Vancouver School Board votes to rename Lord Roberts Elementary School
Posted January 30, 2023 10:14 pm.
Last Updated January 31, 2023 6:56 am.
The Vancouver School Board has unanimously voted in favour of renaming the West End’s Lord Roberts Elementary School.
The process to rename Lord Roberts Elementary School began in the spring of 2022, when the elementary school’s community moved to change its moniker. Since then, there have been meetings to firm up the reasoning and details of changing the name.
School board trustee Lois Chan-Pedley says she looks forward to watching the renaming process unfold.
“I think the evidence is clear that it’s time to to give the school a new name,” said Chan-Pedley.
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School board trustee Janet Fraser says this motion was made possible because of work put in by parents and staff behind the scenes in the school community.
“One of the things that they did was provide quite a detailed information package about who Lord Roberts was, and that was certainly influential in helping me understand why his name and his legacy do not reflect where we are as a school district now in the 2023,” she explained.
The West End school is currently named after Frederick Roberts, a Victorian-era general who led the British Army during the Second Boer War in South Africa. Under his command, Roberts implemented a policy that saw South African farms and homes burned, and resulted in thousands of people being put in concentration camps.
At the Vancouver School Board vote, the unanimous decision was met with applause across the room.
