Coquitlam students push to rename Dewdney Trunk over racist history

There’s an effort to rename part of Dewdney Trunk Road in Coquitlam because of the racist history of the man behind it.

The road, which stretches across a large part of Metro Vancouver, is named after Edgar Dewdney. He was a politician in the late 1800s who, among other things, was involved in the creation of residential schools.

The push to rename part of the route comes from a group of grade 9 students at Charles Best Secondary in Coquitlam, all with the support of their teacher, Megan Leslie.

“We decided to initiate this by writing our various government representatives, from the City of Coquitlam to our local MLA and MPs,” she told CityNews.

Racist legacy

Dewdney was Indian commissioner for the North-West Territories in the late 1870s to late 1880s. He later became lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories.

Leslie says during that time, Dewdney was in charge of relocating various Indigenous groups onto reserves.

“He did that by coercing them through starvation tactics, which was quite devastating to the plains people at the time because they had already suffered loss of food due to the over-hunting of the buffalo. They were dependent on the Canadian government for food aid, which Edgar Dewdney withheld,” Leslie explained.

She adds he also used food as a coercive tactic to force Indigenous parents to give up their children and send them to residential schools.

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It’s for these reasons and more that Leslie’s students have been pushing for Dewdney Trunk Road to be renamed, with reconciliation in the forefront of their efforts.

Leslie says so far her students have received a positive response in their advocacy.

“Our MP, Bonita Zarrillo, has been incredibly supportive. She, on her own social media, talked about support. She also has written letters of support to the City of Coquitlam and the other MLAs in the area advocating for the name change,” the secondary school teacher said.

The City of Coquitlam has also responded positively, she says, adding it’s told her and her students that budget has been set aside to look at place name changes in the community as part of the Truth and Reconciliation effort.

“They’re quite happy to get our letters because it’s actually going to help them move forward in the reconciliation process, so that was really great news to hear,” Leslie said.

Renaming and reconciliations

The students, whom Leslie has described as creative, have come up with some proposed names the road could be changed to.

Some have also reached out to the Kwikwetlem First Nation, hoping any potential renaming would be done in a collaborative way in the name of reconciliation.

In addition to pushing for meaningful change, Leslie says the experience has helped her 14-year-old students realize they can make a difference.

“My grade 9, they started in September not thinking that they had a voice or power,” Leslie said. “So to have this at the end of the semester, getting such attention, it’s really empowering to this next generation, that they have a voice, and it matters, and it has power.”

Last year, Leslie helped another group of her students with the Red Dress Campaign locally, to bring more awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirited people in Canada.

“We hang the red dresses out of respect and remembrance of the people that we have lost and to help advocate for change,” she explained.

She and her students also wrote letters to government representatives urging them to implement calls to justice.

The Red Dress Campaign is a national project that was started several years ago by a Metis artist. Red dresses are hung to draw attention to the ongoing MMIWG crisis.