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Least expendable naming rights.

"Wow. You really need to pick up a history book."

Oh please, this is hardly MLK civil rights stuff here. Toronto evolved relatively politely and uneventfully from an overwhelmingly, predominantly British and protestant place, to one that was increasingly more diverse. I do not want to belittle Nathan Phillips - He was a long-serving mayor, and a universally popular one at that - but to me what does speak volumes about the history and soul of the city of Toronto is not Nathan Phillips himself specifically, but the underlaying peaceful embracing of tolerance and diversity which progressed in Toronto in its own quiet and understated way. Much as it still does.
 
I just want to add MLK in Detroit, at least where I walked (around Rosa Parks, no less; west of downtown), is a quiet, residential area and looks more livable than a lot of other Detroit neighbourhoods.

How about re-naming the 407 the Mike Harris Expressway?
 
I'd say the most expendable naming rights are at Dundas Square. I'm baffled by why they didn't give it a better name to begin with. It could be named after nearly anything or anybody, like Crombie or even Trudeau.
 
Oh please, this is hardly MLK civil rights stuff here. Toronto evolved relatively politely and uneventfully from an overwhelmingly, predominantly British and protestant place, to one that was increasingly more diverse. I do not want to belittle Nathan Phillips - He was a long-serving mayor, and a universally popular one at that - but to me what does speak volumes about the history and soul of the city of Toronto is not Nathan Phillips himself specifically, but the underlaying peaceful embracing of tolerance and diversity which progressed in Toronto in its own quiet and understated way. Much as it still does.
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Ah, can the saccharine touchy-feely dreck. To dismiss Nathan Phillips as "hardly MLK civil rights stuff" is is as asinine and historically philistine as dismissing Union Station as "hardly Parthenon stuff"...
 
Well said.

Tudararms' comments are useful, though. They show that the TDSB really should consider adding a brief local history component to the curriculum. Most Torontonians, as the presumably well-educated tudararms attests, know very little about their own city's history.
 
Oh please, this is hardly MLK civil rights stuff here. Toronto evolved relatively politely and uneventfully from an overwhelmingly, predominantly British and protestant place, to one that was increasingly more diverse. I do not want to belittle Nathan Phillips - He was a long-serving mayor, and a universally popular one at that - but to me what does speak volumes about the history and soul of the city of Toronto is not Nathan Phillips himself specifically, but the underlaying peaceful embracing of tolerance and diversity which progressed in Toronto in its own quiet and understated way. Much as it still does.
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How about Peaceful Tolerance Square? Maybe Understated Transition Square? :p

Seriously, what would you suggest?
 
Adma: "Ah, can the saccharine touchy-feely dreck. To dismiss Nathan Phillips as "hardly MLK civil rights stuff" is is as asinine and historically philistine as dismissing Union Station as "hardly Parthenon stuff"..."

Can the histrionics! To conflate Nathan Phillips to MLK is egregiously risible and insulting (see, I have a dictionary too). Toronto was not Selma; get some perspective!

unimaginative2: "Tudararms' comments are useful, though. They show that the TDSB really should consider adding a brief local history component to the curriculum. Most Torontonians, as the presumably well-educated tudararms attests, know very little about their own city's history.

I'm pretty sure I know more about it than you, dear. Still, enlighten me. I love a good history lesson. Tell me about this noble champion of the downtrodden masses. Really, I'd like to know. You may just change my mind, and maybe I'll include Phillips in my shrine to Ghandi, MLK and El Che!
 
There would have to be an extraordinarily compelling reason to posthumously strip Nathan Phillips of the honour of having the Square ( a part and parcel of the City Hall he was instrumental in creating ) named after him, and so far tudararms has come up with none - other than the red herring argument that Phillips apparently doesn't measure up to iconic figures from other countries who are honoured in their homelands for quite different reasons.
 
I'm pretty sure I know more about it than you, dear. Still, enlighten me. I love a good history lesson. Tell me about this noble champion of the downtrodden masses. Really, I'd like to know. You may just change my mind, and maybe I'll include Phillips in my shrine to Ghandi, MLK and El Che!
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Okay, I have a counter-proposal here. Tear down New City Hall, and have some worthy starchitect design the replacement. Who was Viljo Revell, anyway? What else did he do besides New City Hall? Anybody? See what I mean?

Toronto deserves better...I guess...
 
At least naming or renaming stuff after Trudeau isn't like the industry that has developed south of the border for naming or renaming things after Ronald Reagan, probably the most overrated President in US history.

Though a great historian like Tudararms might want to rename NPS for the Gipper, given that he single-handedly defeated communism and all. :p
 
Although there may be another funny underlying point here: perhaps to those who've been (myopically over-)conditioned by and large within the last couple of decades--would "born after Watergate" be a poetically suitable categorization?--there *is* something a little fishy about the way things have (had?) been traditionally named for personages. To them, I guess, it'd be like naming the square in front of Metro Hall for, say, Paul Godfrey.

As something like the whole posthumous what-should-we-name-for-Trudeau debate demonstrates, it's a tainted issue from both ends these days. Either the proposed naming's deemed a "political fix"; or when that's not the issue, the object in question is deemed "unworthy" of the person.

Makes me wonder what might happen if City Hall was built today; I could somehow envisage a Toronto Star-sponsored people's name-the-square competition that would come up with "Diversity Square" or something like it...
 
For some reason, I *can* live with things here and there being named for Reagan--but maybe that's just a vestige of the pre-Watergate "hey, if you wanna name it after so-and-so, go ahead, he made his mark" days.

In the macro-sense IOW, the trend t/w rampantly naming things for Reagan seems of less significance than how easy it is now to be jaundiced by said trend. Once upon a time, we would have just gone with the flow...
 
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