Why this resident wants Toronto's oldest, richest neighbourhood renamed

One of the city's oldest and most affluent neighbourhoods — Baby Point — could get a new name, as part of an ongoing city review that may designate the neighbourhood a Heritage Conservation District (HCD).

Local resident David Rainsberry has been lobbying the city and his local councillor, Gord Perks (Parkdale—High Park), to have the name changed.

The Baby family, after which the neighbourhood is named, owned slaves in the late 1700s and early 1800s and so, he says, is not worthy of being memorialized.

"When you choose to put someone's name on a street, you choose to elevate that personality, you choose to celebrate him," Rainsberry told CBC Toronto. "And I query whether that's a personality that deserves our continued support."

Rainsberry's initiative comes three years after city council voted to rename Dundas Street, on the grounds that the street's namesake, British politician Henry Dundas, did not do enough to hasten the end of the trans-Atlanic slave trade in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Council put that plan on hold late last year, but it agreed to change the name of Dundas Square to Sankofa Square.

The names of the Jane-Dundas Public Library, Dundas and Dundas West subway stations will be changed too.

City staff have also been looking into renaming other city streets that could have troubling connotations.

Rainsberry's name change proposal is part of the city's ongoing review — an HCD designation would protect homes in the neighbourhood from substantial alteration or demolition, without special permission from the city.

It's not clear when that review will be complete. 

Rainsberry says he has some support locally, but he told CBC Toronto he knows he's facing an uphill struggle.

The Baby Point Preservation Foundation is against the name change.

Board member and historian Maria Subtelny says some of the controversy may come from a misreading of history.

She said the land, about 600 hectares just north of Jane and Bloor, on the west side of the Humber River, was originally bought as a country retreat in 1812 by James Baby, a prominent Upper Canada government official.