Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald schools to be renamed in Toronto: TDSB

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The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) will change the names of three public schools commemorating Henry Dundas, Egerton Ryerson and Sir John A Macdonald.

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In October 2024, the TDSB — the largest public school board in Canada — embarked upon a proactive review of the names of all schools under its purview.

So far, three schools have come up: Dundas Junior Public School, named after the 18th-century politician, Ryerson Community School, named after the 19th-century Methodist minister, and Sir John A Macdonald Collegiate Institute, named after Canada’s first prime minister.

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“This recommendation is based on the potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-indigenous racism and their connection to systems of oppression,” says a report from board staff.

The proposed name changes come after years of controversy and political wrangling over the names of everything from universities to LRT stations to public schools, institutions often named after major figures in Commonwealth or Canadian history who have since become controversial.

Patrice Dutil, a professor in the department of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, called for a “moratorium” on renaming schools, colleges and universities.

“These renaming vendettas are based on cheap hearsay and educators — especially educators — owe it to the population that elects them to consult the historical record and make better decisions. The TDSB is not doing its homework, and the provincial government should be calling it to order,” said Dutil, who recently published a book on Macdonald.

Dundas, Ryerson and Macdonald have all been subjected to debate among historians and activists, not just about their legacies, but whether they should still be celebrated. It’s a debate that, at times, has gone beyond the faculty club or the pages of academic journals and ended with the vandalism of statues.

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Lynn McDonald, a former member of Parliament and fellow of the Royal Historical Society, said in an interview that historical errors — notably in the case of Ryerson, she said — were the reasons given for name changes.

“If there were a good reason to change the name, they should. They should say that, but that’s not what they say. They give false accusations as the reason for changing those names,” McDonald said.

There are villains on residential schools, but neither Ryerson or Macdonald are among them

On Monday, the board’s policy and governance committee recommended that the schools’ names be changed, and referred the decision to the full board. James Cowan, who’s on the advisory board of the Canadian Institute for Historical Education and sits on the board of directors of Canada’s History, said decisions made by school boards can lead to children being “misinformed” and “indoctrinated.”

“What’s so egregious about it is this is an organization that oversees our education system, and so if you would expect any group in society to be interested in facts and accuracy, you would expect the people that we’re trusting to educate our children,” Cowan said.

Macdonald is a controversial historical figure because, while one of Canada’s founders, responsible for the National Policy and construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he also oversaw a period of crippling starvation among Indigenous people on the Canadian prairies. Macdonald’s government, in 1885, was also responsible for the imposition of the Chinese head tax, meant to prevent Chinese immigrants from coming to Canada and in 1883 began the system of residential schools in Canada.

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Ryerson’s name has already been stripped from what is now Toronto Metropolitan University. Ryerson, though credited with developing the public-education system in Ontario, is also charged with being one of the chief architects of what would become Canada’s system of Indian Residential Schools. However, the schools became mandatory in 1920 long after he had died.

“There are villains on residential schools, but neither Ryerson or Macdonald are among them,” wrote McDonald in an email.

Dundas was responsible in part for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. However, critics charge that Dundas’s slow-and-steady approach to the issue was anti-abolitionist, favouring the economy over freeing slaves, and preserved the transatlantic slave trade.

In July 2021, the City of Toronto, began the process to rename Dundas Street and, in December 2023, renamed Yonge-Dundas Square to “Sankofa Square,” in recognition of Dundas’s controversial history.

The TDSB, in its staff report, argues that changing the names of schools is consistent with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and that for minority students, attending schools “commemorating individuals who had an explicit role in perpetuating their community’s cultural genocide or other types of systemic violence, such as sexual and gender-based violence and religious persecution serves as a potentially harmful microaggression.”

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Sean Carleton, a historian and Indigenous studies scholar at the University of Manitoba, argues that the purpose of history is to learn from the past, and not simply lionize those from our history.

“In this moment, what people are doing (is), with new information reevaluating the symbols that we choose in society to, convey our values,” said Carleton in an interview. “Many people are saying, ‘Can we not do better than naming a school after someone who advocated for a system of genocidal schooling?’”

If Canadians have these debates, Carleton argued, it could be something we could be proud of.

“The process of having that debate is actually healthy, as long as the people engaged in it are learning from the past and engaging meaningfully in that dialogue, rather than just trying to push the politics of like, you know, ‘Macdonald is a monster,’ or ‘Macdonald is a saint,’” Carleton said.

Renaming, however, has been criticized by some historians.

Margaret MacMillan, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto, has argued that the past cannot be changed by removing names.

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“The past is something you can debate about, you can have different opinions about but, if we remove all traces of it, then we’re not even going to have those debates,” MacMillan said, as quoted by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education.

Several other school boards have previously removed names from schools. In 2021, the York Region District School Board voted to change the name of an elementary school in Markham, Ont., that was named after Macdonald. It’s now called Nokiidaa Public School. Nokiidaa is the Ojibwe word meaning “let’s work” or “let’s all work together.”

In addition to Ryerson University changing its name, the legacy of Ryerson was also removed from a Brantford, Ont., elementary school. That school is now named after Edith Monture, the first Indigenous woman to become a nurse in Canada and the first Canadian Indigenous woman to serve in the U.S. military.

In Ottawa, the National Capital Commission, which oversees federal lands in the National Capital Region, renamed the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to Kichi Zībī Mīkan, which means “Ottawa River path.”

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Multiple other schools around the country — and other public institutions and spaces — have also had their names changed, sometimes with controversy. In Alberta, some schools bearing the name of Jean Vanier, a Catholic philosopher, were renamed after revelations that Vanier was a sexual predator. An LRT station in Edmonton named after Vital-Justin Grandin, another architect of the residential school system, was also changed.

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