Should ‘friends’ be the ones naming parks after councillors?

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A city council that has become synonymous with renaming Toronto’s public assets has gone full circle, renaming two parks after their fellow councillors.

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City Hall renamed Scarborough’s Rosebank Park this month after Cynthia Lai, a one-term councillor who died in 2022. In June, part of Lawrence Park Ravine was dubbed Jaye Robinson Park, after a longtime Don Valley councillor who died last year.

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Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus of politics at Toronto Metropolitan University, said despite the inherent conflict in having councillors name landmarks after their own, the system we have is the right one. He argued something like a renaming committee made up of people from the community wouldn’t be as accountable as elected officials.

“It’s legitimate to question and to scrutinize,” he said, but added: “I think we should look at it not cynically. I don’t think we should automatically decide that, ‘Oh, they’re playing favourites,’ or, ‘Oh, they’re kind of voting this way because down the road they hope that they’ll get something named after them.’”

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Lai’s time in politics may have been short, but she made an impression on her colleagues.

Former councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong was the only person from the public to speak at Scarborough community council at its initial debate in December 2024. “A lot of you were friends with Cynthia the way I was friends with Cynthia,” Minnan-Wong told the committee.

They agreed. Then-councillor Jennifer McKelvie gushed about Lai. Michael Thompson said she had vacationed with him in Jamaica.

It was Lai’s successor, Jamaal Myers, who brought forward the proposal to rename Rosebank Park. A city report says he “actively engaged” the community on the idea, securing 76 signatures on a petition.

The renaming after Robinson, meanwhile, had to go before council as it broke city policy, being considered less than two years after her death.

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It was passed unanimously in April, but the first time city council considered the idea, weeks after Robinson’s death in June 2024, Dianne Saxe voted against it, and both Saxe and Jon Burnside opposed having the decision bypass North York’s community council.

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“I have heard resounding support for naming this particular area,” Rachel Chernos Lin, the new representative of Robinson’s Don Valley ward, told council.

While discussion was less upbeat than it was at the meeting about Lai, councillors expressed emotion about Robinson. Josh Matlow said late in her time on council, “our relationship became fractious … which I regret.”

Having served as councillor for 14 years, Robinson’s politics and track record were well established – and some Torontonians disapproved of them. This year, a mock plaque for Jaye Robinson Park, drawn up as a protest to her politics, drew plenty of attention on Reddit, and a user slammed her as a “furiously NIMBY councillor.”

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Toronto’s councillors have been naming city assets after other colleagues, too.

The recent rebranding of Rob Ford Stadium at Centennial Park, after the late mayor and longtime Etobicoke councillor, was brought up often during council and committee debates about the contentious Sankofa Square renaming.

Meanwhile, a new park, near Hwys. 401 and 404, bears the name of late municipal and provincial politician, David Caplan. “Toronto city councillor Shelley Carroll got the park … named after her political mentor,” is how TVO show host and journalist Steve Paikin put it in a 2024 report.

Unlike the headline-making renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square, which potentially left millions of dollars in sponsorship money on the table, there was little financial cost to renaming parks after Robinson and Lai. City Hall said three new signs between the two parks came at a total price of $615.

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Siemiatycki noted that at both of those parks – as with the renamings after Ford and Caplan – generic geographic designations were being replaced. “I’d be more concerned if previously named properties named after individuals are being dumped, those other names are being dumped so that these new names could take over,” he said.

Another consideration is that those parks could have instead been renamed after icons from outside the world of politics. Siemiatycki said if people think there’s “too much of this” and submit more names to City Hall, that would ultimately be a “good thing” for Toronto.

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“On balance, I think it’s better that we (allow renamings after councillors) than that we say it cannot be done, and, you know, there haven’t been too many complaints about a place called Nathan Phillips Square, (named for) a former mayor of the city, or Mel Lastman Square. So, there’s nothing new in this,” he said.

Ultimately, Siemiatycki argued, naming city assets after politicians is one way to make the job more worthwhile. The pay is only so-so and our always-online culture has made for “an intimidating and chilling climate” for public figures.

“What I would say is, in this climate, even if some of these instances involve a kind of bending of the stick in the direction of recognizing and honouring the role that an elected official played, I think that’s legitimate in this moment,” he said.

“I do think we do need to be reminded of the contribution and sacrifices that elected officials make, and this is one small symbolic way we can do that. And I think it has a civic value to it, because it sends a message to the public that we recognize and appreciate the contribution that elected officials make.”

jholmes@postmedia.com

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