Go back and get it

Content warning: This article mentions anti-Black racism and systemic oppression. 

About a week ago, I was walking a path I’ve taken for years, from the UTSC campus to the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. Eager to get a workout in, I had been kicking pebbles and running after them to see how far they would go.

As I turned the corner to get into the Sports Centre, I kicked a pebble onto a discoloured patch in the sidewalk that caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I saw dark green paint etched onto the sidewalk, where the capitalized letters spelled out the N-word. 

I stopped in my tracks. Questions flooded through my head: Who wrote this? How long has it been here? Should I do something about it?

To avoid drawing attention from passersby due to my visible confusion, I kept walking. After all, I had a workout to get to, and I wasn’t going to let a stranger’s bigotry ruin my evening. 

As I was working out, however, I couldn’t get the word out of my head. It was like an insect I couldn’t swat away, a reminder that someone doesn’t think people like me belong here. 

Unlike words etched into a sidewalk, racism remains hidden, buried under years of forgotten history. Every now and then, they become unearthed, and the horrors of their past reveal themselves. Canada’s history is no exception to these secret horrors, and one such story has been hiding in plain sight — more specifically, behind the name of Toronto’s busiest of intersections: Dundas Square.

A history mired in turmoil

The story of Dundas Square begins not in Canada, but in Scotland. At the centre of St. Andrew’s Square in Scotland’s capital Edinburgh stands the Melville Monument, a towering stone column that rises over 150 feet into the air. At the top of this grand structure is a stone figure of a man, his curly hair framing a face with a distant gaze. This is Henry Dundas, and for many, his legacy is far less ennobling than his statue might suggest.

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742–1811), was one of the most prominent politicians in the British parliament during the eighteenth century: at the height of the transatlantic slave trade — the forced transportation of enslaved Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean. During this time, Britain was at the helm of the capitalist steamboat of transatlantic slavery, transporting more than three million Africans to the British colonies, making Britain the world’s largest slave-trading nation. 

By the mid-to-late eighteenth century, however, the growing British abolitionist movement incited the debate surrounding the slave trade. In 1792, British abolitionist William Wilberforce put forth a motion in Parliament calling for the immediate abolition of the slave trade. 

As an alternative to Wilberforce’s push for immediate action, Dundas introduced a new motion which offered that the abolishment of slavery would happen “gradually,” over the course of seven-and-a-half years. Regardless, Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was not fully abolished until 1807. In the years before this, almost 600,000 additional African men, women, and children were forced from their homes in Africa and brought to the British colonies. 

This is where the scholarly consensus splits into two camps. One camp of historians believe that the abolition of British involvement in the slave trade would have been impossible at the time, with or without Dundas’ new motion. The other holds Dundas responsible for prolonging Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. 

The possibility of the latter was enough to rouse civil rights activists. In 2020, protestors with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in Scotland rallied against the monument’s commemoration of Dundas’ role in the slave trade, calling for it to be removed in the name of anti-racism.

But what if I told you that Canadians have our own Melville Monument, sitting right here in Toronto, right under our noses? Instead of a 150-foot tower, our commemoration of Dundas is even greater: it’s a 23-kilometre roadway that cuts through various communities, businesses, and homes. You might have heard of it: Dundas Street. 

Dundas Street was named after Henry Dundas by the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, and serves as a constant reminder of Dundas’ legacy. In 1793, when it was nothing more than a “primitive path with mud holes,” Simcoe ensured the highway was named after his friend. 

Fast forward two centuries and this path has transformed into one of Toronto’s most bustling streets. This intersection, now known as Dundas Square, has become a hub for shopping, concerts, community celebrations, and theatrical events.

But some citizens have decided to dig beneath the surface to uncover the history surrounding the Square. These Torontonians believe that Dundas deliberately delayed the abolition of the slave trade to appease the pro-slavery lobby and that Toronto should not have a monument named after him. 

Uncovering Henry Dundas

All it took was one small push to get the ball rolling, and I had the pleasure of speaking with the person behind that push. 

Andrew Lochhead, a PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, began reflecting on monuments and their ties to racist legacies when he was researching the BLM campaign in 2020. The movement sparked widespread reactions against monuments honouring historical figures who supported such ideals. 

“I would argue that Dundas Street is no different than a Confederate monument sitting in the middle of our city,” Lochhead said in an interview with The Varsity. Confederate monuments are those that honour the cause of the American Civil War, which was to defend the American citizens’ rights to own slaves. “It contributes overwhelmingly to negative health outcomes for African American people, and it authorizes higher incidences of racially motivated crimes.”

Lochhead, who studies urban environments and their role in concealing and commemorating the power of historical figures, believes that he has a personal responsibility to share what he’s learned about the name Dundas’ and its connection to the slave trade. 

In 2020, Lochhead created an online petition named “Let’s Rename Dundas Street in Toronto.” He saw the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity for screen-locked citizens to engage civically, and the petition quickly received over 14,000 signatures in just two weeks.

“It literally went viral,” said Lochhead. “I did not expect it to initially generate the amount of conversation that it did, nor did I expect it to be so successful.”

The petition even caught the attention of prominent Canadian political figures. In the summer of 2020, then-leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party Andrea Horwath expressed her support for Lochhead’s cause in an X post. She stated that rather than try the impossible task of changing the past, renaming the Square from Dundas — a man whose actions “cost tens of thousands of lives” — was “about rewriting our present day.” 

Ultimately, it was Toronto’s former Mayor John Tory who brought the issue to the City Council. Stating that the Square’s commemoration of Dundas directly conflicted with Toronto’s value of equity, Tory took the petition to the City Council in June 2020. In July 2021, the City Council voted to rename Dundas Street. 

“It really gathered some steam,” Lochhead noted. “I think that’s a wonderful win for everybody… to effect legislative change.” 

The jagged path forward 

Deciding to change a name is one thing, but what should it be changed to? City Council left this decision to the Community Advisory Committee (CAC), which was composed of Black and Indigenous leaders, community members, business owners, and other diverse residents working and living along Dundas Street. The committee’s task was to come up with a list of potential names for other places named after Dundas — such as the subway station — in the City of Toronto.

After two years of deliberation, the board decided on the name “Sankofa Square” — pronounced SAHN-koh-fah. According to the Sankofa Square webpage, the term comes from the Ghanaian Akan language and loosely translates to “go back and get it.” It signifies growth and reclamation, using the renaming of Dundas-related assets as a way to show how a city can strive for a better future by acknowledging its past. 

However, this isn’t the end of the story. Despite the 14,000 people who signed Lochhead’s petition, there were some who strongly opposed the renaming of Dundas Square.

Daniel Tate — a self-described scholar of Toronto’s live music market and an advocate for the city’s art and culture scene — is one of the many individuals who attempted to stop the renaming of Dundas Street. 

In an interview with The Varsity, Tate described himself as a “vessel for all that anger” that many Torontonians feel about the renaming process. 

Beyond his activism, Tate has deep ties to Toronto’s cultural history. A former concert organizer, he is also the author of two books, The Flyer Vault: 150 Years of Toronto Concert History and Stories of the Stage: 25 Years of Concert History at Scotiabank Arena, both of which document the city’s vibrant concert scene.

In an attempt to showcase his love for the culture of the city, Tate started an Instagram account that currently has over 26,000 followers and over 4,400 posts documenting Toronto’s live music scene. As a steward of Toronto’s culture, he was shocked when he learned about Lochhead’s petition to rename such an important cultural landmark for Toronto. 

For him, Dundas is more than just an intersection: it represents an integral part of not only Toronto’s identity but his own. 

So when Mayor Olivia Chow and City Council confirmed in December 2023 that they would be renaming Dundas Square along with other namesakes associated with Dundas, Tate couldn’t just sit back and watch. He and a friend took a page out of Lochhead’s book and started their own petition: “STOP the Renaming of Dundas in Toronto.” 

Tate received over 30,000 signatories on his petition. He showed up to a Toronto City Council meeting on June 18, 2024, ready to speak. Instead of a receptive audience, he was disappointed by how his case was antagonized by the council members. 

The proposal that the committee was discussing — titled “A Governance and Operational Review of Sankofa Square” — was the final step in changing the name after a series of City Council meetings. Yet, the meeting wasn’t without its controversies.

Tate showed up to City Hall with his deputation and his book of 30,000 signatures. He spoke in depth about his reasons for being against the renaming of the square, from the cultural loss to the fact that he believes there wasn’t enough public consultation before the renaming happened. In his view, the CAC wasn’t enough.

“I was mortified that this City council would… unilaterally pave over our history and pave over a civic space that everyone has wonderful memories of, over some shoddy academic scholarship,” Tate said during the meeting of City Council.

Many counsellors, including Chris Moise, Gord Perks, and Paula Fletcher, criticized Tate’s refutation.

Fletcher noted that many names on Tate’s petition were not from Toronto but from across the province. Perks spoke about the importance of addressing anti-Black racism, saying, “I am not going to listen to a petition — and I don’t care how many names are on it — that says ‘go backwards.’” 

Tate alleged that Moise in particular accused him of being a racist after his five minute speech to City Council. 

“I was so shocked, I immediately confronted him about it because that’s no way to treat your constituents,” Tate told The Varsity. Despite the commotion, the motion passed 17– 6 in the council. 

Tate added that the councillors’ response to his speech demonstrated that “they are arrogant, elitist people who have been up in their perch in City Council for so long unchecked.” He believes that the decision was being made without adequate public consultation. 

“They’ve gotten accustomed to being in a position of power and telling [citizens] — their minions… what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“The writing is definitely on the wall”

Both Lochhead and Tate stand on different sides of the debate over renaming Toronto’s main landmark. Some strongly advocate for reexamining the historical significance of the name, while others seek to preserve the culture that has developed around it. 

Where do we go from here? For one historian at U of T, the answer is obvious. 

Melanie Newton — chair of the Graduate Program for the History Department, professor of history and Caribbean Studies at U of T, and co-chair of the Sankofa Square Community Advisory Committee — spent the better part of two years fighting for the removal of Dundas’ name from downtown Toronto. 

Newton studied Dundas long before it became an X hashtag. “I always say [that] I’m an accidental Dundas expert,” Newton stated. 

Newton’s research is centred around slavery in the eighteenth-century Caribbean. Her current research focuses on the Afro-indigenous group of Africans known as the Garifuna people, whose ancestry is from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. 

Coincidentally, Dundas was the Minister of War and Colonies during this time, and he was in charge of the British forces when they suppressed an abolitionist uprising by the Garifuna people. In 1796, the British troops carried out a genocidal massacre in which they killed large numbers of people and exiled survivors.

The crux of the debate around Dundas’s legacy doesn’t centre around the killing of the Garifuna people but on his addition of the word “gradually” into Wilberforce’s abolition bill. 

For Newton, the nuances of the added word don’t matter — Dundas was pro-slavery even if he might have tried to end the slave trade. While slavery is the practice of owning people as property, the slave trade refers to the large-scale capture, sale, and transportation of enslaved individuals.

“His policies… clearly [made] sure that there is a future for slavery, even if the slave trade is abolished,” Newton stated. “The writing is definitely on the wall… Everywhere… it’s in the archives, it’s in his own speeches.” 

A student’s perspective 

After speaking with different people on this fierce debate about the renaming of Dundas Square, I felt like a rope in a tug-of-war, pulled back and forth by opposing sides. I wondered to myself about which side of the debate an average U of T student would fall on. I decided to strike up some conversations with students in the congested halls of Sidney Smith. The conversations left me with more questions than answers. 

“I don’t know why we’re micro-criticizing the successes of people long dead when we could be focusing on the current struggles that are going on right now,” Connor, a fourth-year political science specialist, said in an interview with The Varsity. 

Connor told me that he understands why people would want to rename Dundas Square in light of recent social divides. 

“I think there was something valuable in some of these old names [of people] who were imperfect,” claimed Connor. “[They] do represent part of a timeline of progression that has ultimately been something that we can value… [Dundas] was somebody who was on the train of reform overall.” 

To him, the broader accomplishments of the abolitionist movement should be highlighted, instead of the failures that occurred along the way.

Making up for the past

The conversations that I had with students, professors, and activists helped me remember two key points of contention around the Dundas debate. 

The first issue is a factual one, as people disagree about whether Dundas was really complicit in the prolongation of the transatlantic slave trade. The second issue is a cost-benefit analysis. Many citizens like Tate believe that the costs of removing Dundas from the city outweigh the potential societal benefits. Is there a middle ground between these viewpoints? 

I would be remiss not to touch on my own Blackness here. While the colour of my skin does not give me special insights into what happened during the slave trade — or the best way to spend the municipal budget — it gives me an emotional outlook into what this decision means for Black Canadians. 

My dad, a Ghanaian man who moved to Canada in the late 1980s with his father to pursue better employment opportunities, couldn’t help but smile when he learned about the renaming. His face shone with an unfiltered happiness that I’ve seldom seen. I felt happy that I was the one to break the news to him. I felt even happier when he told me that he was going to go tell all of his friends. 

My dad’s roots in Ghana are much stronger than mine. As a man who speaks Twi fluently, the word Sankofa felt like home to him. 

To me, that is all that is needed to make the renaming legitimate: happiness. It’s not just about the happiness of the Ghanaian community, but about the happiness of all those whose lives colonization has disrupted, from the African continent to the Indigenous peoples of Canada. 

Despite the questions surrounding the history of this situation and the politics surrounding the renaming, there is no questioning the horrors that unfolded during the transatlantic slave trade. Thus, there is a duty of reparations to acquiesce to the desires of a historically marginalized group. 

Newton echoed this same sentiment, and you can tell through her story. She hails from Barbados, the territory of the Indigenous Kalanago and Garifuna people who suffered the genocidal violence that Dundas facilitated. She believes that her efforts to advocate for the renaming of Young and Dundas Square are an act of defiance against the unjust treatment of her ancestors.

Legacies like Dundas’, Newton exclaimed, “never have the power to destroy everybody.” 

“I feel quite hopeful, that all these years later, that I, as a person from… the Kalanaga and the Garifuna, got to tell Henry Dundas, ‘You don’t belong here. The square? Yeah, this is not yours.’” 

Newton’s story, and the stories of the thousands who advocated for this change, prove that injustice cannot hide from the magnifying glass of historical analysis. In the world of public policy, where practicality tends to work against the desires of the people, it is easy to chastise those advocating for the name change as frivolous. 

This time, the voices of equity did prevail — and is that such a bad thing?