Sackville 'name bank' could help town bring more diversity to street and place names

A professor at Mount Allison University wants to get Canadians talking about place names and she's starting in the school's home town.

Lauren Beck and some of her students in visual and material culture studies are analyzing Sackville street names and surveying town residents to see if those names match with their values.

Names are very meaningful, said Beck, and she'd like them to better reflect modern Canadian society.

The Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter also has a book expected to be released in September called Canada's Place Names and How to Change Them, being published by Concordia University Press.

Many place names were decided decades or centuries ago, said Beck, and Canada's identity is very different today.

A greater number are in now positions of authority "to help decide and shape the map of Canada — or in this case Sackville, New Brunswick," she said.

There are 134 street names in Sackville, said Beck, and dozens of monuments.

Most celebrate people or moments in history, she said, while some are related to animals or nature.

And almost all of the people honoured are white men. 

"Women, people of colour, Indigenous groups — among other sometimes intersecting demographic categories — tend to go underrepresented," she said. 

It could be easy to expand gender diversity, Beck suggested, by adding first names to some street signs.

A number of names are clearly connected to colonialism, she said, such as Queen's Road.

Town residents may want to re–examine those, said Beck, if they're interested in decolonization.

There are also a lot of plaques with outdated references to Indigenous people, she said.