A major thoroughfare in Ottawa that currently bears the name of John A. Macdonald is expected to be renamed this year with a new, aboriginal name, the National Capital Commission (NCC) announced Thursday.
The NCC’s Board of Directors unanimously approved the recommendation to change the name of “Promenade Sir-John-A.-Macdonald”, a wide, scenic boulevard that runs along the Ottawa River, west of Wellington Street.
This promenade has been named after the very first prime minister in Canadian history for the past ten years, a conservative who is now controversial. This grand boulevard, formerly known as the Ottawa River Parkway, was renamed in Macdonald’s honor in 2012 under the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
At the time, the NCC indicated that it cost $60,000 to change the four main signs along the boulevard.
The NCC, a federal Crown corporation, said Thursday it will now engage with Indigenous communities and citizens to come up with a new name and to encourage sharing of its story. The Commission says it will propose this new, indigenous name by June 2023.
The parkway’s new name will be officially announced at a ceremony and public event on September 30, Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The Mayor of Ottawa, Mark Sutcliffe, immediately indicated that he “fully supports this decision” of the Commission. “I think this is something Canadians and Ottawa residents can be proud of once this process is complete,” the mayor said.
Councilors Initiative
Three Ottawa city councilors wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in the summer of 2021 urging the federal government to facilitate an Indigenous-led consultation process to rename the parkway.
The city councilors wrote their letter as penetrating radar had just located some 200 alleged unmarked graves near a former federal Aboriginal residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. The advisers felt that it was “high time” for Canada to commit to concrete gestures of reconciliation.
It was Conservative Prime Minister John A. Macdonald who approved the creation of the residential school system in Canada when he was in power in the 1880s.
It is estimated that more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend these federally funded institutions run by Catholic congregations. Many of these children were abused and some died. The last of these boarding schools closed in 1996.
Last April, the NCC indicated in a press release that it had provided its board of directors with an updated toponymy policy, in order to make “more transparent the decision-making process”.
The NCC then formed a Place Names Advisory Committee, made up of NCC staff, partners from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation and the Algonquins of the Pikwakanagan First Nation, as well as specialists in local and national history.
The commission then indicated that the first item to be studied by this committee would be the examination of a request for a change of designation for the Sir-John-A.-Macdonald promenade.
John A. Macdonald served as Prime Minister of Canada from the birth of Confederation in 1867 until 1873, and again from 1878 until his death in 1891.
This dispatch was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta Exchanges and The Canadian Press for the news.