DDSB launches committee to rename two schools following petition

The Durham District School Board has voted to start the process to rename two schools.

A motion passed calling for the establishment of a renaming committee. Specifically, this committee will focus on two schools, Julie Payette Public School in Whitby, and Sir John A. Macdonald Public School in Pickering.

This petition with over 1,100 signatures calls for Julie Payette Public School in Whitby to be renamed to Leslie Macfarlane Public School. Payette previously served as the Governor General, but she resigned after a report came out alleging her employees experienced harassment in her office.

Over the past few years, there have been several calls to rename institutions named after Canada’s first Prime Minister. There have been calls for other institutions named after controversial Canadians to be renamed, such as when Ryerson University’s School of Journalism temporarily removed ‘Ryerson’ from it’s name.

Macdonald was criticized by the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, who called for the removal of his name from public schools. The ETFO says our nation’s first Prime Minister was the “architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples.”

Macdonald was one of the main creators of the Indian Act, a piece of legislation that remains largely unchanged since its inception. In the year 1887, Prime Minister Macdonald said the purpose of the legislation is “to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion” of Canada.

He was also one of the driving forces behind Canada’s residential school system, which contributed to the genocide of Indigenous peoples across Canada.

Now that the motion has passed, the DDSB committee will work on finding suitable replacements for these school’s names.