John A. Macdonald Road in Saskatoon will have its name changed to Miyo-wâhkôhtowin Road (pronounced mee-yo wah-KOH’-toh-win) after Saskatoon city council approved the new name.
The city received letters on Wednesday, some in favour of the name change, others calling for there to be no name change.
Coun. Bev Dubois wanted clarification as to why the members of the initial committee that recommended this change didn’t want to be identified.
“I’ve never heard of that or experienced that in my years on city council that the city has a committee and we don’t identify who the committee is to the public,” Dubois said.
City administration noted that ultimately this was city council’s decision.
“I’m not sure why it would be necessary to know who the names are of the people who are on the committee before making that decision,” said Cindy Yelland, city solicitor.
Dubois said city council tries to be transparent.
Lynne Lacroix, general manager, noted that an overview of the committee was given previously, saying there was community association representation, a resident from John A. Macdonald Road, and representation from residential school survivors.
She said some people on that committee were fearful of receiving letters following the decision.
“What we did was respect some of their requests around names, but again it was a committee that was established that had some broad representation with a core focus on lived experience and people who have been traumatized by residential schools,” Lacroix said.
Dubois said she was happy to get an explanation, noting she had received some questions from residents about transparency.
“I understand,” Dubois said. “Folks might be scared because we go through that every day here.”
Coun. Darren Hill asked if there was an existing name change policy.
Lacroix said the civic naming policy makes reference to renaming, adding that they are using that as their foundational policy and that this was a pilot project that will eventually lead to an update to the civic naming policy.
This name change will affect about 172 addresses, and Lacroix said those addresses will be receiving a guidebook around the new name, and residents will also receive small group or one-on-one sessions with the city to discuss the address change process and what unintended expenses might be coming out of this change.
Coun. Randy Donauer took issue with the renaming of the street, noting there were concerns about the process, adding he had concerns about “this being the start of a slippery slope.”
“It’s not my intention that we start going around Saskatoon changing street names, park names, pulling statues down, that sort of thing,” Donauer said.
Dubois was also concerned, noting her ward was on the other side of the city but she was still hearing from people that they weren’t supportive of this name change.
She also brought up the fact that the city doesn’t currently have a process to go through these steps, saying she thought some things were missed because of that.
Hill recognized that this was a sensitive issue.
“The name ‘Sir John A MacDonald’ causes a great deal of pain for many members of our community, and should the name of the road be changed? That’s up for the members of the community to determine, not 11 people sitting around in these chambers,” Hill said.
He said that the community wasn’t given a full engagement strategy, and that they should have a policy in place and a legacy review finished before ever addressing the name change.
“We now have opened the floodgates to many more names to be brought forward, other political and community leaders who supported eugenics and research and experiments on sexually diverse people, and on people with intellectual disabilities. Are we going to change all those names?”
He said he wasn’t opposed to the name change, just how they got to this position.
Coun. Mairin Loewen said she recognized that the process for the name change was complicated and didn’t meet the expectations of the public, but said that through the attempt to balance the needs within the community, not everyone in the community was going to be satisfied.
She said she wasn’t willing to abandon this project based on what she called “some flaws in the process.”
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