School board votes unanimously to rename Cornwallis Junior High
Posted Jun 23, 2011 05:09:24 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Sixty-two years after the cornerstone was laid at Cornwallis Junior High School, the school is being told it has to find a new name.
The Halifax Regional School Board voted unanimously Wednesday night in favour of a motion from Mi’kmaq member Kirk Arsenault to have the school renamed, citing Governor Edward Cornwallis’ checkered history with the native people.
Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax, vowed to clear the peninsula of the Mi’kmaq people, ordering their killing and putting a bounty on their scalps.
“That should not be celebrated, especially not in the naming of the school,” said David Cameron, board member for the Cornwallis Junior High district – who seconded Arsenault’s motion.
Arsenault said the move to remove the Cornwallis name from a local institution wasn’t born out of vindictiveness.
“This is brought forward in the feeling of healing and education,” Arsenault told the board, noting he’s received mostly positive responses to the proposal.
No one appeared before the board to oppose the motion, but Mi’kmaq elder Daniel Paul addressed the board after the motion passed.
“Thank you very much, I’m proud of you,” he told them. “You’re proactive, and God bless.”
Paul has spent years bringing overlooked elements of the Cornwallis story to light and says he’s delighted with the board’s decision.
“You don’t know how I feel,” he told reporters after the meeting. “I feel like dancing in the street, but I’m too old for that, I’d probably drop dead.”
Paul says he will continue to call for the Cornwallis name to be removed from a city street and park, and for the removal of a statue of the historical figure from Cornwallis Park.
“(Cornwallis) is part of history, you can’t change it,” he said. “Let’s keep him in the history books, we don’t have to put him on a pedestal.”
The community will be invited to submit a new name for the junior high school.
