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The Near North District School Board has voted to rescind the original motion to rename Chippewa Secondary School. Does this mean the school will remain as Chippewa Secondary School? Not necessarily, but it will allow for the discussion about renaming to start from scratch, or not occur at all.
“The motion was rescinded,” Erika Lougheed, the Board’s Chair, clarified. She added that as such, the re-naming committee and the "direction it had ceases to exist.”
“There is no formal plan or next steps for naming/renaming, at the moment,” she said.
Trustee Louise Sargent put forward the motion to rescind. She did so in response to a meeting in October, where trustees were informed that for “further discussion” to take place on renaming the school, the original motion calling for the renaming and rebranding “had to be rescinded,” Sargent’s motion explained.
That original motion was brought to the board on December 13, 2022.
This past October, Trustee Julie Bertram put forward a motion to halt the process of renaming the school until “appropriate Indigenous consultation and collaboration” occurs. She noted in that motion when the discussion of renaming the school began in September 2017, the goal was to “rebrand, not rename” Chippewa.
See: School board reconsiders ‘contentious’ renaming of Chippewa
At that October meeting, Director of Education Craig Myles noted, “We need to take a pause and move forward with strategy and a focus on procedural fairness.”
“Obviously this is a very contentious issue,” Myles said, “a very complicated issue.”
With the motion to rename and rebrand now rescinded, the trustees now have a blank slate on which to write the future of the possible naming and branding of Chippewa Secondary School.
Former School Board Chair Jay Aspin welcomed the move.
"It has taken far too long but it is good to know the board has come to the right decision," he told BayToday. "It would be a good thing if money earmarked from dropping renaming, could be used to build on further developing Chippewa to continue to be one of the best examples of secondary schools offering indigenous educational programming in the province in support of the goals of Truth and Reconciliation."
Local resident Steve Brown led the charge against the name change and promises to continue to monitor the ongoings of the school board. He told BayToday, "It just goes to show that if we hold publicly voted-in bodies accountable, we can make change. It's a great day that they have listened to the people finally. I was glad to be part of it. This is so awesome."
With files from Jeff Turl.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
