A city subcommittee has given initial approval to the renaming of Ryerson Recreation Centre in Hamilton.
Once finalized by city council, the facility’s new name will be Kanetskare , a Mohawk word meaning bay or inlet.
The city’s Dawn Walton notes that Hamilton’s public school board has also chosen that name for an elementary school on the same site.
“We chose to kind of follow a conjoined path,” Walton told the city’s facility naming subcommittee on Thursday. “Yhe monuments and landmark review group were doing some work on their process, while the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board was doing some work on theirs.”
The renaming of the school and recreation centre are a response to Egerton Ryerson’s role in developing Canada’s residential school system.
Walton added that officials felt the new name, which reflects a landmark or destination in the area, “made perfect sense” for both the school and recreation centre.