Vote to rename SJAM could bring end to 'truly painful' reminder

The National Capital Commission (NCC) will be voting Thursday on a new name for the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway after a recommendation from Algonquin communities was selected earlier this month.

On June 9, an NCC spokesperson said the federal Crown corporation, which oversees the parkway often called SJAM, is expecting to finalize the selection of the new name: Kichi Zībī Mīkan.

Albert Dumont, who has been one of the leading advocates for changing the name, said it's going to feel good hearing the new name.

"My heart will be glad every time," he told CBC's Hallie Cotnam.

"I've got to say it was truly painful to hear it so much everyday, how the road conditions are, and traffic in the morning."

Mīkan, pronounced MEE-khan, is an Algonquin word meaning road or path. Kichi Zībī means great river and is the Algonquin name for what would later be called the Ottawa River.

Dumont, who is an Algonquin Anishinaabe spiritual adviser from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg near Maniwaki, Que., said the Ottawa River, which the parkway runs along, was integral to life for Algonquins.

"I heard a woman from Manitoba say one time that the Oldman River in Manitoba was as much of her identity as the blood in her veins," he said.

"And that's how the Algonquins feel about this river here. It really is."

In June 2021, three Ottawa city councillors sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging the federal government to facilitate an Indigenous-led consultation process to rename the parkway after ground-penetrating radar located some 200 suspected unmarked graves at a former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.

For Dumont, the reasons for wanting a name change are simple and powerful.

"Understand what Macdonald wanted to do to the Indigenous Peoples, he wanted them to disappear and his laws and policies are clear on that," he said.

"He is guilty of genocide. People need to think about that and process it."

Macdonald authorized the creation of the residential school system while he was in power in the 1880s. It is estimated more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend the government-funded, church-operated schools, where many suffered abuse and some died. The last such school closed in 1996.