Name change the least of square's issues

A confession, and maybe an unpopular one: I don’t really care what we call the square at the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets.

- MATT ELLIOTT

At this week's meeting, Toronto city councillors should spend less time debating Sankofa Square's name and more time thinking about ways to make the area a better-used and more-loved public space, Matt Elliott writes.

I get that a lot of people are mad about the move Toronto city council made in December to rechristen the space as Sankofa Square. I watched a few of them line up last week to make the case against the name change at a meeting of Mayor Olivia Chow’s executive committee at city hall, during a public deputation session that at times got really heated.

Heck, I even criticized the sudden process that led to the name change in a column soon after the council decision. Allowing the public to consider potential names from a shortlist would have been preferable to the out-of-nowhere name drop we got.

But let’s be real. Yonge-Dundas Square was always a bad name. It’s generous to even call it a name. It always felt more like a placeholder that was just kept around for two decades for lack of anyone bothering to think up any better options.

It didn’t describe the square and its purpose. It doesn’t signify anything, or honour anything or anyone not already honoured by bordering street names. It just provided its geographic location and shape in a very literal way. It’d be akin to naming Nathan Phillips Square as Bay-Queen Square, or the CN Tower as the Bremner Big Thing.