Yesterday, Elder Advice was driving on Dundas Street in Toronto, enjoying the traditional sights and sounds of the holiday season. The incessant horn-honking of furious, self-absorbed drivers. Their dogged refusal to signal lane changes. Their insistence on entering intersections without being able to exit. As always, the seasonal requirement of “goodwill toward all men” should not be exaggerated. Or misinterpreted as an instruction to eschew ill-will.
Dundas Street. They could have permitted Elder Advice to savor a small victory. As I patiently explained in Elder Advice - 68 and elsewhere 1 renaming places by distorting the historical record, judging historical figures selectively and by contemporary standards, assessing those who did real public service on their best day by what they did on their worst, and wasting limited municipal resources on such issues, is wrong. So, when Toronto City Council reversed course this week and announced that Dundas Street would not be renamed, they could have done the right thing. A simple admission that Elder Advice was predictably right and that their initial decision was catastrophically wrong - historically, financially, ethically - would have sufficed. An added promise to stop pandering to the increasing number of the vocal torch and pitchfork holders in this City and their misinformed followers, who seek public funds and attention for both imagined and petty grievances at a time when we face real municipal crises - in housing, infrastructure deficits, school issues, the gutting of the small business environment, food security, public transit, and economic disparity - would have been a nice touch.
Of course, to expect such conduct from politicians and bureaucrats is delusional. Faces must be saved and bones thrown to all dogs. So Elder Advice was unsurprised that the announcement was coupled with a proclamation that the Dundas subway station would be re-christened “TMU Station” and Dundas Square would be renamed “Sankofa”.
TMU. Elder Advice has wondered, since Ryerson University renamed itself “Toronto Metropolitan University” and rebranded as “TMU” whether anyone remembered that it is a well known acronym in industrial circles for: “The Most Useless”.
Sankofa. Elder Advice was initially certain that it is a brand of instant coffee enjoyed, like all instant coffees, by no one. But he has since been educated and now appreciates the word comes from the Twi language, spoken by the Akan people of Ghana, and dating from a time when they were enthusiastic human traffickers, supplying the victims and losers of African tribal warfare first to the Muslim world as part of the odious trans-Saharan slave trade and then to Europeans as part of the equally horrific trans-Atlantic trade. So, just to be clear, Toronto is jettisoning the name “Dundas” because of false claims that Sir Henry Dundas delayed the abolition of slavery, in favour of a name which has incontrovertible connections to those who promoted, practiced and profited from it.
And to think Elder Advice’s doctor says he has an irony deficiency.
Elder Advice? Controversies over North American place names are trivial by any real world measure - “champagne problems” as my friend Taylor Swift might say.
So perhaps we would be better to give a damn, during this season of caring, about more important things. For example, the estimated 50 million actual slaves living in the world today. People who, the International Labour Organization of the UN reports are the victims of forced labour and coerced marriage, almost all in the Arab states and Asia. Whose numbers are increasing as a result of more complex conflicts, widespread environmental degradation, climate-induced migration, the global rollback of women’s rights, and the ongoing economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Giving a damn could include putting something in the stocking of active charities like TheExodusRoad.com
One of Elder Advice’s least favourite clients called to say that the $5.00 T-shirt he bought himself this holiday must be excluded from any concern or action. Yes, it was undoubtedly made by modern day slave labour in the Ugyhur nation. Yes, it was transported in a carbon spewing container ship, in an Amazon box large enough to rent out in Toronto as a junior one bedroom. But it is emblazoned “PHILANTHROPIST” and he needs it to ensure others appreciate his constant and over-riding concern for humanity.
https://www.municipalworld.com/podcasts/tim-lowman/