A moderator had to urge audience members to follow the format rules when things got out of hand at an event about renaming city streets and assets.
The city-held event — called “What’s in a Name? The Past, Present, and Future of Municipal Naming” — took place the evening of Nov. 1 at the Arden Theatre. Free to attend, it featured five experts on renaming, as well as city staff and hired consultants working on an update to the city’s naming policy.
“Last May … when the Kamloops recovery work began and the ground-truthing began, the city was inundated with calls,” Cindy de Bruijn, the city's senior manager of community relations told the audience.
The calls were both from people urging the city to change the name of city neighbourhoods and streets named after people who were involved in residential schools (such as Bishop Vital Grandin), and other callers asking them not to make any changes, de Bruijn said.
“This was when we referred back to our policy and recognized that we did not have anything that necessarily gave council what they needed to make an informed and objective decision based on the requests they were being faced with,” she said.
Now, the city is in the middle of conducting extensive public engagement as part of the formation of a new naming policy.
“St. Albert is the site of two former residential schools, so this is an issue that is extremely poignant for our community. If we were going to do it, it wasn’t going to be a quick and easy survey online.”
Moderator emphasizes event rules
During the first half of the event, panellists were given the opportunity to introduce themselves and answer prepared questions on renaming.
At the event’s half-way point, attendees were invited to bring questions to moderator Harry Harker, who then posed the questions to panellists and the city’s team during the remaining hour of the event.
However, several interjections from attendees during the latter portion of the event led Harker — a community planner experienced in public engagement — to request the audience follow the event format.
“I’m going to step in with ground rules,” Harker said. “We’re not going to break into applause for things we like and potentially go in for things we don’t like.”
He emphasized the city has not yet decided whether to rename a specific street or neighbourhood.
“I’m here because I believe in process,” Harker said. “This is not about our bias or our lack of bias or our perspective professionally. This is about us hearing from you and trying to get to the bottom of how we can give you a process that reflects you.”
Panellists share expertise
During the first half of the event, the five panellists outlined their experiences and expertise related to historical commemoration projects and renaming.
“Through a naming process or a renaming process, I think what we need to do is to bring more people into the braid of St. Albert’s history,” Christina Hardie, a Métis historian working for the Arts and Heritage Foundation, said.
“If we think of braiding sweetgrass or braiding our hair … we’re not dropping one of the strands to bring something in,” she said. “It’s all of those things woven together that makes it a complete whole … we’re not wanting to replace or overwrite history, we’re wanting to add new perspectives.”
Dan Rose, former chair of the Edmonton Historical Board and historical preservationist, said naming is one of the natural uses of history, but also “one of the great abuses of history.”
“Names aren’t neutral,” Rose said. “They were chosen by usually a small group of people informed by a specific set of values with specific motivations, in a unique moment in time … In doing that, we’re choosing to select or uplift specific aspects … at the expense of another narrative or another part of that story.”
Audience members raise questions about panel
At intermission, attendees The Gazette spoke to criticized aspects of the event.
Margaret Miller, who lives in Grandin neighbourhood, said the panellists were all echoing the same perspective.
“It feels like listening to politicians,” Miller said. “They’re just going around in circles … They should ask our opinion — we’re the ones that live in Grandin.”
Hazel Robertson, also from Grandin, said she had attended the event to seek clarity on whether her neighbourhood would be renamed. She said one aspect she still had questions about was what renaming would ultimately cost.
“We’ve got money that we need to put into making life better,” Robertson said. “Not changing this stupid name.”
Later in the event, Kristina Peter — the city’s planning branch manager — responded to audience questions about the potential cost of renaming.
“Generally, the costs are minimal,” Peter said. “It’s more about time to people.”
When the city recently annexed land from Sturgeon County, Peter said they worked with registries to provide residents a letter saying the name had changed in order for them to change their driver’s license, though noted the change would still take individuals time. On the city’s part, Peter said street signs are not expensive to replace.
The history of Vital Grandin
When answering audience questions, panellists elaborated on the history of Bishop Vital Grandin.
Vino Vipulanantharajah, a Musée Héritage Museum archivist, said we can prove some of Grandin's involvement in advancing residential schools because of a copy of the Saskatchewan Herald newspaper where Grandin had written a letter proposing residential schools for St. Albert.
“He wrote a letter talking about how he wanted Indigenous kids to learn in residential schools,” Vipulanantharajah said.
Joe Becigneul, chair of Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools and participant in the renaming of Holy Family Catholic School (formerly known as Vital Grandin) said Vipulanantharajah was “very kind to Bishop Grandin in terms of the letters that he wrote.”
He referenced something Grandin is quoted as saying: “We instill in them a pronounced distaste for the Native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origin. When they graduate from our institutions, the children have lost everything Native except their blood.”
Becigneul said that while Grandin also built the Catholic Church in Western Canada, “the bad … really outweighed all of the good he did.”
“It was poison,” Becigneul said, referring to the impact of the residential school system.
Rose said conversations that acknowledge the messiness of history are an important feature of renaming.
“When we do the practice of history and when we bring those voices in and we look at the facts as they are, you can let the historical record stand for itself,” Rose said.
“How much history of that violence and that trauma do you need before you can ask yourself a very serious question about whether that legacy is one that you want to attach yourself to?”
Rachel DiSaia, the fifth panellist who worked on renaming the university formerly known as Ryerson, argued the question of renaming does not only affect the direct community where the name exists.
“You have to also think about who works here, who drives through this area every day, what teams come in to play on your courts and in your field, and how they are impacted,” DiSaia said. “Nobody lives in a bubble.”
They highlighted how choosing to keep the name will not close the chapter on questions surrounding it, or end the conversation on calls to rename.
“The demand for change will continue and the opportunities will be missed," DiSaia said.
