Renaming is part of rehabilitation of Toronto waterfront

Toronto Star: Indigenous elders have chosen a new name with deep roots for an island neighbourhood forming on Toronto’s waterfront — a moniker meant to honour its heritage and speak to its hopeful future.

The city’s circle of Indigenous advisers announced Friday they have unanimously picked the name Ookwemin Minising for the 40hectare island that had been informally known as Villiers Island.

Pronounced “oh-kwhe-min Minnih-sing,” the new name means “place of the black cherry trees” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin.

“This is really lifting up the land as a teacher and the knowledge that the language is written on the land,” said Ojibwe Elder Shelley Charles, a culture and language teacher who led the renaming process, in an interview with the Star.

The island south of the Keating Channel has been carved out of former industrial lands on the eastern waterfront as part of a massive billion-dollar flood-protection project that includes restoring the mouth of the Don River, and connecting it to Lake Ontario through a new human-made river valley.

The advisory circle of elders and various First Nations, Inuit and Métis community members also chose Biidaasige, pronounced “bee-daw-sih-geh” — meaning “sunlight shining toward us” in Anishinaabemowin — as the new name for the island’s parklands.

The names go to the city’s executive committee Tuesday, then to council for approval in mid-November.

Charles said the advisory circle let the earth lead their discussions since April, an Indigenous philosophy known as Akinomaagewin. As a result, the 14-member group aimed to honour the natural landscape’s history with a nod to the fruit tree. Black cherry once grew naturally along the waterfront’s original marshlands near the mouth of the Don River before they were lost to the industrial lands that filled it, now known as the Port Lands.

Unknown to them until their sixth and penultimate meeting in October, Charles said, Waterfront Toronto workers had recently planted more than 80 black cherry saplings on the island as part of the rigorous environmental restoration work underway there, marking a full circle moment.

“It was an ‘A-ha’ moment because we are connected on a cellular level to this region,” Charles said. “That moment affected me (positively) on so many levels. It affected me physically … I had an emotional reaction.”

For Fred Martin, a Mi’kmaq member of the circle: “My heart kind of (grew) at that moment because it just felt like that was the name it should be.”

After that, what resonated around the circle during the final stages of the nearly yearlong process was how Ookwemin Minising had connections between the past, the present and the future of this developing area through the revitalization of Indigenous names, plants and the natural ecosystems that once thrived there.

Black cherry trees grow naturally across southern Ontario, but are rare in its Carolinian forests compared to other broadleaf trees. Workers transported these Indigenous seeds from local growers in the region.

“Trees are our relatives,” said Martin, who’s also the senior project manager for the waterfront in the city’s Indigenous affairs office. “Throughout this whole process, it felt like we were going down the right path and many comments were around, ‘Spirit was with us’ … this was meant to be.”

Ookwemin Minising also aligns with other historical Ojibwe place names on Lake Ontario, including Adoobigok (Etobicoke) which means “place of the alders.”

Charles and Martin both said in emotional interviews that a key moment in the latter stages of the renaming process was when members of the circle stood up around the table, in ceremony, and spoke the name out loud in unison to the east, south, west then north — something dozens of city staff, councillors, the mayor and Waterfront Toronto representatives repeated Friday, led by Charles.

Martin explained Biidaasige was chosen to honour water. It also symbolizes what the Port Lands’ flood protection project is about: water awareness and conservation, but also a nod to a hopeful, bright future ahead in both restoring the environment on land once considered derelict while reconciling with colonial history.

The park’s new name also speaks to important design elements in the area and the re-naturalized river, Martin added.

The park’s trajectory runs west alongside the new mouth of the Don River and ends in a large swath of green space, with water entering the new river valley on the east side of the island and also flowing west. This is the geographic trajectory where the dawn’s light will first illuminate the water and shine throughout the area.

The three bridges that connect the island to the mainland and the rest of the Port Lands are also coloured red, yellow and orange on the inside to correspond with dawn, midday and sunset.

Toronto Star, MAHDIS HABIBINIA