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Sankofa Square, formally known as Yonge-Dundas Square, was renamed last year after a Twi word that loosely translates to, ‘go back and get it.’Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
This week a breathless announcement arrived in my inbox. “Toronto is set to celebrate a historic cultural milestone,” it said. On Aug. 23, the city would hold its very first official “Sankofa Day.” What’s that, you say? You may well ask.
Sankofa Square is the obscure new name for Yonge-Dundas Square, the one-acre public space at the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets, right across from the Eaton Centre. Sankofa Day, its organizers tell us, is another name for the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
In 2021, the city government decided to erase the name Dundas from the square bearing his name. It was a time when statues were being toppled and historical figures cancelled in the name of social justice.
Henry Dundas was a leading British statesman of the Georgian era. His critics say he was responsible for delaying the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His defenders say he was a sincere opponent of slavery who orchestrated a tactical delay in parliament to pave the way for eventual abolition.
City councillors brushed aside these complexities and voted to rename the square, though not the street (which would be too expensive). Various new names were kicked around. One suggestion was Lightfoot Square, after the iconic singer who played many times at Massey Hall around the corner. But, no, that would have been too easy.
Instead, the city struck a committee: the Recognition Review Community Advisory Committee, in fact. After what the group that runs the square calls “two years of careful work,” it announced its choice. Yonge-Dundas Square would become Sankofa Square.
Toronto’s shameful renaming debacles
Torontonians were understandably bewildered. They still are. What or who is Sankofa? The square’s website explains that “Sankofa (SAHN-koh-fah) is a Twi word from the Akan Tribe of Ghana that loosely translates to, ‘go back and get it.’” The phrase “encourages learning from the past to inform the future.”
A-ha. Not surprisingly, the name has failed to catch on. Does anybody ever say, “Meet you at Sankofa Square?”
The name has no connection to Toronto or its history. Worse, after the name came out, critics pointed out that the Akan people themselves once kept and traded slaves. Awkward.
Unembarrassed and undeterred, the folks who run the square are throwing a big party to get Torontonians onside. If you don’t like (or for that matter even know) the name, well, they are going to make you like it.
The website invites visitors to come “experience Canada’s first major public Sankofa Day celebration!” – a free, all-day event featuring Caribbean film screenings, music performances, public-art installations, Indigenous and African ancestral ceremonies, DJ sets and a community run. The event will also include a “brand reveal” of the square’s new visual identity.
If all this is a bit too much for you, sorry, there is more. Toronto is not finished with its renaming follies.
Dundas subway station, just below the square, is to be renamed TMU station. Nearby Toronto Metropolitan University is paying the Toronto Transit Commission for the rights, shelling out a reported $1.6-million. So now the downtown stations on the Yonge Street line will be called Bloor, Wellesley, College, TMU, Queen and King – all but one named after the corresponding cross street.
What is ‘downtown,’ anyway
TMU itself has been part of the rename game. It used to be Ryerson University, after the 19th-century Methodist minister who helped establish a system of free, mandatory schooling in what is now the province of Ontario.
It dropped his name after campaigners claimed his writings helped pave the way for the establishment of the residential schools where many Indigenous children suffered and died. But there is another side of his story, as there was with that of Henry Dundas.
Ryerson’s defenders say he was a liberal educator who lived among the Ojibwa people and learned to speak their language. None of that counted for much in the feverish atmosphere of recent times. Ryerson’s statue was decapitated and his name expunged.
TMU, at least, has the merit of being a logical name. It is, in fact, a Toronto metropolitan university, with its campus in the heart of downtown. Sankofa? Well, that is something else. Inviting the whole city to a party won’t persuade anyone this was a good idea.
