im in the camp that if there was a good local name, and it was polled, i would totally vote in favor of a rename. I’ve lived in a couple towns now with native names, and really prefered it over… Campbell River for example.
That said, this is so far down my list of priorities…
Yeah I’d support a name change to something better, but I’m not much interested in a discussion of what ‘better’ is.
Personally I don’t care for it is or isn’t a native name, but I do dislike British Columbia. I can live with it but if it were out up to a vote to change it I would say go for it.
I hate that it’s:
- So long
- Two words
- Refers to other geographical places
I would much prefer a simpler name like Alberta or Manitoba. Fuck Saskatchewan though I need to pull out the dictionary for that one half the time.
Definitely agree about point C
We are not British, not related to miss Columbia, republic of Columbia, ect
Ooooh BC -> C and DC -> C
Me: I’m going to Columbia. Them: Canada, US or SA?
I say we piss literally everyone off and change it to British Colombia.
How about United Kingdom’s Colombia?
How about English Colombia?
They aren’t suggesting dropping the “British”, rather they are asking about changing the name to something more representative of the Indigenous Peoples of BC who have been keepers of the land since time immemorial.
Not sure how that would work, though, as there are so many Nations and languages in the province.
Like, “Powell River School District” is now “qathet School District”. They didn’t just drop “Powell” to call it “River”, lol.
Sorry, I suppose my humor doesn’t always transfer via text.
I vote for just calling it BC without any hint of this being an abbreviation. If anyone asks say it stands for BeCause.
Beautiful Beesee
There is nothing offensive about the name British Columbia. This isn’t like Yong-Dundas or schools that are named after residential school pushers or streets named after slavers.
There is a push to native-wash everything in Canada, I think because it makes progressives feel like they’ve accomplished something despite the systems of oppression against native peoples remaining fundamentally unchanged.
Though indirectly, it’s named after Columbus… as in Christopher Columbus
Not really, it is named after the Columbia River, named after the ship that found the mouth, the Columbia Rediviva.
Columbia, from Columbus, has always been a common poetic name for the US and it’s this that the ship is named after. The name of BC is one of many on the continent that ultimately derives from Columbus
Sure if you stretch it. But BC wasn’t named aftet Columbus “discovering” it. Changing the name to remove a a non-connection is just putting glitter on shit
Next year something else will become offensive. Next year another huge initiative to change something else. This type of thing is literally endless as everything is changing all the time. Sounds like a waste of tax $ to me.
This type of thing is literally endless as everything is changing all the time.
Reality is tough to deal with, that’s true.
change bad
Is your position that we shouldn’t change because… everything is changing all the time?
My position is this seems like a waste of $ compared to more pressing matters like, I dunno, funding climate change initiatives.
offensive. Next year another huge initiative to change something else. This type of thing is literally endless as everything is changing all the time. Sounds like a waste of tax $ to me.
Changing a name isn’t stupid, unless done for stupid reasons. If you have the money - get it done. It also doesn’t have to be done all at once. Start small with new document templates, create a reasonable budget for replacing signs…
Speaking as someone that resides in what was once the Province of Canada (Upper Canada or Canada West) and renamed themselves something else native - we named ourselves after the Huron word for ‘Great Lake’ and that ignores the fact that we’re only talking one of the 4 great lakes that border us on one side of the province… There’s way more to the province than the Hurons and way more than just that one lake. Seriously, get a huge list of place names that are underutilized by all the different nations out there, find something that is easier to spell than Saskatchewan, and send it around for approval.
The ONLY downside is that you’re throwing out a lot of ‘brand recognition.’ I made the argument that the Law Society of Ontario should not have renamed themselves from the Law Society of Upper Canada because they have been called the LSUC for over 200 years. It’s like if The Bay decided to go close all their stores under that banner and exclusively work under the name Saks Fifth Avenue - I don’t think it would work out well for them, and it might not work well for BC.
How much money is being currently “wasted” on this? And how much of it is taxpayer funding that could be redirected?
No idea, but knowing how the government works I’m sure it’s more than I’d expect.
If you’re sure it’s more than you’d expect, then you have some idea. You can just say how much you expect and then we have a lower bound to verify.
In any case do we even know who commissioned the poll? Might as well have been some institution with discretionary spending. Maybe I missed it in the article but it’s not clear that this is government funded research in the first place.
