Change Kitchener's name back to Berlin?

[ijmorlan]

Berlin also operated horrific concentration camps in southern Africa that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. If we're going to change the name to avoid associations with genocide, Berlin isn't a great choice.

The point is that the name “Kitchener” commemorates somebody who expanded what we now call concentration camps and did a bunch of other stuff we wouldn’t necessarily want to commemorate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Ki..._Kitchener

By contrast the name “Berlin” is basically Swampville, if I understand correctly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin#Etymology

As someone pointed out, we can’t rule out a name because people from a place with that name did bad things. For starters, every single settlement in Germany would have to be renamed, which is clearly absurd.

That being said, I don’t actually think we need to rename Kitchener; the name is now more salient as this city with lots of tech companies and other things than as the guy who did the stuff. The original reason for the naming is an educational fact of historical interest.

Note, for similar reasons I think the current move to rename Dundas St. in Toronto is very questionable. It’s not even named after the person but after the town which is named after the person. At a certain point, we’re not really commemorating the person; and the historical knowledge that at one time we did commemorate such people is better maintained by not renaming than by renaming.