Negro Brook Road should be renamed, say area residents

Residents of a small rural community in south central New Brunswick are pushing to change thename of their street, calledNegro Brook Road.

The street in South Branch, near Sussex, ison the route to several provincialtourist attractions, including Fundy National Park.

Up until 10 years ago, it was named after a once-common racial epithet.

"I'm not gonna say it.I can say to you it was the 'N-word,'" said Susan Tyler, the only permanent resident of the road.

But even the cleaned-up version leaves her and other area residentsuncomfortable.

"If anybody can say that they don't mean anything bad and they use that word, I think they're being intentionally ignorant," said Tyler. "I don't believethat you need to carry on symbols.

When we do have to share the name of the road, because people need to find where we areit's embarrassing.- ZachMelanson, area resident

Zach Melanson, who works on a farm down the road, agrees it's time the name was changed.

"When we do have to share the name of the road, because people need to find where we areit's embarrassing," he said.

Melansonsays he met with Department of Tourism, Heritage, and Culture officials in December about having the name changed, but has not heard back since.

At least four other places in New Brunswick have the word negro in them, includingNegro Head, Negro Point, Negro Lake and Little Negro Lake.

A national search came up with 36 results.

'Part of history'

I'm not necessarily sure that names of objects and places should be changed," said DonaldAlward, curator of the Albert County Museum.

"It's a shout-out to recognizing the history that has taken place.Although it may be a negative part of history, we still need to acknowledge it in order to move forward from it," he said.

Melanson, however, contends there's no historical reason for the road to be named after such a cruel word, aside from past prejudices.

If there seemed to be some cultural relevancy from all of the people I've spoken to, it doesn't seem like there is a history here, other than a bigoted one," he said.