2 Officials Resign From Yonge-Dundas Square Management Board After Vote on Name Change

The Toronto skyline is shown on June 21, 2018. The Canadian Press/Tijana Martin

Two members of the management board responsible for Yonge-Dundas Square (YDS) in Toronto have announced their resignation following a decision to change the name of the public space.

Board general manager Julian Sleath said the resignations were not related to the name change.

“I can confirm that the chair and vice chair [resigned] over a number of governance issues and not the naming of the square,” Mr. Sleath told The Epoch Times. “They and the full YDS board has been supportive of the work by the community advisory committee on the renaming of Dundas Street.”

Chair of the Yonge-Dundas Board of Management Michael Fenton and Vice-Chair Jan Mollenhauer resigned on Dec. 20, days after Toronto’s city council voted 19–2 to rename Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square.

As part of the motion adopted by city council, the name “Dundas” will also be removed from the Dundas and Dundas West subway stations and the Jane/Dundas Public Library in 2024.

The name change is due to the “controversial legacy” of Scottish politician Henry Dundas, who was active in the late 1700s and early 1800s when the British Parliament was debating motions to abolish slavery in the British Empire. While Mr. Dundas introduced a motion to stall abolition, his descendant Bobby Dundas has argued he was attempting to be strategic by abolishing the practice gradually.

Historical documents have shown that claim to be true. Mr. Dundas proposed an amendment to the original slavery motion, “That the Slave Trade ought gradually to be abolished.” He said immediate abolition could lead to “other nations [to] take up the trade” and an illegal slave market.

The Henry Dundas Committee for Public Education on Historic Scotland has also found a wealth of evidence that “Dundas proved, over the course of a lifetime, that he was genuinely opposed to slavery and the slave trade.”

City Coun. Dianne Saxe, who voted in favour of the name change, criticized the failure to consult the wider public on the change, saying it was a prerequisite for “legitimate” public decisions.

“This was a decision that was made without the consultation that the public was promised, and frankly, without consultation with council,” she said Dec. 21.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow defended the name change on Dec. 20, arguing that the 19 meetings held on the decision meant that it was not rushed.

Ghanian Name 

The new name of Sankofa originates in Ghana and refers to the act of “reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past, which enables people to move forward together,” Toronto City Council said in a statement on Dec. 14.

“This new name reflects the city’s commitment to taking steps to right wrongs, confront anti-black racism and build a more inclusive Toronto for all,” it added.

The Akan tribe of Ghana was believed to have been a hub for the slave trade, and the Ghanaian government issued an apology for its involvement back in 2006.

According to the 2021 Statistics Canada census, there are 15,600 people of Ghanaian descent and 439,565 people of Scottish descent living in Toronto.

Ms. Chow told the council on Dec. 21 that Mr. Dundas’s actions intending to delay the end of the slave trade were “horrific,” and “heartbreaking.” She said the renaming of the square was a way of addressing community concerns, and that the new name—which took two years to decide on—was not picked arbitrarily.

The council voted on July 14 to rename the 23-kilometre thoroughfare in response to a 2020 petition with 14,000 signatures that called for the name to be changed, according to the city website.

The latest estimates show the cost of renaming the street will amount to $12.7 million, more than double the price of the original $6.3 million price tag, according to a city manager.

An October poll of 817 Torontonians by Liaison Strategies found that while 54 percent of respondents supported renaming the street, that number dropped to 42 percent when the price to do so was factored in.

Back in June, the National Capital Commission board of directors voted to rename the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway in Ottawa to Kichi Zībī Mīkan, which is an Algonquin word meaning path or road, and great river. The name change was done in response to the legacy of Canada’s first prime minister, who implemented policies that led to the starvation of indigenous people and the removal of them from their land.