Former Toronto mayors urge city staff to reconsider renaming Dundas Street

Three former Toronto mayors are expressing their opposition to changing the name of one of the city’s most well-known streets.

Former mayors David Crombie, John Sewell and Art Eggleton have issued a letter to Mayor Olivia Chow and city councillors, asking them to reconsider the decision to rename Dundas Street.

“Henry Dundas, for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result,” reads the letter that was posted on X on Aug. 16.

“It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.”

Council voted in favour of changing the name of the 23-kilometre east-west thoroughfare in 2021 due to its namesakes alleged connection to the slave trade. Henry Dundas never set foot in Toronto, he was an active British politician from the 1770s to the early 1800s when parliament was debating slavery abolition motions.

The decision to rename came after a petition was launched by a Toronto man in June of 2020, following global discussions of anti-Black racism in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. At the time, Andrew Louchhead, the man who start the petition, called Dundas’ legacy “highly problematic.”

Related:

• Toronto to release suggested new names for Dundas Street this fall

• Where is Toronto in the renaming process of Dundas across the city?

Melanie Newton, the co-chair of the city council advisory committee looking at the renaming issue, has studied Dundas’s legacy and said that as Britain was weighing abolition, he intervened and introduced a motion for ‘gradual abolition.’

The three former mayors are questioning the interpretation of the research and say rather than prolonging slavery, Henry Dundas was in fact a committed abolitionist who did his best to end slavery. The mayors say that in 1778 he took an appeal case “of an enslaved person brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner.”

They allege he urged the supreme court judges to spurn “the thought of slavery among any part of our species.”

“The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland,” reads the former mayors’ letter.

Those opposing the name change have also contended the city cannot afford the costly $8.6 million to make the change given its massive budget shortfall.

A new report released last from the city manager and interim chief financial officer outlined options on how the city can increase revenue in the face of major deficits. City council is facing an immediate $1.5 billion hole and a $46.5 billion budget deficit over the next decade.

When asked if the province would be giving Toronto more money to cover the budget shortfall, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said, “We’ve been there for Toronto, we’ve put in billions of dollars to support Toronto… and I would just ask the mayor to look at some things like renaming Dundas Street.”

Newton has argued that the cost of renaming the street amounts to a small fraction of Toronto’s approximately $16-billion operating budget.

When asked about the issue last month, Chow said they would be moving forward with the name change. The city says it will be releasing the suggested new names for the street in the fall.

Ahead of the expected renaming, a 20-person committee made up of residents, ward councillors and business owners has been tasked with inviting “historians and community leaders specializing in Black and Indigenous history and culture” to propose new names.