Remember when the city of Berlin, in an effort to disassociate itself from the horrors seen in Germany, changed its name to Kitchener – after Lord Kitchener, inventor of concentration camps…?
Looking forward to seeing what bad things the new name is associated with.
What a waste of time. Who cares about the name of a street. People focus so much time, energy, and money (not to mention public time energy and money) on things that don’t matter when we have real issues that need to be dealt with, and quickly.
How about getting some of the current transit projects fixed up so that they actually finish during our lifetimes? Or fix the housing crisis? Or deal with all the empty office space? This city has countless problems, many from neglect over the decades, and people think that changing the name of a damn street is more important.
They are hard, but hard problems are the ones that need addressing. Easy problems tend to have little to no effect, regardless of if they’re solved or not. And solving this problem will have exactly zero impact beyond stroking a few egos (which is something I consider a bad thing so thus should be avoided).
Melanie Newton, the co-chair of the city council advisory committee looking at the renaming issue, has studied Dundas’s legacy and said that as Britain was weighing abolition, he intervened and introduced a motion for ‘gradual abolition.’
In other words, the government of the time was mixed about abolition, and instead of letting it die on the floor to those who were opposed, he proposed a gradual system to try and win more abolition support – to ensure that something happened instead of the otherwise certainty of nothing?
What a horrible monster. Get that name changed at once!
Yeah, much as I agree that there’s a good reason for this, it’s really not the best optics to do this right now, and I really do wonder if the reason it’s even being floated is a) to get people to engage on a frivolous issue instead of real ones, and/or b) for the media to generate rage-clicks.
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Rename it. That’ll show …
Well, I’m not sure. Sticks and stones, I guess.
Love how this is how my tax dollars are being used.
Not working towards solutions for actual problems, but instead how to re-label a street name.
It’s only $8.6 million!
Spend that 8.6m on homeless shelters instead. Or fixing pot holes.
“Normally we give friends of the council a lot more! This is a good deal.” – Toronto city council, probably.
Remember when the city of Berlin, in an effort to disassociate itself from the horrors seen in Germany, changed its name to Kitchener – after Lord Kitchener, inventor of concentration camps…?
Looking forward to seeing what bad things the new name is associated with.
Baby steps.
Link for anyone interested in learning about Kitchener’s atrocious behaviour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps
Oh no! It will no longer be possible for the Bathurst-Dundas intersection to be nicknamed “Ba-das”.
Ok, I may have been the only one to name it that way… And I’ve only been there twice… I guess it doesn’t really matter then.
What a waste of time. Who cares about the name of a street. People focus so much time, energy, and money (not to mention public time energy and money) on things that don’t matter when we have real issues that need to be dealt with, and quickly.
How about getting some of the current transit projects fixed up so that they actually finish during our lifetimes? Or fix the housing crisis? Or deal with all the empty office space? This city has countless problems, many from neglect over the decades, and people think that changing the name of a damn street is more important.
People need an ego check.
The problems you listed are hard, but like painting a bike shed, everyone has an opinion on changing the street name.
They are hard, but hard problems are the ones that need addressing. Easy problems tend to have little to no effect, regardless of if they’re solved or not. And solving this problem will have exactly zero impact beyond stroking a few egos (which is something I consider a bad thing so thus should be avoided).
In other words, the government of the time was mixed about abolition, and instead of letting it die on the floor to those who were opposed, he proposed a gradual system to try and win more abolition support – to ensure that something happened instead of the otherwise certainty of nothing?
What a horrible monster. Get that name changed at once!
Yeah, much as I agree that there’s a good reason for this, it’s really not the best optics to do this right now, and I really do wonder if the reason it’s even being floated is a) to get people to engage on a frivolous issue instead of real ones, and/or b) for the media to generate rage-clicks.
Who the fuck cares? What a waste of taxpayer money.