DUNDAS, Ontario – A petition on Change.org is asking that the name of Dundas County be changed.
Split between the municipalities of North and South Dundas, Dundas County was given it’s name in 1792 in honour of Lord Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811).
Dundas, the man, was a Tory politician and lawyer. There are several monuments and places that bear his name including a statue of him in St. Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dundas Island in BC, Dundas St. in Toronto and of course the County of Dundas.
At issue is Dundas’ record on slavery. As a lawyer, Dundas represented Joseph Knight in a case against John Wedderburn. Wedderburn claimed Knight, a runaway slave, as his property. Dundas’ arguments in the case lead to a decision that slavery was illegal in Scotland.
During his time as a politician, Great Britain was in the process of abolishing the slave trade, something that Dundas obstructed or pushed to be delayed on more than one occasion.
Dundas pushed for an amendment in Britain’s slavery abolition bill which lead to the “gradual” end of slavery over a 15 year period. This lead to more than 500,000 people being kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery.
After George Floyd was killed in the United States when a Minneapolis Police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, Dundas’ legacy became problematic.
There have been calls for his statue to be removed from St. Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh and Toronto Mayor John Tory has commissioned a working group to look at the issue of his name on one of Toronto’s most important downtown venues.
“Aside from his Scottish Heritage, he is in no way representative of the people of Ontario,” reads a statement on the petition from organizer Virginia Dipierro. “We call on our S_&G council to take this as an urgent necessity, not a request. We cannot continue to move forward as a community with a name that denotes hatred and racism. We just cannot.”
Speaking with Seaway News the Mayor of North Dundas, Tony Fraser, and the Mayor of South Dundas, Steven Byvelds commented on the petition.
“Dundas County has been around for a long time, and changing names is not an easy thing,” said Byvelds. “The Mayor of Toronto is contending with the same thing right now. Certainly what he was doing is not the right thing by today’s standards, and I don’t think it was right then.”
Mayor Fraser commented that the issue encompassed questions about the history of Canada and the nature of Canadian society.
“Our County is what it is because of the efforts of those who established it,” he said. “I think these questions encompass the whole of Canada and it is more than one issue on social media. Do they want to change names for just changing the name or is it about changing the fabric of who we are.”
Fraser stated that going down such a path could open up a Pandora’s Box of issues.
Fraser also raised concerns that an online only petition could have signatories from outside of Dundas County and even outside of Canada and might not reflect the sentiment of those who live in North or South Dundas.
Dundas is not the only County dealing with this issue. Russell County, a part of the United Counties of Prescott-Russell is likewise dealing with the legacy of it’s namesake, Peter Russell, a slave owner.
