Trustees reject long-prominent London family name for city school

A northeast London school set to shed the name of Canada’s first prime minister will not be renamed for the Carling family that once owned the land on which it sits.

Amid a widespread review, Thames Valley District school board officials are in the process of renaming John A. Macdonald public school, located on Landor Street in a neighborhood, Carling Heights, named for Sir John Carling and his clan.

A survey poll was sent to the school community’s parents earlier this month and 78 of the 210 eligible cast a vote – with 41 selecting Carling Heights public school as the new name. There were 24 votes for Merwin Heights public school and 13 for Landor Street public school.

But in an unrecorded vote Tuesday night, trustees rejected the name – Carling was a businessman and politician who launched his brewery in 1843 – with one trustee suggesting the name might spark the same kind of blowback as Macdonald, who modern critics have decried as racist.

“I really value the voice of our community and them having agency in making decisions about the renaming of schools,” Beth Mai said. “I would be completely handed over if I did not bring up a concern around this particular name choice and whether or not the community members had access to the information we had access to now when they cast their votes.

“My primary concern is that we do not find ourselves a few years down the road renaming a school once again and spending $40,000 of taxpayer money,” which is the cost to rename a school. It was unclear what specifically concerned May.

Carling Heights is the name of the neighborhood where the school is located. It’s located north of the CPR tracks – between Highbury Avenue and Adelaide Street. The land was once owned by the Carling family, which sold off chunks of it, including a section on which Wolseley Barracks now sits.

There were no details provided on what will happen next after trustees rejected Carling Heights as the name.

This is all part of a sweeping school-name review across the Thames Valley board that began about two years ago.

Last month, an elementary school in northeast London long named for a US president, FD Roosevelt, was given a new name that pays tribute to the city’s longtime moniker: Forest City public school. Roosevelt’s legacy “has limited relevance” to this community, board officials said at the time.

Last June, London’s former Ryerson elementary school officially was renamed Old North public school. The school’s former namesake was Egerton Ryerson, widely considered the father of public education in Ontario but also one of the main architects of Canada’s Indigenous residential school system.

Amid posthumous revelations of a sex scandal, Jean Vanier’s name was removed in 2021 from a London Catholic school in the city’s Westmount neighbourhood. It was renamed St. Rose of Lima.

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