Naming Charlotte after Zelensky is myopic. We want to stick it to the Russians by forcing them to put his name on their letterhead. But really, what is the point? This is the diplomatic world and the long-term is more important. We are trying to build positive relations and understandings. In 10 or twenty years we may be dealing with a completely different regime in Moscow. We may actually have good relations with them. Why badger them like children?
I suppose the response would be, yes, we hope to have good relations one day, but that would require a Russian government that agrees it's bad to invade neighbours. And such a government would also honour Zelensky. That said, I do think your approach of thinking from a future perspective is the right one (it's what this newsletter is dedicated to!) and you're right that the world will (we hope!) look very different. There are also other ways to poke the bear on Charlotte Street that don't require a permanent change. I wonder if we explore those with a little creativity whether we might come up with something that would make everyone happy.
I'm honoured with your reply. Your books are the best I have read in many years. Finding reason in stats after 9/11 was brilliant. Now we need one on how to evaluate the validity of information.
This idea of renaming a street after zelensky based on a few weeks of news cycle mania pretty perfectly encapsulates how nutty our society is becoming. Imagine in the 80s if we started naming boulevards Osama Bin Laden Way; he was a western funded hero at the time fighting a Soviet juggernaut. My point isn’t that Zelensky will turn out to be a terrorist but that the world is chaotic and mired by the fog of war; people are too quick to tear down the fabric of our history based on the frenetic hype of the current fashion. This is not healthy and you don’t have to be some huge Edmund Burke fan to think so.
I’ll admit that I lived in Ottawa for years and didn’t really know anything about princess Charlotte and the history of Charlotte Street!
A happier counterexample in my neighbourhood in Montréal: in 2019 Amherst Street was renamed Atateken, and there was a great deal of attention to who General Amherst was and why it was considered inappropriate by many to retain a street named after him. I have no doubt that people learned about history in ways that they wouldn’t have without the name change and related public conversation. (There was even a great small exhibit by a local museum on Atateken Street: https://ecomusee.qc.ca/en/event/from-amherst-to-atateken/ )
I'm sure that is true. But once the renaming is done and fades in the rearview mirror, the previous name is gone and any possibility that it will lead someone to history is gone with it. So I think arguing that renaming has pedagogical value as a reason to do it is a little myopic.
A fair point and I don’t entirely disagree. But I think that toponymic history can itself be enormously valuable for learning about societal events and values over time — to take another example local to me, it tells you much more about Québec history to look at Blvd René-Lévesque, learn who he was and why the street was named for him, and that it used to be named Dorchester — why did it have that name and why was it decided to change it — than if the street still
bore the name Dorchester.
Where I take your point is that this requires extra effort on the part of the passerby/observer; the old name has to be retrieved and is lost to anyone who doesn’t learn the history of the place — but I see this as a similar burden on the observer as learning anything useful from the name of a street or place in any case. The mere knowledge of the name and nothing more (like my knowledge of Charlotte Street before today) is shallow to the point of emptiness.
Does it make a difference in your view where the old name is retained in other forms? To stick to my two examples, we still have the Amherst Building at Atateken/Sainte-Catherine, and Dorchester Square Park on René-Lévesque.
Sure, the context matters. If there are half a dozen "Smiths," losing one to honour someone else may not be a great loss. But my default would always be to retain the status quo and add new honours by building something new: Or to put that in terms of my river delta metaphor, add silt, don't excavate it.
Naming Charlotte after Zelensky is myopic. We want to stick it to the Russians by forcing them to put his name on their letterhead. But really, what is the point? This is the diplomatic world and the long-term is more important. We are trying to build positive relations and understandings. In 10 or twenty years we may be dealing with a completely different regime in Moscow. We may actually have good relations with them. Why badger them like children?
I suppose the response would be, yes, we hope to have good relations one day, but that would require a Russian government that agrees it's bad to invade neighbours. And such a government would also honour Zelensky. That said, I do think your approach of thinking from a future perspective is the right one (it's what this newsletter is dedicated to!) and you're right that the world will (we hope!) look very different. There are also other ways to poke the bear on Charlotte Street that don't require a permanent change. I wonder if we explore those with a little creativity whether we might come up with something that would make everyone happy.
I'm honoured with your reply. Your books are the best I have read in many years. Finding reason in stats after 9/11 was brilliant. Now we need one on how to evaluate the validity of information.
This idea of renaming a street after zelensky based on a few weeks of news cycle mania pretty perfectly encapsulates how nutty our society is becoming. Imagine in the 80s if we started naming boulevards Osama Bin Laden Way; he was a western funded hero at the time fighting a Soviet juggernaut. My point isn’t that Zelensky will turn out to be a terrorist but that the world is chaotic and mired by the fog of war; people are too quick to tear down the fabric of our history based on the frenetic hype of the current fashion. This is not healthy and you don’t have to be some huge Edmund Burke fan to think so.
I’ll admit that I lived in Ottawa for years and didn’t really know anything about princess Charlotte and the history of Charlotte Street!
A happier counterexample in my neighbourhood in Montréal: in 2019 Amherst Street was renamed Atateken, and there was a great deal of attention to who General Amherst was and why it was considered inappropriate by many to retain a street named after him. I have no doubt that people learned about history in ways that they wouldn’t have without the name change and related public conversation. (There was even a great small exhibit by a local museum on Atateken Street: https://ecomusee.qc.ca/en/event/from-amherst-to-atateken/ )
I'm sure that is true. But once the renaming is done and fades in the rearview mirror, the previous name is gone and any possibility that it will lead someone to history is gone with it. So I think arguing that renaming has pedagogical value as a reason to do it is a little myopic.
A fair point and I don’t entirely disagree. But I think that toponymic history can itself be enormously valuable for learning about societal events and values over time — to take another example local to me, it tells you much more about Québec history to look at Blvd René-Lévesque, learn who he was and why the street was named for him, and that it used to be named Dorchester — why did it have that name and why was it decided to change it — than if the street still
bore the name Dorchester.
Where I take your point is that this requires extra effort on the part of the passerby/observer; the old name has to be retrieved and is lost to anyone who doesn’t learn the history of the place — but I see this as a similar burden on the observer as learning anything useful from the name of a street or place in any case. The mere knowledge of the name and nothing more (like my knowledge of Charlotte Street before today) is shallow to the point of emptiness.
Does it make a difference in your view where the old name is retained in other forms? To stick to my two examples, we still have the Amherst Building at Atateken/Sainte-Catherine, and Dorchester Square Park on René-Lévesque.
Sure, the context matters. If there are half a dozen "Smiths," losing one to honour someone else may not be a great loss. But my default would always be to retain the status quo and add new honours by building something new: Or to put that in terms of my river delta metaphor, add silt, don't excavate it.