Owen Sound is moving ahead with a process to consider formally renaming Ryerson Park.
Council unanimously approved a staff recommendation at its meeting Monday to initiate the city’s process to rename a park, and appointed councillors Jon Farmer, Marion Koepke and Brock Hamley to join a working group necessary to coordinate the task in accordance with the city’s policy.
City staff took the sign down at Ryerson Park in 2021, in response to a public petition to change the park’s name due to its association with Egerton Ryerson, a 19th century educator whose ideas contributed to the establishment of Canada’s residential school system.
Since 2021, the park near the bottom of the 8th Street East hill has sat with two bear posts and no namebar. But it is still known as Ryerson Park in city documents as the name has not yet been formally changed.
Owen Sound’s Director of Community Services Pam Coulter told councillors the city has received a request to rename Ryerson Park — the first one received since a parks and facilities naming policy was passed by council four years ago.
“That park has effectively been de-named, because the sign was taken down,” says Coun. Jon Farmer. “Certainly, living in the neighbourhood, people often talk about, maybe other names for the park. I’ve heard many suggested and I think the only we can effectively rename is to follow the policy we’ve set out.”
The park at 8th Street East and 5th Avenue East is across the street from the former Ryerson school, which was redeveloped into apartments in 1990, past news reports indicate.
The application to rename Ryerson Park was included as part of Monday’s council agenda. It was submitted to the city by Anne Finlay, and suggests a new name of Old School Park.
“Many of us find honouring Ryerson is not in the spirit of reconciliation … others feel the nostalgia of family attending Ryerson School across the road, for which the park was named,” Finlay says in the application. “My suggestion of Old School Park is that the name recognizes sentiment of the park’s history without the baggage of the Ryerson name.”
The city’s policy on renaming parks and facilities is it “will only be considered when it can be demonstrated that it is not in the city’s best interest to continue to use the name.”
In addition to three council members, the working group to examine the renaming request will include the clerk, city manager and potentially other necessary city staff members. The community services committee will eventually get a recommendation from the working group, and then council would have the final say with respect to renaming the park.
