zang
Senior Member
Yeah, don't trust Reddit. About 1 in 10 slaves were Akan, and the Sankofa is a symbol of reclamation. https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/resources/kwanzaa_coloring_pages.pdf
Yeah, don't trust Reddit. About 1 in 10 slaves were Akan, and the Sankofa is a symbol of reclamation. https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/resources/kwanzaa_coloring_pages.pdf
How is this not cultural appropriation? The Ghanaian word Sankofa has nothing to do with Canada, unless we’re going to build a tent city for all the recent migrants from Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa?
We might as well have chosen an indigenous Mongolian or Brazilian term for all its relevance here.
Don’t forget the Sankofa gas pipeline.Sankoka Square, in the city of Sankofa, in the province of Sankofa, in the country of Sankofa...
Yes. Also the impitus to rename the square was based on falsehoods.So, we should keep the name Dundas because of his association to supposedly ending slavery though he never set foot in the country, but we shouldn't use a slave word that represents remembering the past. Got it.
I was thinking this morning that this decision is so NDP - but that is the city in so many ways - bogged down in irrelevance, but without any energy to come to grips with encampments, homelessness, poverty and the lack of simple policing. ( I came in from Montreal last night through Union and VIA, and the place was a mess of vagrants and gridlock and the police…….good question). And then I was thinking that as the city has taken on the legacy of Dundas, maybe they would like to address the atrocities of the ‘clearances’ in Scotland, perhaps the forcible subjugation of Wales, even the Irish famines…possibly the French Hueguenot’s exile to New France as well. Maybe even the Wendat and other First Nations might have some grievances to be righted, with one another, for events that happened over the proceeding 12,000 years or so. All of these events have had profound impacts on the culture, fabric and makeup of this county - one that long ago moved on from its ’colonial’ past, to coin a phrase. And why this particular phrase, part of Ghanaian culture, as catchy as currently translated for Council, but is it accurate? There seems to be a number of variations, as can be understandable when translating, but the phrases relevance to Canada? You can certainly say that Ghana is (currently) a state where good and predictable governance appears to be on the rise, where an orderly transfer of power has occurred between administration's, without having to undergo endless coups, uprisings and other forms extreme social cleansing. So there is that.
But then I was catching up on the case of Adam Rossi. And for anyone who has had to deal with longer term mental illness in one’s family, this is another case of endless sorrow for the victim of Rossi, ongoing rage at the incompetence of the authorities, tempered by the fact that the ‘system’ is underfunded, understaffed, and ruled by arcane laws that place the independence of Rossi (with all known conditions) above the
protection of the balance of society, and eventually, as so often happens, the murdered victim. And only now will he be sent to a secure psychiatric facility.
And if anyone feels that the case of Dundas should be followed further, they are wrong. Enough time, energy and money has been wasted on this trivial and misplaced person, longdead, that should be so much better applied to a topic such as mental health, and fixing a broken system and empowering it with a set of values that preclude tragic figure such as Adam Rossi prowling the neighbourhood until murder occurred, and another family is left wondering why.
And for those interested in homelessness, the Globe has an excellent piece by Shaughnessy Biship-Stall entitled “A Tale of Tent Cities“. It is a multi page piece, so makes for a long read, but worth the time. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opi...onto-tent-city-dwellers-carry-on-despite-the/
1) We're still running on Tory's last annual screw-Toronto-over budget.I live close to Alan Gardens. As most of you know, it is filled with tents housing homeless people because there is no affordable housing left in this city for them to live. Across the street is a Church that on Friday holds a food bank. The line of people looking to get food is wrapped around the block. Many are well dressed with smart phones which tells me that their financial circumstances have suddenly taken a dramatic turn for the worse. People in this city are HURTING BADLY right now!
Against this backdrop, Chow is spending millions to change the name of Dundas Square because supposedly Mr. Dundas held views 300 (?) years ago that are incompatible with the views of "enlightened" people today.
Why are we putting up with this INSANITY?
Even excluding all the slavery stuff, Henry Dundas has zero connection to Toronto. Dundas never visited the city, let alone the province, and stuff was named after him here entirely because he was buddies with Simcoe. It was all backscratching BS. That's not a good enough reason to keep the name.If there is a good argument for changing the name Dundas, I would like to hear it.
It was and is still the road to the town of Dundas, just like Kingston Road was the road to Kingston.Even excluding all the slavery stuff, Henry Dundas has zero connection to Toronto. Dundas never visited the city, let alone the province, and stuff was named after him here entirely because he was buddies with Simcoe. It was all backscratching BS. That's not a good enough reason to keep the name.
This is an even worse justification for the renaming than the fairly sketchy reading of history that constitutes the argument against the street.Even excluding all the slavery stuff, Henry Dundas has zero connection to Toronto.