Real change must accompany removal of statues, street names linked to slavery, scholars say

For Torontonian Andrew Lochhead, a petition he started to rename the city's downtown Dundas Street is not about erasing or rewriting history.

"We're really shining a light on it," said Lockhead, a multidisciplinary artist.

DundasStreet wasnamed byJohn Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, afterHenry Dundas, First Viscount Melville.Dundas was an 18th-century Scottish politician who, according to the British website The History of Parliament, was the champion of gradual abolition of the slave trade but opposed immediate abolition.

As Lochhead's petition notes,inthe wake of protests around the globe over the death of George Floyd, Toronto shoulddisavow its historic association with persons who have actively worked to preserve systems of racialinequality and exploitation.

"We talk a lot about statues and statues that should come down. But there are other forms of memorial. And one of those in our urbanenvironment is street names," Lochhead said.

But whether it be removing statues of controversial historical figures or renaming streets, some Black culture scholars say it's more important thatrealchange accompany such moves.

Need more inclusivesociety

"Mymost important issue here is not wanting thisto be a performance," saidCarl Everton James,a professor of education at Toronto's York University who researches race and racism.

"My most important thing is the extent to which these actions, these changes, produce real cultural change, where we can see a different kind of society that's more inclusive and responsive to the realities ofracializedpeople."

Renaming streets or eliminating statues will mean little if there remains a lack ofBlack people represented insocietal institutions like corporations and the media, Jamessaid.

Video that emerged more than two weeks agoof a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into Floyd's neck as he pleaded that he couldn't breathe moments before his death set off protests and sporadic violence across the U.S. over the treatment of Black people.

It also led to many Confederate monuments being damaged or brought down, some toppled by demonstrators and others removed by local authorities. In Virginia,Democratic Gov. Ralph Northamordered theremoval ofthe statue of the most revered Confederate of them all, Gen. Robert E. Lee, but a judge on Monday blocked such action for at least 10 days.

Some have argued thatstatues should be left alone as monuments of history, or that plaquesbe added with more information about these historical figures in relation to slavery. Others have said they shouldbe removed and placed in a museum, or gotten rid ofentirely.

Sen. Murray Sinclair, who led theTruth and Reconciliation Commission into Canada's residential schools,has suggested that tearing down statues is "counterproductive" to reconciliation because it "smacks of revenge."

IndigenousServicesMinisterMarcMillersaid Thursday he wouldn'ttake a position as to whether or not thesestatues should be taken down, but said it's important to examine what the statues represent.

"If we're blind to the past, we're blind to the future," Miller said.

Sir John A. Macdonald statue removed

Actions to remove such statues have not been limited to the U.S.Protesters in Bristol, England, for example, toppled thestatue of slave trader Edward Colston and threw it into theRiver Avon on Sunday.

Inrecent yearsin Canada, the controversy over statues commemorating historical figures has tended to focus on their links to anti-Indigenous policies. There have been calls to change the names of schools, and bring down statues of Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, who commissioned residential schools, which are blamed for the cultural genocide of Indigenous people in Canada.

In 2018, a statue of the former prime minister was removed from the steps of Victoria city hall.

But other figures too have come under scrutiny. In 2018,Halifax removed a statue of Edward Cornwallis, who founded the city in 1749, over his proclamation offering a bounty to anyone whokilled a Mi'kmaq person.

Calls have alsogone out to change the name of Ryerson University, named after Egerton Ryerson, whose ideas alsohelped toinfluencethe creation of Canada's residential schools system.

The federal government is currently looking at its own policies onhow to address concerns with historical figures like Macdonald. TheHistoric Sites and Monuments Board of Canada is in the process ofdeveloping guidelines to determinehow and under which circumstances a national historic designation may be removed.

"Wehave to reflect on our history and these are important conversations to have," saidMoira Kelly, a spokespersonfor Jonathan Wilkinson, the minister responsible for Parks Canada, in an email to CBC.

"It is important, at all times, to reflect on the past in the context of the present."

However, even before the death of Floyd, controversy was brewingoverinstitutions and streets in Canada named after figures with links to slavery.

Dalhousie University was named after George Ramsay, the ninthEarl of Dalhousie, also known as Lord Dalhousie. Ramsay was known to be pro-slavery and made disparaging remarks about Black refugees from the War of 1812, who settled in Nova Scotia.

But a panel in 2018 recommended against a name change, saying the school isno longer associated with Ramsay.

However, in Toronto earlier this year, Russell Street, named after an Upper Canada politician and judge who opposed abolition, was changed to Ursula Franklin, who wasan experimental physicist and professor of metallurgy at the University of Toronto.

Last month, the board of governors at the University of New Brunswick voted to strip George Duncan Ludlow's name from the school's law faculty building in Fredericton because of his connections to slavery and the abuse of Indigenous people.

The death of Floyd seems to have sparked more such action in Canada. An online petition is seekingto change the name of Russell, a townsoutheast of Ottawa.

But Andrea Davis, chair and co-ordinator of the Black Canadian Studies Certificate at York University, said a distinction must be made between Confederate statues and some street names in Canada.

Davis said removing thoseConfederate statues was long overdue andserved as a reminder that the freedomof Blacks in the U.S had boundaries and limits. She said those statues revealed that theSouthernerswhohad gone to war against the Northand tried tosecede had a greater place in that state than Blacks.

Removing monuments like that of Lee would have a "real tangible and immediate effect," she said.

But changing of a street name, for example, where most people don't know the history or even remark on the change, is "more symbolic.

"And we need to be careful that we're not just making or just having knee-jerk responses," she said.

"I thinkwhat I would like to see alongside those moves, if we decide to go in that direction, is to also have deeper, more thoughtful responses that address the root of the erasure."