Park to be renamed for Rooster Town roots

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This article was published 01/05/2022 (926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Métis community once forced by the city to relocate will now be honoured at a local park.

Winnipeg city council has approved a recommendation to rename Pan Am Pool Park, located at Grant Avenue and Cambridge Street, to Rooster Town Park.

The proposed change aims to honour those displaced from the Grant Park area by the early 1960s.

The city’s website notes families settled on the land after being pushed out of their Red River homes. By 1911, 42 families lived in the area.

In 1951, the city sought to develop the area and worked to displace the residents, with the last homes bulldozed and destroyed by 1960.

Meanwhile, council also approved a call to rename Singh Trail Park (located at 80 Singh Trail) to Komagata Maru Park. A sign or other new permanent marker is also expected to give an Indigenous land acknowledgement and explain “Canada’s broader colonial policy of exclusion,” pending funding approval.

A city report notes Komagata Maru was the name of a ship that sailed to Vancouver from Hong Kong in 1914. Most of its passengers were Sikh men, who were challenging Canada’s former practices of excluding immigrants from India, the report notes.

In a news release, a spokesperson for the Descendants of the Komagata Maru Society, said the new name should raise awareness of that history.

“Renaming Singh Trail Park to Komagata Maru Park will help educate the community and remind us of Winnipeg’s unique and diverse population. We are all richer when we remember how special it is to have so many different ethnic communities living together,” said Raj Singh Toor.

Both changes were approved last week through the Welcoming Winnipeg: Reconciling our History process. That policy primarily aims to address names that negatively impact the Indigenous community, while handling additional naming requests.