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This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, see some language, pick it up, all day long I have good luck!
This episode is another instalment in the Telling Other Stories series about renaming. It’s an unexpected adjunct to the last episode, Actively Passive, wherein Kennedy Whiters of unRedactTheFacts.com talked about the word ‘plantation’.
This time, we find out what happens when you do try to get rid of the word ‘plantation’ from your street name.
The episode contains references to enslavement of Black people and a brief description of the Canadian residential school system.
On with the show.
HZ: Last episode I mentioned a petition started in 2019 by the then 9-year-old Lyla Wheeler in London, Ontario. It received 4,316 signatures, and it says:
“I have been trying to have the name of my street (Plantation Road) changed for the past year. The name of my street means a place where Black slaves were forced to work, in horrible conditions and were often whipped and punished, and sometimes killed.
With everything happening in our world right now, slave language needs to be abolished. Please sign the petition and help end racist language.”
LYLA WHEELER: My name is Lyla Daley Wheeler. And I live on Plantation Road in London, Ontario.
KRISTIN DALEY: My name is Kristin Daley. I live on Plantation Road with my daughter Lyla.
Oh, this is a great letter from one of our neighbours.
LYLA WHEELER: “Hi Lyla. On June 30th 2019, I will have lived in my home for 60 years. I have always liked the name of my street. You say that ‘plantation’ means a place for Black people. I looked up ‘plantation’ in my dictionary and there was no such definition like you state. I am voting a definite no to your request. I am enclosing a copy of a letter that was sent to all the participants. To me, it was an age appropriate activity. Wishing you well in future projects. I remain, yours truly.”
KRISTIN DALEY: So this newspaper article was from - do you have it? The one from 1972 that she sent.
LYLA WHEELER: It's about flamingos in Storybook Gardens.
KRISTIN DALEY: Storybook Gardens is kind of like this zoo thing that we have here. And there were some kids from this neighbourhood who raised some money to do something about the flamingos that had died. So this was an example of the more age-appropriate activity that Lyla should be doing. That came to our house. So that was a fun letter. She was told that a lot: find something more age appropriate to do .
HZ: “Find something that doesn't make me, an adult, feel uncomfortable.”
KRISTIN DALEY: Exactly.
HZ: So Lyla, what gave you the idea to start the petition?
LYLA WHEELER: When I was eight, I was reading a book about the Underground Railroad, and a lot of times I found the word ‘plantation’. And they kept mentioning the plantation as a place where Black slaves worked. And one day I was coming home from school, and I noticed that - well, I already knew the street name, but I just really noticed it then, like, why is it this? Why is it named this?
HZ: How do you answer that question?
KRISTIN DALEY: Right? We would love to know.
HZ: I've heard from people where they're like, “Well, where I live, it’s not the USA. So ‘plantation’ means something different.” However… The resonance it has is strong.
KRISTIN DALEY: Yes.
LYLA WHEELER: Doesn't really matter where it is.
KRISTIN DALEY: But I remember you came home and you were raging about it. You were really angry when you made that connection. And you were horrified.
HZ: Kristin, what did you think when Lyla made this point?
KRISTIN DALEY: I was never thrilled with the name itself when we moved in. I thought, well, this is kind of gross. But we needed to move and this was the house we could get. So I thought, “This is gross,” but I tried to ignore it, which I think a lot of us do. And then when she said that to me, I was like, “She is so right.” I already knew she was right; but hearing it from my eight year old daughter and seeing the outrage - you were so mad when you came home that day. And you were right. And so seeing that passion and that outrage from her was like, “She's right. Why am I sitting here doing nothing?” So I said to her, “I will support you any way” - her dad and I both - “we will support you any way that we can in doing this.” She wrote - she's a phenomenal writer. So she wrote at all, she wrote it all by herself. I don't help you with writing.
LYLA WHEELER: I wrote a letter to our councillor, Steve Lehman.
HZ: When was this?
LYLA WHEELER: This was in… It would have been 2019. [rustling of paper] Here it is.
KRISTIN DALEY: She saves everything.
LYLA WHEELER: “Dear Steve Lehman. My name is Lyla, I'm eight years old. This letter is important, because I love the Caribbean. I don't think Black people would like the name plantation. I have a friend who is Black and I want to respect her. Can you please change the name of our street, because plantation means a place where Black slaves, and we love Black people in our home. Thank you.”
KRISTIN DALEY: At eight years old. Eight years old!
HZ: And what did Steve say?
KRISTIN DALEY: Steve did write you back.
LYLA WHEELER: He basically said that it will cost a lot of money, and it would take about 10 months, and all the neighbours would have to chip in.
KRISTIN DALEY: And they would all have to agree.
HZ: Do you think that's true?
KRISTIN DALEY: Well, we now know that's not true. So for a little while, she was kind of like, "Okay, well, what am I going to do? What's my next step here? The councillor's saying we need all this money."
HZ: How much money? Did they give you a number?
LYLA WHEELER: I think it was $10,000.
KRISTIN DALEY: $10,000.
HZ: Okay. $10,000 - to replace the sign and tweak some maps?
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah, they have to give everyone on the street $100 for the inconvenience of changing their licence.
HZ: Alright!
KRISTIN DALEY: I know. Just go online.
LYLA WHEELER: It doesn't take that much to change your street name.
KRISTIN DALEY: It does not, it really does not. What was the next thing you did? Oh, you sent letters to the neighbours?
LYLA WHEELER: Yes, I sent letters to the neighbours.
KRISTIN DALEY: Yes. Which was met with... we had some support from some of our wonderful neighbours, but other abusive emails, because we set up an email account. So some abusive emails with swearing. And she said in the letter, "I'm eight and this is why I want to do it." And so there's a few abusive emails.
HZ: It's interesting that people feel so comfortable being abusive to an eight-year-old.
LYLA WHEELER: Yeah.
KRISTIN DALEY: It's shocking, just shocking. That wasn’t even the worst of it, that was just the people on our street.
HZ: How big is the street?
KRISTIN DALEY: There's maybe forty houses on it.
LYLA WHEELER: Yeah, but there's a school on it too.
KRISTIN DALEY: The school she goes to is on this street. So that's another - we kind of wonder why the school board isn't - they’re renaming some schools here in our town, like Ryerson public school is being renamed; but they haven't said anything about the street that that school is on.
HZ: Okay, so renaming is happening.
KRISTIN DALEY: Yes.
LYLA WHEELER: But not…
HZ: The eponymous Ryerson, Egerton Ryerson, had - and still has - his name on several educational establishments, streets, parks and a township, to commemorate his advocation of free public schooling in Canada and libraries in every school. His name is now being removed from some of those eponymous things - for example, in April 2022, Ryerson University in Toronto renamed itself Toronto Metropolitan University. Because Egerton Ryerson was also one of the designers of the residential school system, through which, for more than 100 years, Indigenous Canadian children were removed from their families and their culture, and forced to assimilate into the Christian European-derived culture. Violence and psychological and sexual abuse by the staff were common; disease and malnutrition were rife; and many thousands of children are known to have died at the schools. It was the discovery in 2021 of the remains of two hundred Indigenous children at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, that spurred the school board for the Southwestern Ontario region, across the country, to begin a review of names, under which, in 2022, Ryerson Elementary School in London, Ontario was renamed Old North. That school is just five miles away from Lyla and Kristin. So renaming is happening. In their own city.
KRISTIN DALEY: After that, things kind of - you were kind of -
LYLA WHEELER: Just staying, waiting…
KRISTIN DALEY: Waiting, seeing what else could happen. And then what happened that got you to start the petition?
LYLA WHEELER: George Floyd was killed.
KRISTIN DALEY: And you did have another city councillor come and work with you, who wasn't our councillor.
LYLA WHEELER: Elizabeth Peloza.
KRISTIN DALEY: Elizabeth Peloza. She was on the Civic Works Committee. And she said, "Even though I'm not the councillor here," she wanted to do something. So she kind of took the lead on this, and she came and met with you, and then she took it to council. So the cool thing: it's still in council. Well, it’s being reviewed. But that's because - do you remember why that's why it's taking so long?
LYLA WHEELER: I don't.
KRISTIN DALEY: You don't remember?
LYLA WHEELER: No, I don't.
KRISTIN DALEY: Because they're trying to change -
LYLA WHEELER: Oh! You have to change the policy.
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah. So she's trying to change the policy about naming streets.
HZ: What's the policy about naming streets?
KRISTIN DALEY: Right now, it's just kind of whatever the developer picks. So this has kind of spurred on this whole policy change. So it was voted through council - remember watching the city council meetings?
LYLA WHEELER: I do.
HZ: It sounds very age appropriate to have to watch council meetings and things. Wonderful way to spend your youth.
KRISTIN DALEY: It did have a lot of support in council.
LYLA WHEELER: It did.
KRISTIN DALEY: There was only one councillor who voted against it, who is no longer a councillor. Councillor Peloza was pretty sure that it would be changed. But she did warn us that it would take a while, because it's a policy change. And policy change takes a long time. Long time. I believe right now they're doing a report on it; I think that the report was due back to council in early 2024.
HZ: Okay! Four years for policy change. You think: what if a policy was really urgent stuff, like life and death stuff?
KRISTIN DALEY: Yes. Maybe they need to review the policy reviewing. That would be another four years, though.
HZ: They'll get around to that in 2049. Maybe they're like, “If I wait long enough climate change will take care of it. Just sit it out, stay strong.”
KRISTIN DALEY: It does take time. Just wait.
LYLA WHEELER: Just wait.
KRISTIN DALEY: Got to keep at it.
HZ: That's why you start early; gives you more time to keep at it.
KRISTIN DALEY: Exactly! First decade of your life, you're already on it.
HZ: Do you think they're just waiting? They think if they wait long enough, without doing anything, Lyla will have forgotten and got into something else?
LYLA WHEELER: Probably.
KRISTIN DALEY: You think so?
LYLA WHEELER: I think that they've just kind of… They know about it, but they've just waited so that I would forget about it.
KRISTIN DALEY: Are you going to forget about it?
LYLA WHEELER: No.
KRISTIN DALEY: Good luck. She's so stubborn, in a good way, that it will not be forgotten.
HZ: What gave you the idea to start a petition specifically - had you petitioned before?
LYLA WHEELER: I didn't. But I remember that I'd seen lots of petitions about Black Lives Matter after George Floyd was killed. And I remember seeing a lot about changing street names and other names of public schools.
KRISTIN DALEY: You had some some great support for your petition as well. A local artist from Ghana, KFT, he's a rapper. He's amazing. And he did this whole - it's in the paper, supporting Lyla, saying how much this meant to his family, that she was standing up and saying this. And your friend Jelena, her mom, what did she say?
LYLA WHEELER: “It means so much to us. And it's very close to our hearts.”
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah, they're Jamaican, Lyla's Jamaican friends, and Jelena's mum is so proud of you.
HZ: Of course, Jamaica got plantationed up the wazoo, which people will happily forget.
KRISTIN DALEY: Lyla won't though.
LYLA WHEELER: I won’t.
KRISTIN DALEY: She never forgets anything.
HZ: At what point did it reach people beyond the people that live on the street and go to the school?
LYLA WHEELER: I think that it was mostly the newspaper, because we used to have a photographer for the London Free Press that lived on our street, and he asked if he could take pictures to write about it in the paper. So I think that's when it really reached the world outside of the street.
HZ: Did it change the kinds of responses you get when more people know about it?
LYLA WHEELER: Yes. We got some very hateful responses.
KRISTIN DALEY: More - more hateful. Because we had some really great support on our street too, some really wonderful support. A couple of hateful responses from our street, but only two. But then when it went into the paper, the hate, it was everywhere. It was was shocking. We got phone calls, because our number we still have a dinosaur phone, like a landline, and it's listed. And so they would look it up, because they knew her last name and her street, and they would call us. And I mean, I had people telling me that they were calling the police because what I am making her do is child abuse. There was one that really annoyed you: when people would say that you were making me do it. People would say, “You put your kid up to this.” I'm like, Well, do you want to come and talk to her? Because I didn't. But that was a lot. And we were abusing her. And “You should be playing with makeup.”
LYLA WHEELER: That was one.
HZ: Oh, sure. Then they'd be like, “She's too young.”
KRISTIN DALEY: Right. Yeah. So it was a lot of ageism, I found, and a lot of abusive comments. The email address was not a good idea. That was terrible. And Facebook commenters and stuff. They're just horrific. The swearing, the language that they would use against - you were nine at the time?
LYLA WHEELER: Yes.
KRISTIN DALEY: It was disgusting. Very upsetting. I wouldn't engage, but I still read the stuff. Lyla at that time: she didn't know, because she was only nine. I shielded her from a lot of that stuff when it first came out because it was… it was intense. And it was just so much hate. But we did have some really good support.
LYLA WHEELER: We did.
KRISTIN DALEY: There was a lot of people who supported you. Adam Pally, the actor: he signed the petition, and put it on his Twitter. And Dr. Jay, he's a Caribbean DJ, a soca DJ in Toronto: he was a huge supporter when he found out about this, and he had it all over his Instagram and had the whole community behind her. So there was some really amazing support as well. Lots of people signed the petition quietly, and were like, “Awesome, good job,” and continued on with their lives. But it's always people who complain that are the loudest.
HZ: And they don't even live on the street.
KRISTIN DALEY: No, oh, no.
HZ: Why do you think they're so bothered about it?
KRISTIN DALEY: It's ridiculous - and how inconvenient it would be. That was the other: “Oh, what an inconvenience. Is this what we're doing with taxpayer money? What an inconvenience,” that was the other complaint. Okay!
HZ: Yeah - one of the comments on the London Free Press article about Lyla from June 2020 was, I quote: “It would mix up all the maps and GPS, the slaves were bought from violent slave traders and given better lives” - oh sure, plantation owners’ motives were notoriously altruistic. Also, those are two very different takes for a single sentence. Another comment says: “If she really wanted to help the world ...especially for females age 13-30...start a petition to "abolish" the words "like" and "oh my God" from that demographic’s lexicon.” [punctuation: commenter’s own]
I’d vote to abolish the use of ‘females’ as a noun unless you’re narrating a documentary about how insects reproduce.
KRISTIN DALEY: There were also a lot of comments like: “‘plantation’ can mean other things too.”
LYLA WHEELER: Well, it can mean other things. But it also means this.
KRISTIN DALEY: Exactly!
LYLA WHEELER: There can be more than one meaning for a word.
KRISTIN DALEY: And there is, lots, in English. Right?
HZ: Some of them really ruin it for the rest of the meanings.
KRISTIN DALEY: Absolutely. This is one of them.
HZ: Are there people who were like, “You're white, you shouldn't be saying these things on behalf of Black people, what they should be upset by?”
KRISTIN DALEY: People do, we had a lot of - and to be honest, it was always the 50 year old white men who were saying that, it was never anyone from the Black community. They were always so supportive. That was actually one of the reasons that Kwasi, the musician, KFT, he did a whole interview saying, “This is amazing, and look, I'm standing here supporting Lyla.” The local Black Lives Matter chapter was very supportive of Lyla as well. So we had a lot of good support. That's what I always tried to focus on.
LYLA WHEELER: Yeah. Not the bad support.
KRISTIN DALEY: It was hard, as a mom, to this wonderful human, to see and hear the things that were written about her. It was hard. But I just focused on the people who mattered. That's what I would tell Lyla, you know, whose opinion matters to you? Like, Jelena and her mom thought opinion matters to you.
LYLA WHEELER: I don’t care about the 50-year-old neighbours.
KRISTIN DALEY: You don't care, that's right! You don't care about their opinions so don't let it bother you. People you respect, that's whose opinion matters. And you've never let it deter you either. Which I have always found remarkable, because I think of me at your age and I would have been like, “I'm not doing this anymore!” It never deterred you.
LYLA WHEELER: Nope.
KRISTIN DALEY: You're like, “Well, it's wrong, so I'm gonna keep doing it.”
HZ: I feel like I wasted my childhood.
KRISTIN DALEY: Right?!
HZ: It does seem to be quite a common pattern that people are a lot happier to tolerate racism than they are if you point it out.
LYLA WHEELER & KRISTIN DALEY: Yes.
HZ: Why do you think that is?
LYLA WHEELER: Because they don't want to deal with it, because they feel either guilty, or they just don't want to deal with it. They just want to let it sit quietly. And it can come up some other time. But they don't want to deal with it.
KRISTIN DALEY: “This doesn't affect me, so why would I -”
LYLA WHEELER: “Why would I care?”
KRISTIN DALEY: “Because I'm not going to do something to inconvenience myself, like going online and changing my licence.”
LYLA WHEELER: That would just be terrible.
KRISTIN DALEY: So hard.
HZ: How do you feel when you have to tell someone your address?
LYLA WHEELER: I feel uncomfortable, like, why am I writing this? Why am I talking about this?
KRISTIN DALEY: I feel the same way. I'm mortified. I was just seeing my surgeon for my follow up and they were like, “You're on Plantation Road?” I was like, Yes, I am. The person reading it was horrified that that was the name of my street. And sometimes your dad calls it “Racism Road.”
HZ: Do you think some of the locals will be comfortable with renaming it that? "Alright, that aligns with my values."
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah, totally! So what do we refer to it as when we're talking to each other?
LYLA WHEELER: Josiah Henson Way.
KRISTIN DALEY: Josiah Henson Way. Because that was one of your suggestions for renaming it was Josiah Henson way.
HZ: Tell us about Josiah Henson, how did you land on him as a plan?
LYLA WHEELER: Well, I remember you were reading a book called The Life of Josiah Henson, and I remember you telling me about him. And I thought, well, this might be a good name, a good new name for the street.
KRISTIN DALEY: Josiah Henson was enslaved in the USA. And he escaped to Canada, and then he set up a community here for other escaped slaves, actually not too far from us. It was about two hours from where we are, because we went to see the community that he set up for other slaves who had escaped. There was a chapel and he taught, like woodworking and taught escaped slaves all of these amazing skills. So he was like a little safe house here in Canada. So that was why you kind of decided on that one: to honour someone, instead of what we have now.
HZ: What other names did you think up?
LYLA WHEELER: Well, originally, I had - [finds piece of paper with list] here we go: “Daisy Drive, Orca Road, Wild Berry Road, Bluebell Drive and Wild Cherry Road.”
KRISTIN DALEY: There's a lot of flower and tree names around us, one of the streets -
LYLA WHEELER: - there's Hibiscus, Palm Tree…
KRISTIN DALEY: So she thought maybe that would be - anything other than...? But people will say, “It's a plantation because that's where trees are planted, and other streets are named after trees in your neighbourhood.” Well, who do you think planted the trees?
HZ: Lyla, how do you feel when you think, “Gosh, I started this thing when I was nine, and that was 2019, and the street is still called the same thing”?
LYLA WHEELER: It's very shocking, when I really think about it. I was nine, now I'm almost thirteen. And it's it's just shocking to see that it hasn't gone anywhere.
HZ: How are other renaming campaigns going in your city, like are there other streets you mentioned? Like Ryerson.
KRISTIN DALEY: Ryerson school has been changed already because it was the school board who gets to make that decision. So they changed that. There is another renaming campaign who did a petition. Do you remember the name of the street? It's in our neighbourhood.
LYLA WHEELER: I don't remember it.
KRISTIN DALEY: It's Indian Road.
HZ: Great!
KRISTIN DALEY: I know, it's just been delightful.
LYLA WHEELER: Just fantastic.
KRISTIN DALEY: It's about 10 minutes from us. And so they had also started a petition. And so that would be part of the policy change in regards to Indian road as well. That's the only other one I know about specifically. Do you know any others?
LYLA WHEELER: I know that the statue was taken down in Toronto. And I know that they've changed some street names in Toronto. But other than that: in London, I'm not sure…
KRISTIN DALEY: In London, we don't have a lot of traction here. I know Dundas Street is being changed in Toronto as well.
HZ: And that's a huge, long street.
KRISTIN DALEY: Humungous!
HZ: That's a lot of signage to switch.
KRISTIN DALEY: I think, wow many signs do we have on ours? Four?
LYLA WHEELER: Four.
KRISTIN DALEY: Four. There'd be four signs that needed to be changed on our street.
HZ: You could print those out and laminate them and put them up.
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah. That was a thought actually: one of my friends who was very supportive said, “That’s it! One night, we're just gonna go rip them all down.” Do you remember what your response to that was?
LYLA WHEELER: “That's not what Martin Luther King Jr. would do.”
KRISTIN DALEY: That was her response.
HZ: He'd go and sit and wait for the council to change the policy.
KRISTIN DALEY: How do you argue with a 10-year-old who says that to you? But you're right, you're right; that's not the way to go about it. It takes time. Because you're changing policy.
HZ: And policy is like, "I'm tired. Why are you waking me up?"
LYLA WHEELER: I think that it should be going somewhere.
KRISTIN DALEY: It is. Slowly.
HZ: Change is slow.
KRISTIN DALEY: It is.
LYLA WHEELER: And lots of people don't like change.
KRISTIN DALEY: That's right.
HZ: Why do you think that is?
KRISTIN DALEY: Yeah, why do you think that is?
LYLA WHEELER: They’ve been stuck in their ways for so long, that it's just they don't like change. They don't like things to be different. They want everything to be the way it was, whenever they were my age.
HZ: Well, otherwise, it might imply that things were bad.
LYLA WHEELER: Yes. They don't want their childhood ruined by that. Right?
HZ: Because you can ruin someone's childhood decades later, that’s how it works.
KRISTIN DALEY: By renaming a street. Yes, lots of strong opinions on this. But I'm proud of you for for not stopping.
LYLA WHEELER: Thank you.
Hey podfan, fan of pod, one of my favourite podcasts of this decade has returned with a second season: FOGO, Fear Of Going Outside, in which Ivy Le with one E tries to train herself to be an outdoorsy person. The giveaway that she’s not a true outdoorsy person is that she’s making a podcast, a very indoorsy activity; but she’s a very funny person and this season she is learning to hunt, and what’s scarier, the huge creepy-crawlies of Texas or the gun enthusiasts? Listen to FOGO at fogopodcast.com.
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Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
zonda, noun: a hot dusty north wind in Argentina.
Try using ‘zonda’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks Dan Engler for coming up with the title of the episode. Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com provided the original music and editorial assistance.
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