Researcher calls for McPherson Avenue renaming
The east side street is named for David Lewis MacPherson, who served as interior minister under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and was responsible for what has been called "egregious" colonial policy.
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Stephanie Danyluk first heard the story behind the name of a leafy avenue on Saskatoon’s east side a couple of years ago. It didn’t sit well with her.
Now, the historical researcher is asking Saskatoon city council to consider renaming McPherson Avenue, given its namesake’s “egregious” policy decisions while serving as Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s minister of the interior.
“Every time I walk along or walk past it, it irks me to think somebody like this is memorialized in our local history when there are so many other contributors (that) have yet to be commemorated in any real way,” she said.
The avenue, which runs south from the river and terminates in the Exhibition neighbourhood, is named for David Lewis MacPherson, a Scottish-born politician who served in Macdonald’s cabinet until 1885.
According to historian Keith Carlson, temperance colony activist John Lake named the street in his honour after the politician intervened and stopped the surveying of long, narrow Metis river lots in the area.
Carlson, a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous history at the University of the Fraser Valley, said Lake initially took his request to the federal surveyor general, who declined, before turning to Macdonald.
Macdonald passed the matter on to his interior minister, Carlson said, and the surveying underwent a significant change, leading Lake to write, “orders were telegraphed to them to lay (them) out in square sections.”
“I then returned to the colony (and) found the survey of the town site progressing finely,” Lake wrote.
It is not clear why the two names are spelled differently, but a city report says the street is indeed believed to be named for MacPherson.
In her letter, which is headed to the civic naming committee next week, Danyluk said the federal government’s poor handling of Metis people asserting their land rights was a major catalyst for the Riel Resistance of 1885.
Cheryl Troupe, an assistant professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan specializing in Indigenous history, said there is a rich history of First Nations and Metis people living in the area before they were ultimately forced to move.
“I think naming that street after someone from that particular community would go a long way in acknowledging that history and that experience here,” she said.
Such a change would not be unprecedented in Saskatchewan.
Three years ago, Regina’s public school board voted to remove the name of Nicholas Flood Davin, one of the architects of the residential school system, from an elementary school in the city.
More recently, a statue of Macdonald in the Queen City has become a political flashpoint, with opponents of its proposed removal equating such an action to erasing Canadian history.
Troupe said the process of history is interpreting the past through the lens of today, and it’s important to “re-engage” with ideas about who these individuals are in the contemporary context.
Danyluk said she’s not certain if city councillors will act on her suggestion, but framed the request not as erasing history, but broadening understanding.
“We just know better now.”
amacpherson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/macphersona
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