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You may need to update your road maps in Regina soon if a council motion goes ahead.
A name change to Dewdney Avenue is among the items on a busy council agenda at City Hall. The Council is to consider a motion that Dewdney Avenue be renamed and to direct administration to consult to propose a replacement name as soon as practicable and in any event by the first quarter of 2025.
This had originally been on the agenda for the council’s June 12 meeting but ended up being pushed back to this week. The motion is backed by Councillors Dan LeBlanc and Andrew Stevens, who point to Edgar Dewdney’s role in residential schools as the reason his name should be removed from the street.
Should the motion pass, it would start the ball rolling at City Hall on renaming Dewdney Ave. but the actual change would not take place for a while. Consultations with the public will be needed before a new name is selected.
So far 14 delegations are on the list to appear to speak on the motion before council. Those appearing are overwhelmingly in support of a name change.
Among those scheduled is Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway. She has long been involved in efforts to change the name of Dewdney Avenue.
She said she was approached about eight years ago by those interested in having the City of Regina address the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
“I made a list of my ideas to address the TRC calls to action and on this list was rename Dewdney. And that took a life of its own,” said BigEagle-Kequahtooway.
This was one of about ten items on reconciliation they worked on. But, they have not gotten to those other items yet because the Dewdney name change became “a mission,” she said. It ended up being a more difficult challenge than expected.
“It was supposed to be an easy tangible item because of who Dewdney was,” said BigEagle-Kequahtooway. “It just seems like it’s a no-nonsense response to an act of truth and reconciliation.”
BigEagle-Kequahtooway listed a variety of reasons why Dewdney’s name should be taken off the street. She pointed to Dewdney’s “level of irresponsibility as Indian commissioner” as well as “wanton acts,” adding “was he deliberately cruel or inherently evil?”
The biggest thing for her, she said, was “the deliberate withholding of rations and causing the situation for my ancestors to starve. And that was deliberate on his part.”
BigEagle-Kequahtooway also accused Dewdney of having a stake in the pig farms and of using that to make money off of the “poverty and misery” of Indigenous people.
“He was a terrible person, and the thing is: why we know he’s a terrible person is because he wrote these memos, he wrote these letters between him and John A. Macdonald and other politicians. It’s not me saying this, it’s him exposing himself,” said BigEagle-Kequahtooway.
It is important to acknowledge history, she said, but also to say this was not right.
“Truth and Reconciliation means we need to change these places that we might say ‘does this represent the identity of the people of Regina?'” said BigEagle-Kequahtooway. She says it’s important to change the name “because I don’t think Dewdney represents the beliefs, the values, the vision of the people of Regina. And so it’s time to let it go, and leave him to remain in the history books. But street names are meant to be places of honour, places of status. Was he inherently evil or just a financial profiteer? Maybe he’s both.”
While the delegations set to appear at City Hall are overwhelmingly in favour of a name change to Dewdney Avenue, there has been pushback from other groups to the idea. One group called Advance Regina has posted on Facebook stating council should focus on other priorities instead, such as affordability, safer streets and well-planned construction.
Others have raised concerns about the costs associated with renaming the whole street. On this point, BigEagle-Kequahtooway believes there are ways to bring the cost down.
“I think when there’s a political will there’s a way,” said BigEagle-Kequahtooway. “There’s all sorts of imaginative ways to make something less costly. It could be broken into phases.”
She adds “Ultimately what is the cost of Truth and Reconciliation? What’s the cost to addressing some of the issues like missing and murdered Indigenous women? The addictions crisis, homelessness crisis. How do you put a value on that on the other side, on the value of human lives and people feeling a sense of belonging and addressing the wrongs of what happened here in this community.”
A long day is expected at the council on Wednesday. In addition to the Dewdney Avenue motion, also on the agenda is debt financing for the downtown library project, as well as the report on REAL.
-with files from Gillian Massie
