Conceding to the demands of the Ladies of Greenwich Invisible and David Rafferty, "Binney Park" will revert to its original Algonquin name, “maškyeᐧkwi manybitumbug”

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“Swamp with many nasty mosquitos”

Toronto Renamed a Park to Honor ‘First Peoples,’ and It’s a Disaster

First off, some of the nice things about the new Woodsy Park in Toronto were its amenities, which included a field, a playground, a firepit, a skate trail, a splash pad, and, with a hat tip to those Canadians, it’s well-maintained and very clean. Another nice thing about it was its name – “Woodsy.” That was easy to remember, and it just sounded nice, you know, woodsy, even though there weren’t a lot of trees. 

In due course, the deranged people who run Toronto decided that the original name for the new park wasn’t quite right. “Woodsy” just wouldn’t do. In a fit of self-loathing and with an attack of suicidal empathy, the city decided to rename the park to honor “first peoples.” The new name is Ethennonnhawahstihnen. How’s that for a rebrand? 

You read that right. No typos there: Ethennonnhawahstihnen Park. It’s near the Ethennonnhawahstihnen Community Recreation Center, which is on Ethennonnhawahstihnen Lane. 

The renaming was the brainchild of Toronto City Council member Shelley Carroll. She initiated the process to change the name to reflect the diversity of the community and honor indigenous peoples. This is Carroll imploring you to pronounce the new name correctly… or else. 

Fun Postscript:

In her video overview of her proud accomplishment, Caroll tells us that not far from the-park-whose-name-cannot-be-pronounced is important indigenous ground. She says, “The Moatfield Ossuary was a very important site to a strong and unified agricultural community. It served as a cemetery, but not specific to one family or kin.” 

Caroll doesn’t say what happened to that cemetery, but if you’re wondering, an ossuary is a communal burial pit used during large ceremonies where the remains of many people are buried together. The Moatfield Ossuary belonged to a 13th-14th-century indigenous village in what is now North York in Toronto. Archaeologists have estimated that it dates to about A.D. 1280-1320. 

Construction workers accidentally discovered the site in 1997 when they were installing a chain-link fence around a newly built soccer field. The post pierced buried human remains, and that led to an archeological dig on the site. 

For a country so bent on reconciliation and placemaking, what do you think Toronto did with that sacred ground? 

It moved the 87 bodies that were discovered there and finished the soccer field, of course.