+- IOPList.Org (https://www.ioplist.org)
+-- Forum: Off Topic (https://www.ioplist.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=25)
+--- Forum: World News (https://www.ioplist.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=27)
+--- Thread: Some Quebec rivers, lakes may be renamed to drop racial epithet (/showthread.php?tid=603)
Some Quebec rivers, lakes may be renamed to drop racial epithet - IceWizard - 08-11-2015
Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:39am EDT
By Allison Lampert
MONTREAL (Reuters) -
As the United States debates public display of the Confederate battle flag, the Canadian province of Quebec is considering changing the names of 11 locations, including lakes and rapids, that contain a racial epithet.
The Quebec Toponymy Commission, which
manages place names in the mostly French-
language province, is due to meet later this year to discuss whether to rename sites like Nigger Rapids, a stretch of the Gatineau River about 120 kilometers north of Ottawa, said Julie Letourneau, a spokeswoman for the
commission.
"The commission is very sensitive to what is
happening around us and people's perceptions," said Letourneau.
According to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp
report, the rapids were named in memory of a
black couple who drowned there in the early
1900s.
The CBC quoted Jean-Pierre LeBlanc, a
spokesman for the commission, as saying, "It
was meant to describe the people who died.
There was no pejorative connotation then as
there is now."
The June 17 shooting of nine black people
inside a South Carolina church by a white man
who had been photographed with the
Confederate flag triggered a debate over public display of the U.S. civil war relic. The flag is considered by many to be a symbol of slavery and racism.
Charmaine Nelson, an art historian who teaches about slavery at McGill University in Montreal, said she has mixed feelings about changing the place names.
Nelson said that while the term “nigger†is
deeply offensive, these names also serve as a
reminder that slavery existed in Canada. “It you start to wipe out these place names, it makes it easier to say it didn’t happen here.â€
According to the CBC report, the commission
has recognized six place names that include the N-word in English and five that include the word nègre, which in French can mean both Negro and the N-word.
The report cited a commission reference to a hill 50 kilometers south of Montreal that contains the N-word in its name. Black slaves were buried at the site from 1794 until slavery was abolished in 1833.
In Quebec's Laurentides region, the commission has recognized three rapids along the Red River that have the N-word in their names but it does not detail the origin of the names on its website, according to the CBC report.
(Reporting By Allison Lampert)
***Opinion***
Really .... Changing the name of rivers and such as not to "offend" anyone! .. Where does this crap end? No more "Washinton Redskins" or maybe the first grade "Big Chief" tablets ..
RE: Some Quebec rivers, lakes may be renamed to drop racial epithet - IceWizard - 08-11-2015
Will we also have to change the names of the Cleveland "Indians", Dallas "Cowboys", ... I guess we need to rewite history and just rubout the "Buffalo" Soldiers ... We will no longer be able to call racoons - coons?
We will never be able to make the whole world "generic" ... It will always be something!
Now I don't even know what to yell when I jump from a plane, since "geronimo" has to go!!
(just a note: I'd never jump from a perfectly good plane that had a shred of a chance of landing)