dig into the history of Sir George Yonge, the British secretary of war so long as we trying to right perceived past wrongs
yonge street is the longest street in the world, imagine the cost of renaming it?
while you are at it Kings and Queens thorough history have benefited from slavery
how many towns . cities have a king street and / or queen street?
All of them
lets spend a couple of hundred million renaming theses streets in the name of politically correct virtue signaling non-sense , shortly followed by complaints from the loonie left politicians of 'we need more taxpayer money to waste, the city is broke'
the better solution is to rename loonie left politicians as ''former politicians ''.
every dollar wasted on this ridiculous bullshit renaming would have been far better spent by the taxpayer or by local food banks
"Until 1999, the
Guinness Book of World Records repeated the popular misconception that Yonge Street was 1,896 km (1,178 mi)
[4] long, making it the longest street in the world; this was due to a conflation of Yonge Street with the rest of
Ontario's Highway 11."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonge_Street
Putting that detail aside, even if Toronto decides to rename Yonge Street it could only go as far as Steeles Avenue. Toronto council has no say in how Thornhill, Richmond Hill, etc. names its streets. That would be the same for every small town with a King, Queen, Dundas, etc. Street. Mississauga council already voted not to rename the portion of Dundas Street that runs through it. This won't cause any problems because we have many examples of streets with different names. University and Avenue Road, Bloor and Danforth, College and Carlton, Queen Street and Queensway, Lakeshore and Woodbine, etc.
I'm pretty sure that the province has no say on the renaming issue or they would have intervened. I'm also pretty sure that the province would be able to rename the 401 aka McDonald-Cartier Freeway if they wanted to.
I agree though that the rationale for the renaming is poor because it's impossible to measure the goals of "reducing harm" or "increasing inclusiveness." That is the same if the city has the money or not.
If Toronto did have the money, renaming the square, street, etc. to honour someone from recent history would be more appropriate. Lincoln Alexander would be a great choice even though there's more than a few things named after him like the expressway in Hamilton and Ryerson's law school. He checks a lot of boxes though:
Born in Toronto and didn't even have a driver's license
Served as a wireless operator for the RCAF during WWII
First Black MP, Cabinet Minister and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
Ghana was the centerpoint of the West African slave trade. That's how it managed to keep it's independence while the French and British were parsing the rest of West Africa for themselves. That changed when Lincoln outlawed slavery, Ghana became a British Colony in 1874.
