Even if most of the extra funds come from private sources, as city hall hopes it will, it seems a criminal waste of money.
Nor is it a good day for historical accuracy. Descendants of Henry Dundas have made a persuasive case that his story is more complicated than the name-change brigade made out. They say he was a committed abolitionist who, as a lawyer, once represented a runaway slave.
The charge against him, they insist, is false. Dundas is accused of helping to amend a bill in the British Parliament to have it call for phasing out the slave trade instead of ending it, thus prolonging the trade and the suffering of its victims. Defenders say it was a tactical move designed to make sure an abolition bill of some description made it through the House instead of going down to what looked like certain defeat.
If the reaction to the square renaming is any indication, Toronto is growing weary of pointless debates over whether the names of long-dead figures should be expunged from the city’s landscape.
At one point, city hall was planning to rename the whole of Dundas Street. It pulled back over the painful cost: close to $13-million. And just minutes from Yonge-Dundas Square stands Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University, whose namesake had his statue toppled from its perch.
Enough. Toronto has better things to do than play the name game.