Evidence mounting that Toronto staff ignored credible information that exonerated Henry Dundas - "the Henry Dundas Committee of Ontario accuses Toronto staff of “research misconduct” in its preparation of reports that led to a Council decision to rename the street. The Dundas Committee cites documents obtained under Freedom of Information that show Toronto staff were aware of several peer-reviewed articles written by respected historians that exonerated Henry Dundas from accusations that his actions extended the slave trade in the late 1700’s, but kept the information from Council... Dr. Nicholas Rogers, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus Department of History at York sent a scathing 2022 letter that was forwarded to Blackman that accused the committee of deliberately stacking the deck against Dundas, writing, “the committee’s research team cherry-picked a few secondary sources which seemed to vindicate Dundas’ responsibility; one of which, (Scottish Professor) Stephen Mullen’s article in the Scottish Historical Review, has already been soundly discredited…It prevaricated when Sir Tom Devine, Scotland’s leading historian, offered evidence that did not square with the research committee’s presuppositions. The letter Devine received from the mayor’s office revealed that the city establishment was not seriously interested in an historical debate on Dundas’ role. It had already made up its mind. He added, “The so-called peer-adjudicated research financed by the City of Toronto was shabby, incomplete and suspiciously parti pris (prejudiced).”... “Professor Angela McCarthy, an expert in Scottish history, published two peer-reviewed articles in 2022 that detail the inaccuracies in the accusations against Henry Dundas. In her written submission to the Executive Committee, she advised it not to accept the accusation that Dundas had prolonged the slave trade.” Despite the reference to Dr. McCarthy’s research being peer-reviewed, Blackman helped draft a response to the Dundas’s that stated, “at this time, the City is not aware of any peer-reviewed academic research that takes the position that Dundas was an abolitionist.” When Linda Dundas informed the City Manager in August 2023 about a third peer-reviewed article that identified new evidence supporting the view that Henry Dundas was indeed an abolitionist, senior staff declined to respond. The FOI documents show no evidence that staff considered the third article further. What is clear from this new information is that the committee established to investigate the possible renaming of Dundas Street had no interest in developing a history-based justification. Staff had taken council’s request for an investigation into a possible name change and somehow morphed it into a mandate to implement the name change. They justified the move by clinging to Mullen’s research that was exposed as shoddy and substandard, and ignored peer-reviewed research by Dr McCarthy as well as the preponderance of scholars with expertise in the area, which were published in journals or on websites with a short turnaround, and were not peer-reviewed, but which were not challenged. In the end, the staff-led committee engaged in exactly the same kind of selective cherry-picking that resulted in the outing of Mullen by respected historians. For their part, the current Toronto Council has had most of this information in their possession for a year and are apparently in agreement with their staff that the facts simply don’t matter in this increasingly embarrassing fiasco."
Opinion: Toronto’s shameful renaming debacles - The Globe and Mail - "The chair of the Yonge-Dundas Square Board of Management has resigned, saying neither the board nor the public had an opportunity to weigh in. In his resignation letter, Mike Fenton wrote that he was asked to provide a quote for the press release announcing the renaming with 30 minutes’ notice."
Henry Dundas was an abolitionist. He deserves a street named after him - "accusations about Henry Dundas have been discredited. Historians from around the globe have shown that Dundas was actually an abolitionist, repeatedly fighting on behalf of enslaved peoples, Indigenous peoples and minorities in distress. The updated information was heard — everywhere but in Toronto. Last year the city council of Mississauga, Ont., voted against renaming its three-kilometre stretch of Dundas Street. The town of Dundas, Ont. (now part of the City of Hamilton) and the united counties of Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry in eastern Ontario will not change their names. Belleville will not renounce its Dundas Street, nor will other Ontario centres including London, Whitby, Burlington and Oakville. What happened? First, as the matter gained public awareness, people realized that the “issue” was faked... It also became evident that city hall staff tasked with investigating this file were inexperienced in handling such complex work. Rather than provide councillors with unbiased background, the staff report placated a handful of activists using Dundas Street as a step to “decolonize” the city. It produced a brief six-paragraph “report” riddled with inaccuracies that distorted the background of Henry Dundas and any significance he had to Toronto. Governments typically refer legal matters to lawyers, structural matters to engineers and public health issues to doctors. Likewise the task of “commemoration” should be overseen by individuals with relevant expertise and the ability to engage objectively with the entire community. The city did not use knowledgeable resources prior to the 2021 vote, and thus looked foolish as the decision came under increasing scrutiny. Staff further compounded the problem with a distorted consultation plan focused on communities that were readily predisposed to accepting the accusations against Dundas. Instead of consulting with impartial experts, city staff adopted a secretive closed-door process and bullied the business community into accepting its view of history. Any public support that existed at the time of the vote began to evaporate as more accurate historical facts emerged... Dundas was actually responsible for Canada’s first policy of bilingualism: As Britain’s Home Secretary, he ordered the government of Lower Canada (today’s Quebec) to support the pleas of Canadien politicians, ensuring that laws introduced in the Legislative Assembly be written in French and all bills be presented with translation."
Renaming Dundas Street: Why the issue is back in the public eye - "Critics of the name-change point to a disputed historical record about Dundas and the lack of broad community consultation underpinning the decision. For some, the focus is on the cost and inconvenience — Dundas is home to more than 97,000 residents and 4,500 businesses, 60 with Dundas in the name. The latest estimate for the name change is $8.6 million, a high price to pay, say opponents, as Toronto struggles to maintain its roads, libraries, pools, programs and services... It’s fair to say that until the summer of 2020, few people in Toronto knew who Dundas Street was named after... Wesley Crichlow, one of the experts consulted by the city on the renaming issue, agrees with the path the consultations took. He believes “colonizers” should not be part of the renaming discussion at all. “Colonizers make the colonized doubt themselves and it forces you into this place of having to constantly prove yourself to the oppressor. The oppressor, the colonizer, they never have to prove themselves. They are always right: this is what we call plantation politics,” says Crichlow, a critical race decoloniality intersectional theorist at the Ontario Tech University. He believes a national decolonizing monuments and renaming committee should be struck to come up with guidelines for the practice... “If you keep Dundas around, does that make the Black population feel disrespected somehow? Does it retraumatize certain members of the Black population? I think these are important questions if we all come from a community where we care about our neighbours. We need to care about everybody’s different experience of place names.”"
A classic liberal focus on language, and a disregard for spending money that characterises their agenda (all while bitching about the budget deficit meaning taxes are too low, while pushing to hike spending)
Ironically, since liberals claim the name traumatises black people, their obsessing about it increases the "trauma" when before no one knew or cared. In a second layer of irony, this mirrors liberals' claims that conservatives are insincere for not caring about issues before the liberal agenda ruins them (e.g. that conservatives don't care about women's sport unless transwomen are edging women out)
Jennifer Dundas on X - "BREAKING: Staff at the City of Toronto have doubled their estimate of the cost of renaming Dundas Street. The new estimate is $11.3 – 12.7 million. In June 2021, when staff recommended renaming Dundas Street, they said it would cost $5.1-$6.3 million. Earlier this year, media reports quoted an unofficial estimate of $8.6 million. The City Manager provided the new estimate in a letter posted on a city webpage last night. https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2023.IA13.1 The letter says the "main drivers" of the costs are Transportation Services, TTC, Toronto Parking Authority, signage, communication, and public engagement. Noticeably absent is any assessment of the total costs of renaming for businesses and residents. Staff have never revealed how much it would cost to reimburse businesses for the cost of changing their addresses and in some cases their business names. There are 4500 businesses on Dundas Street. Providing meaningful subsidies to them would add several million dollars to the bottom line. Under Council Procedures, councillors' options today are to receive the new estimate without debate, or refer it to a committee for further consideration."
Toronto used word from slave-trading African tribe to replace Dundas - "Toronto city council voted unanimously on Thursday to change the name of Toronto’s world famous Yonge-Dundas Square to “Sankofa Square” to distance it from Henry Dundas’ purported connection to the transatlantic slave trade. The word used by the City of Toronto, True North has learned, originated from a tribe known for its role in the slave trade. While Dundas was, in fact, an abolitionist, the Akan people of Ghana, from whom the word “sankofa” comes, were active participants in the slave trade and imported slaves to develop their own economy. As scholar A. Norman Klein, reviewing the work of renowned Ghana historian Ivor Wilks, wrote, the Akan “exchanged their gold for these slaves, who rewarded their Akan masters by creating an ‘agricultural revolution’ during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Akan people imported slaves to help clear their forests, where they searched for gold, and also sold slaves to Europeans, fuelling the transatlantic slave trade. In 2006, Ghana apologized to descendents of slaves for its role in the slave trade. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said the name change is part of the city’s commitment to “confronting anti-Black racism, advancing truth, reconciliation and justice, and building a more inclusive and equitable City.”... Historians, even those on the political left, tend to agree that Dundas was a supporter of the abolition of slavery. Controversy around him stems from an amendment he proposed to an abolition motion from William Wilberforce to make it more “gradual,” but he said in doing so it was because he thought that was the most effective way to end slavery. Given it took more than 50 years from that point for the transatlantic slave trade to end, he was likely right. Dundas also called on African leaders to stop their complicity in the slave trade, which they didn’t do at the time. Despite the city’s historic revisionism of Henry Dundas and his legacy, it said in a statement that the “Sankofa” word was inspired by a reverence for history."
Black skinned slave traders are good. White skinned abolitionists are bad.
WARMINGTON: Sneaky renaming of Dundas Square to Sankofa Square is revisionist madness - "“They were so sneaky about it,” said Jennifer Dundas, a retired crown prosecutor and a “distant” relative of Henry Dundas, who has been trying to “set the record straight” on the Scottish politician. Sneaky is the right word. The first anybody had heard about this Sankofa name was earlier in the day Thursday but no one realized council would amend the agenda to voted on it immediately and inappropriately change two centuries of a very proud history. “My understanding is that short notice, or no notice motions, have to address something urgent to make it on to the agenda,” said Dundas... It’s all so obscene and unnecessary. Using exaggerated grievances of a “colonizing” past, leftists want to change everything about Canada’s history so say goodbye to the city of Toronto as you knew it. Calling it the beginning of a “journey,” Chow indicated that they will focus on these changes while putting on hold the original asinine effort to rename all of Dundas Street — based on inaccurate history of Henry Dundas. Research shows the Scottish politician was in fact in favour of abolishing slavery which former mayors John Sewell and David Crombie highlighted in an open letter. Drunk with power, you know these traitors to Toronto will eventually get back to renaming all of Dundas Street. It, or Dundas Square, shouldn’t be renamed at all. But if Torontonians decided to do that, there are a million ideas better than Sankofa — starting with Canadian patriot Gordon Lightfoot who not only performed at nearby Massey Hall more than anybody else but was also present in the square to support our troops in Afghanistan in 2006. Mayor Chow and her gang of revisionist history militants seem to hate Toronto and are looking to transform it from one of the great cities in the world into a sewer of their woke politics and test tube for their expensive, failing socialism that has taken a safe place and turned into one that is unaffordable and mean. This square has become a front for their failings so it is no surprise they would plant their leftist flag there by taking away its historical name and replace it with some of obscure concept representing a bird from Ghana, that metaphorically goes back to alter the past to forge a new path. It has no connection to Toronto. Under their direction what should be the jewel of the downtown and centrepiece of tourism, Dundas Square, has become a staging area for drug addicts jonesing for their next hit, hunting for cash to achieve it or tripping or sleeping it off after they taken their latest shot or snort aided by taxpayers’ money to help them ingest their poison at a so called safe injection site right on the northeast corner of the square. There’s stabbings there, shootings, assaults, sexual assaults, drug dealing and thefts which will get worse since on the other side of the square council recently quietly announced taxpayers will purchase the old Bond Place Hotel and make it a permanent homeless shelter. It’s great for those hooked on crack, opioids, fentanyl and crystal meth who can walk across the square for free needles or crack smoking kits. Not so great for people with families to sit there and have their lunch. Instead of it being a destination to host the world, it’s now a place where staff have to clean up the vomit. And other things. This whole bizarre, unfair, cancellation exercise to change the name of Dundas Street because of an incorrect smear on Henry Dundas two centuries ago and his position on slavery has been nothing more than a cultural revolution style move to steal Toronto’s proud history and try to make it racist which it is not. It’s the opposite. Find another city in the world where people from all racial, religious, or economic backgrounds have been able to come and create a great life. Toronto is the beacon for that. Yet, there are these bullies spending millions of tax dollars to cancel its builders and replacing them with made-up virtue signalling and expensive, inauthentic re-branding."
Decolonisation means taking a foreign name
Liberals claim bread and butter issues are more important than things like gender ideology, but of course when it comes to their virtue signalling no amount of money is too much to spend
Yonge-Dundas Square chair resigns over renaming of landmark: Report - "“While I support the selection of a new name for YDS — the lack of a consistent, public review to evaluate this decision has been disjointed and lacking good governance,” wrote Fenton"
Jennifer Dundas on X - "If the City of Toronto had chosen an Anishinaabe word for Yonge-Dundas Square, I think we would all agree that the city would have been honouring the Anishinaabe people. That's why the choice of "Sankofa" is so shocking. Toronto is honouring the Akan people of West Africa - a slave owning and slave trafficking tribe that built its wealth on slavery.
On one level, it is not surprising to see this apparent disregard for historical facts. That's how city staff approached their research into the history of Henry Dundas from the outset. Last year, Scotland's most eminent historian, Professor Sir Tom Devine, tried to warn council about the substandard research of staff, to no avail... York University's Professor Emeritus Nick Rogers did the same... Staff rejected the knowledge of these eminent historians. They then went on to facilitate a process that produced the name "Sankofa." Toronto could have chosen a name that was inspiring and uplifting. Instead, through negligence or carelessness, it has drawn attention to African complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and embarrassed itself on the world stage. Who will be accountable for this blunder?"
When you have an agenda and narrative to push
2 officials resign from Yonge-Dundas Square management team after council changes name - "Michael Fenton, chair of the Yonge-Dundas Board of Management, and Jan Mollenhauer, vice chair, resigned on Wednesday. Council voted on Dec. 14 to change the name of Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square... "I can confirm that both the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Yonge-Dundas Board of Management have resigned over their concerns around governance on a number of matters, along with lack of public and board consultation by the city," Julian Sleath, general manager of the board, said in an email"
The left always bitch about the importance of consultation, so this is ironic
Most Torontonians disapprove of new name chosen for Yonge-Dundas Square: poll - "More than two-thirds of Toronto residents are not on board with the proposed new name for Yonge-Dundas Square, according to a new poll... The name change has the most support from downtown residents — but only at 17 per cent approval, with 69 per cent still disapproving."