London's Trooper Wilson Place is heading for renaming, Plantation Road is not
Councillor warns that renaming streets puts financial burden on residents
London council will vote Tuesday on a proposal to start the process of finding a new name for two city parks while also approving a suggested renaming of an east-end street.
Trooper Mark Wilson Place, a small residential street off the corner of Hale and Trafalgar streets in east London, stands to be renamed Peacekeeper Place. The motion before councillors also calls for a public engagement process to find a new name for a park in northwest London that was named after Wilson.
Trooper Mark Wilson was killed in 2006 at age 39 when a roadside bomb destroyed the vehicle he was in near Kandahar, Afghanistan. In 2022 the London Free Press reported that Wilson had pleaded guilty in a military court-martial to drunkeness and assaulting a woman.
The news about Wilson prompted council to remove his name from a park.
His name remained on the street while staff worked to update the city's naming policy for streets and other city assets.
Coun. Shawn Lewis surveyed residents on the street after the news about Wilson broke and the renaming discussion began. He said the Peacekeeper Place was the most palatable to residents.
"Lots of people on the street are adamantly opposed to any name change," said Lewis. "But the consensus was, we can live with this one."
Lewis said the new name, if approved by council, will be a good addition to other memorials in the area that pay tribute to Canadians who've served, such as the Charley Fox Memorial Overpass public artwork.
"We don't really have anything to honour peacekeepers," said Lewis.
Lewis also said city staff and councillors shouldn't take lightly the burden that renaming a street puts on the people who live there.
"Wills have to be changed, mortgages, driver's licences, health cards all of those sorts of things, you have to get new cheques," he said. "Those things all take time, they also have a cost. To get a lawyer to re-do a will, that's not a free service."
The motion coming to council today will also start the process of finding a new name for Paul Haggis Park. In 2022, council voted to strip Haggis's name from the park after a U.S. jury ordered the London-born screenwriter and director to pay damages to a woman who accused him of sexual assault.
'Plantation Road' renaming process won't move forward
One road that won't be renamed is Plantation Road in the Oakridge neighbourhood.
A petition started six years ago by student Lyla Wheeler, then nine years old, asked council to consider changing the name of the street because the word "plantation" has a historical connection to slavery and oppression of Black people.
A staff report that came to a council's infrastructure and corporate services committee on April 30 recommended a public engagement process be started with the neighbourhood on whether or not the street should be renamed.
Coun. Steve Lehman, whose ward includes Plantation Road, said he consulted with residents of the 32 houses on the street and only two are in favour of the name change. Eighteen were against it.
"They don't want to be seen as racist but feel that if they speak out in opposition, they will be," said Lehman.
Lehman said the Plantation Road name was chosen by the developer when the subdivision was created in the late 1950s. The name is a nod to a tree farm operation that was there. Other names in the subdivision (Pine Tree Drive, Hickory Road, Mahogany Road) reflect this history.
In the end, councillors on the committee voted against moving ahead with the public engagement process to consider renaming the street.
Londoner Melissa Allder is disappointed council shied away from changing the name. She's one of 10 people who've sent written submission to council arguing that the Plantation Road name should be changed.
"As a Black Canadian woman, I must express that the word 'plantation' carries with it an undeniable and painful historical weight," said Allder. "The term is not neutral."
City staff are also moving to update the process of naming streets and other city-owned assets by applying a human-rights approach, one intended to consider implications of the proposed name on marginalized groups.