City of St. John's changes policy on naming new streets to avoid 'problematic legacies'

The City of St. John's is changing its street naming policy to no longer allow new streets in the city to be named after people.

It's an effort to protect itself from potential problems in the future, according to Coun. Ron Ellsworth.

"Naming streets after people carries a number of risks," Ellsworth said during Tuesday's council meeting. "[There could be] problematic legacies, political polarization, disparity in representation and cultural marginalization."

To reduce those risks, Ellsworth continued, the city's policy has been updated to remove the option to submit a person's name to the city's reserve street names inventory.

On Friday, Ellsworth told CBC News that applications that were already under review ahead of the policy change — of which there are four — will continue moving through the process.

Current streets also won't be renamed, Ellsworth said, and the city will still allow the use of surnames because they aren't directly tied to a person.

For example, a road could be named Breen Street, but not Danny Breen Street in honour of the current mayor.

Ellsworth said there wasn't a single issue that prompted the change, but noted other municipalities have faced challenges in recent years.

"If you don't pay attention to your history, you're doomed to repeat your history and repeat the same mistakes. So this is a clarity issue, an identity piece that will, hopefully as we move forward, will create less issues for future councils and the public," he said.

"This is not about renaming anything, this is just about as we move forward. New streets, new subdivisions, this is the process we will be using."

Coun. Tom Davis said he sees the change as a harm reduction measure.

"People can have, you know, history that comes out after the fact. So in particular, I brought up the point about child abuse.…  A lot of times, we don't know these people's history because a lot of times they never get brought to justice," Davis said Friday.

"There was also, you know, the reflection upon, you know, colonialism and potentially the use of some names. But the main driver was new names that might be brought forward that could end up having criminal or some sort of negative connotation that would end up being a mistake."

Ellsworth said there's nothing stopping the city from reviewing street names in the future, should the need arise.

Coun. Ophelia Ravencroft also voiced support for the change during Tuesday's meeting.

Ravencroft encouraged finding new street names with an Indigenous-first lens.

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