Abstract
In 1916, Berlin, Ontario, disappeared off the map through a controversial vote. In its place came a new toponym named after British Secretary of State for War, Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Over a century later, a Facebook post about the city’s name gained local media attention. For the writer of the post, the name Kitchener was synonymous for hate due to the military figure’s role in expanding the use of internment camps during the Second Boer War. However, the Berlin–Kitchener controversy is far older than the recent news story; it goes back to 1991 when a news article brought up the subject a year after the city’s German-Canadian community celebrated the reunification of their cultural homeland. This article examines the original resurfaced controversy over the 1916 name change as well as the recently re-emerged debate. It is argued that the origins of both debates are markedly different and reflect different concerns.
Introduction
In the summer of 2020, a news clip aired on Canada’s CTV Television Network to address a topic that had been largely forgotten in Kitchener, Ontario, a mid-size city (2016 population: 233,222) located some 100 kilometres west of Toronto. 1 The issue surrounded the historical legacy of a wartime vote that was held in the city over a hundred years prior. Tied to the considerable anti-German sentiment that faced the city and its many German-speaking inhabitants during the First World War (1914–1918), the controversial vote of 1916 was held to replace the city’s once celebrated name of Berlin. The winning choice was deemed a fitting replacement since it honoured the legacy of the then celebrated British Secretary of State for War, Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916), who had died only a few months before the vote. However, as the 2020 news broadcast revealed, the choice of Kitchener as the city’s new name was not unproblematic, especially for later generations, given the military figure’s role in expanding the use of civilian internment camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). Interestingly, the controversy over the Kitchener place name was sparked by a single social media post by a local resident who wanted to educate her fellow residents of the ‘hate’ that was embodied in their city’s name. 2 However, as revealed in the title of an accompanying news article (‘Kitchener name change debate being revisited’) to the televised broadcast, this was not the first time that the 1916 vote emerged as a point of debate. 3 In fact, the First World War–era name change proved to be a headache for city councillors in the early 1990s. At that time, many residents, particularly from the local German-Canadian community, called for the ‘historical wrong’ of 1916 to be redressed through the proposed revival of the Berlin place name.
This article examines the original (early 1990s) and latest resurfaced debates over the City of Kitchener’s controversial, historical name change through an analysis of relevant news sources. To contextualize the findings, the article begins with a review of the literature on toponyms, memory and contestation. I point out that while much has been written about the politics of place naming and re-naming, with few exceptions, most of the contributions are centred on street names rather than city names. This article then addresses the formative roots of the lingering problem in the Canadian city (Figure 1) through a brief review of the well-documented 1916 name change event that resulted in one controversial name being replaced by another (Campbell, 2015; Chadwick, 1992; Coschi, 2018; English and McLaughlin, 1983; Lovasz, 2008; McKegney, 1991; Robinson, 2019; Wright, 2011). 4 To further contextualize the story, the revival in the cultural display of German identity that occurred in Kitchener–Waterloo during the early stages of official multiculturalism in Canada will be subsequently addressed. This article then examines the unexplored issue of the early 1990s Berlin–Kitchener debate, before briefly addressing the most recent manifestation of the place name controversy and comparing it with the previous one. I argue that the origins of the early 1990s and 2020 controversies are quite different and reflect different concerns. In particular, whereas the early 1990s debate was centred more on the cultural politics of reviving the original Berlin city name, the most recent manifestation of the place name debate revolved solely around the appropriateness of maintaining the present-day city name of Kitchener. In particular, I point out that rather than being tied to issues concerning community identity, heritage and ethnic memory, as was the case of the 1990s controversy, the origins of and media attention that was recently directed towards a single Facebook post and to a subsequent online petition for toponymic change have more to do with the current prominence of social justice-related concerns and the not infrequent attendant call by some to expunge difficult memories from place, including those embodied in place names. 5
Location of Kitchener, Ontario.
By addressing the resurfaced debates over the 1916 Berlin/Kitchener name change, this article contributes to the study of place names and memory in two ways. First, this article serves to address the very limited research that exists on the cultural politics of place (re-)naming at the city scale. Second, this article helps to fill in a gap in critical place names studies by addressing the contestation of urban toponyms and the memory embodied within, as an act of social/transitional justice, showcasing one recent example of a broader global trend.
Toponymic change: from street names to city names
Although there is a very long history of research on place names, the study of toponyms has grown significantly over the past three decades in terms of research focus and spatial scale. Specifically, whereas much of the earlier literature was focussed on the etymology of place names, a growing volume of work has examined the cultural politics of place-naming and re-naming, particularly in terms of the contestation and commodification of toponyms. In addition, there has been a noticeable expansion in such critical place-name studies (or ‘critical toponymy’) (Rose-Redwood et al., 2010) from street names to other spatial scales, including the city.
Mangena (2020) notes that ‘the politics of street naming has been at the forefront of the critical approach to toponymy’ (p. 1017). Although not the subject of this article, the literature on the cultural politics of street naming is nonetheless relevant to this research. For example, much has been written about the ‘toponymic cleansing’ of street names that often follows regime change (Azaryahu, 2011, 2012; Hui, 2019). Such research, which to date has largely focussed on former member states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc (Azaryahu, 1997; Chloupek, 2019; Creţan and Matthews, 2016; Erőss, 2017; Light and Young, 2014; Palonen, 2008; Rusu, 2019a, 2020), identifies the act of place naming as a reflection of power. That is, those in power (i.e. political authorities) possess the ability to inscribe place, based on particular ideological meanings; however, the resultant geographies of public memory can be contested and renegotiated once political circumstances change. In addition, another strand of research that is also of relevance to this article is centred on the re-evaluation and replacement of commemorative street names as an act of social justice. Such research has addressed the importance of replacing controversial toponyms with new names that give voice to formerly suppressed and marginalized identities. To date, such research has centred largely on street renaming as it relates to racialized communities in the United States (Alderman, 2003; Alderman and Inwood, 2013; Brasher et al., 2020; Rose-Redwood, 2008). Finally, a newer strand of research on place names, including streets, has addressed the commodification of place names for tourism and place marketing purposes (Light, 2014; Light and Young, 2015; Shoval, 2013; Sotoudehnia and Rose-Redwood, 2019). Although this smaller body of research pertains less to the case study presented in this article, it does apply to the original Berlin–Kitchener name change given that part of the rationale for the controversial historic event was tied to local business interests; in particular, the call for the name change was not only linked to growing war-time anti-German sentiment, but also to growing concerns by the city’s manufacturers about the difficulty of selling goods with the ‘made-in-Berlin’ label (Wright, 2011).
While the majority of contributions to critical place names studies have centred on street name change, a small body of studies have also begun to address the politics of place names at other spatial scales, such as schools (Mangena, 2020; Rusu, 2019b), sports stadiums (Medway et al., 2019), iconic architecture (Sotoudehnia and Rose-Redwood, 2019), memorials and public parks (Fuchs, 2015), urban infrastructure, including metro stations (Rose-Redwood et al., 2019), neighbourhoods (Madden, 2018; Wideman and Masuda, 2018), and cities (Ji, 2018; Kearns and Lewis, 2019; Kolås, 2004; Post and Alderman, 2014; Van de Putte, 2021). Of the five studies on urban place names, two explore the various effects of tourism-driven city-renaming in China (Ji, 2018; Kolås, 2004), one examines public reactions in New Zealand to a short-lived name change proposal that arose for place marketing purposes (Kearns and Lewis, 2019), one explores how residents in Oświęcim (Auschwitz), Poland, demarcate the memory of the Holocaust as it relates to their usage of the town’s ‘living’ versus ‘dead’ place name (Van de Putte, 2021), and another examines a war-time effort to de-Germanize an American landscape with the renaming of a ‘New Berlin’ in the state of Ohio (Post and Alderman, 2014). While the first two contributions are not relevant to this study given their tourism focus, the other three papers cover issues touched upon in this article; namely, public reactions to a proposed name change (Kearns and Lewis, 2019), tensions over place name usage as it relates to history and memory (Van de Putte, 2021), and toponymic change as an outcome of war-time, anti-German sentiment (Post and Alderman, 2014). Consequently, a short summary of some of the relevant findings and concepts from these three studies follows.
Similar to this study, Kearns and Lewis (2019) examined a campaign to rename a city, including the reasons behind it and reactions against it. Unlike the proposals for name change that are addressed in this article, the proposal that they analyse was based solely on economic considerations. In particular, the short-lived campaign that was made in 2016 to rename Blenheim, New Zealand, after the famous Marlborough wine region the municipality is located in, was based on the idea that toponymic change would increase the brand recognition of the town. However, Blenheim’s residents did not wish to see a significant part of their social history erased for economic goals; they successfully resisted the campaign that had been introduced by some local businesspeople, through a ‘flurry’ of letters sent to the local media. Of significance to this article, Kearns and Lewis (2019) note in their review of the literature on place branding and toponymy that ‘emotional ownership’ of place names can be ‘tenacious and resilient’, especially when such names have been in place long enough (p. 873).
Unlike the previous work, Van de Putte’s (2021) article does not examine a proposal for toponymic name change, but rather explores how residents and policymakers of Oświęcim/Auschwitz conceptualize and internalize the two place names as they relate to the memory of the Holocaust. To do so, Van de Putte (2021: 94) applies the concept of memoryscapes – or ‘material and symbolic spaces in which memory is expressed’ as Kapralski (2017: 171) conceptualizes it – to his analysis. He reveals how the usage of the different place names depends on the audience and context at hand, and how the resulting differentiation of an Oświęcim memoryscape from the German occupation Auschwitz memoryscape may help relieve the burden to which residents are exposed, living in a town associated with mass-scale death. Of significance to this study is Van de Putte’s application of the memoryscape concept to place names, since memoryscapes are most often explained as ‘particular clusters of spaces and locales which have a particular significance in the ways in which people relate to and narrate the past’ (Kappler, 2017: 132).
Finally, Post and Alderman (2014) explored a case of toponymic change that was part of a wider First World War–era effort to de-Germanize place names across the United States. Their study revealed that the 1918 name change of New Berlin, Ohio, was influenced not only by growing anti-German sentiment, but also by economic considerations similar to those that led to the 1916 Berlin/Kitchener name change. In fact, that event in Canada was cited in at least one of the many letters that the two Hoover companies of New Berlin had received, demanding they be proactive in encouraging the renaming of the town. Fearing the loss of sales from disgruntled customers, the companies initiated the petition that led to ‘wiping New Berlin off the map’. Although Post and Alderman’s (2014) study helps contextualize the anti-German sentiment and extreme xenophobia that also flourished south of the border after the United States’ entry into the First World War, no attention is paid to the legacy of the historic event. Indeed, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no studies have explored the lingering, multi-generational controversy that may surround the re-naming of a city. This article sheds light on the potential negative legacy of toponymic change as revealed in two separate debates that emerged over the former and present-day place names of a Canadian city. Specifically, this article explores a heated debate that unfolded three decades ago in Kitchener, Ontario, about the appropriateness of reviving the original city name as well as a more recent discussion of the appropriateness of maintaining the city’s current name. Thus, this article offers a unique look into how place names at the city scale can be contested and how the underlying reasons for such contestation can change over time as the interplay between memory, demographic change and changing social trends continues to evolve.
Beginning of the problem: the Berlin–Kitchener name change (1916)
The small hamlet that would become known as Berlin 6 in 1833 (originally Sandhills and later Ebytown) was established in the early 1800s by German-speaking Mennonites from Pennsylvania. 7 Beginning in the late 1820s, Berlin became the choice destination for several waves of settlers from various regions in the German Confederation (1815–1866). Up until 1850, a large number of the newcomers hailed from the predominantly Roman Catholic areas of southwest Germany as well as from German-speaking areas in Alsace-Lorraine; they, in turn, were followed from the mid-century onwards by larger numbers of Lutherans from the central and northern regions of pre- and post-unification Germany (Liebbrandt, 1973). Together, the arrival of these peoples contributed to the growth of Berlin, which was incorporated as a village in 1854, receiving town status in 1870 and finally city status in 1912. The influx of thousands of German immigrants over the course of the nineteenth century also contributed to Berlin’s association as a centre of German, rather than Mennonite cultural identity.
At the onset of the First World War, Berlin, Ontario, was a demographically unique city in Canada, given that the majority of its residents were neither of British nor French origin. 8 Seventy per cent of the residents of the small, thriving industrial city of approximately 16,000 were of German descent and the city boasted bilingual shops and German newspapers and schools. In stark contrast to what was to unfold in the war years, the cultural identity of the majority population was often openly celebrated before the First World War through various cultural activities and events (e.g. Saengerfests or song festivals). However, tolerance towards local German-Canadian identity dissipated as the ‘Great War’ progressed. In particular, xenophobia and anti-German propaganda affected the thinking and actions of many soldiers from the 118th Battalion, which was stationed in the city. By mid-March 1916, some of the battalion’s soldiers had not only looted small businesses and the German Club offices in Berlin’s Concordia Hall, but had also roughed up a German Lutheran pastor who opposed the war, parading the terrified clergyman through the streets (Chadwick, 1992; English and McLaughlin, 1983; Wright, 2011). In addition to other shocking acts of violence, young men were regularly harassed and ridiculed, and the city’s iconic bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I, which had stood next to a statue of Queen Victoria since 1897, went missing for a second and final time during the war, never to be found again. Fearing further violence, but especially spurred on by the business interests of the city’s manufacturers and Board of Trade, a proposal to hold a referendum on renaming the city was passed by Berlin’s town council. Although the idea to erase Berlin from the map was an unpopular one within the wider community, on 19 May 1916, 3057 people cast their vote on the issue. To the dismay of many, the proposal to rename Berlin won by a narrow margin (81 votes). Certainly, intimidation and fear of reprisal played a role in the outcome (Campbell, 2015; Robinson, 2019) as did the fact that the names of many German-born residents were removed from the voters’ list due to their enemy alien birth (Coschi, 2018). 9 A second referendum was held in late June to select the new name. However, of the 4897 registered voters, only 892 bothered to cast ballots. Of those, 346 chose Kitchener, beating out the second most popular name, Brock (a heroic military figure of War of 1812 fame), by 11 votes. A petition subsequently signed by 2000 Berliners to maintain the place name was dismissed by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario (Campbell, 2015) and on 1 September 1916, Berlin, Ontario, ceased to exist when the new name became official.
A cultural revival in Canada’s ‘German capital’ (late 1960s onwards)
As a legacy of the trauma inflicted upon the community during the First World War, public celebrations of German cultural identity in Kitchener and adjacent Waterloo (hereafter Kitchener–Waterloo or the ‘twin cities’) were discouraged for several decades. A more acceptable place identity and heritage was cultivated in the interwar period that drew upon the area’s Mennonite roots (Hayes, 1999: 131). As Hayes (1999: 145) explained, ‘In the face of a collective memory of the First World War that had demonized Germany and things German, [local community leaders] fostered a more innocuous form of German-Canadian identity. . .’; their ‘revisionist approach’ to dealing with the presence of a German identity in the area ‘within the prevailing memory of war’, involved emphasizing the founding myth of the German-speaking Mennonites’ early 1800s trek to Waterloo County and their subsequent contributions to the nation (Hayes 1999: 131). Thus, although ‘there was minimal overlap between these historic communities’ with the Mennonites being associated with farming and the Germans with commercial manufacturing (Spigel and Bathelt, 2019: 273), the county’s rural Mennonite character was stressed, despite most of the county’s urban dwellers not being of Mennonite origin (Kobus, 2005).
It took well over a half century before the German community of Kitchener–Waterloo made an effort to once again celebrate its cultural heritage in public with non-German Canadian residents, albeit through a cultural event that had little to do with the origins of most residents there of German background: Oktoberfest. As an innocuous event that would be tolerated if not welcomed by those of different ethnic backgrounds, the Bavarian beer-centred festival fit the needs of the diverse post–Second World War German-Canadian community whose origins now stretched from Germany to Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia, among other countries. 10 Held for the first time as a public event at the German Concordia Club in 1967, the year of Canada’s Centennial, what was to eventually become a 9-day long annual event was officially celebrated as a citywide festival 2 years later. K-W Oktoberfest, as it is now officially known, subsequently became an important festival event, one that is marketed as the largest of its kind outside of Bavaria (Xiao and Smith, 2004).
Local tolerance to public expressions of German cultural identity was further tested a year after the first official Oktoberfest. In 1970, the remains of German prisoners-of-war who died in Canada during the First and Second World Wars were re-interred from three dozen burial sites across the country to a small secluded parcel of land within Kitchener’s Woodland Cemetery. Despite some initial opposition to the move, the initiative was accepted due to the widely recognized symbolic significance of Kitchener as Canada’s ‘German capital’. Annual remembrance events which were attended for several decades by German veterans of the Second World War went on without any serious problem as they still do (Kovacs, 2016). To be sure, such displays of a once suppressed ethnic cultural identity were given a major boost with Canada’s official adoption of multiculturalism in 1971 and the attendant interest that the new policy fostered in the documentation and celebration of ethnic settlement histories and cultures across the country (Mackey, 2002). The display of German identity in Kitchener–Waterloo also reflected the sheer number of ethnic German immigrants who had settled in the ‘twin cities’ in the 1950s after the Canadian federal government lifted its restrictions on German immigration due to labour shortages. Although the overall proportion of residents of German ethnic origin in the Kitchener–Waterloo census area began to decline even before Berlin became Kitchener (dropping to 50% by 1931; < 5% by 2011), the influx of German nationals and ethnic German immigrants (Volksdeutsche) in the post–Second World War period contributed to ‘a visible German identity to an extent not seen since the turn of the century’ (Kobus, 2005: 21), with the total number of residents of German ethnic origin peaking in 1971 (Spigel and Bathelt, 2019).
The controversial vote resurrected: reactions and responses (1991–1993)
The reunification of West and East Germany in 1990 was widely celebrated by the various German community centres that existed in Kitchener. However, a year later, vestiges of anti-German sentiment revealed themselves within the ‘twin cities’ after the topic of Kitchener’s original name began to be addressed within the local media. The first article on the topic appeared in the October 1991 issue of the Kitchener Waterloo Magazine. Titled ‘The worst of times: it wasn’t always easy being German in Canada’s German capital’, the author, journalist John Roe noted that the proud old city of Berlin became a casualty of war. Conceived in pride and prejudice, bombast and bluster, the new Kitchener was born from the corpse of Berlin, rising from broken glass and broken dreams: riots, looting mobs, troops intimidating civilians, a rigged vote, the city renamed for the inventor of concentration camps.
Curiously, reference to Herbert Kitchener’s responsibility ‘for the first concentration camps in modern times’ – a topic that received considerable academic attention even before Spies’ (1977) seminal book Methods of Barbarism? revealed not only the brutality of Kitchener’s scorched earth policy and use of civilian internment camps, 11 but also the role of his predecessor Field Marshall Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832–1914) in initiating these tactics – later appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press in early December 1991. Referring to the restoration at that time of Leningrad’s original name, Saint Petersburg, the author of a short letter to the editor argued that Kitchener’s citizens ought to ‘show the same courage . . . and restore the old name’. 12 Although it is not known if this obscure letter in a publication from a city in another Canadian province had any connection with what was to follow, what is clear is that John Roe’s article sparked further thought about the city’s place name.
On 14 December 1991, the first of two articles authored by a retired high school teacher, freelance writer and former officer in the British and Canadian armies was published in the principal local newspaper, the Kitchener–Waterloo Record (hereafter K–W Record). Harry Currie’s article ‘Kitchener was named after an imperialistic boor’ raised the argument that since the city was building a new city hall, perhaps it was time to ‘pause and reflect on our civic name – Kitchener – examining carefully the man from whom it was adopted and why only 7% of eligible voters chose Kitchener as a new name’. While this article did not trigger much reaction apart from a letter to the editor that questioned the appropriateness of renaming the city after a European capital, 13 Currie’s follow-up article entitled ‘Righting a wrong: let’s recognize Kitchener’s German heritage and name it Berlin again’ (28 December 1991) did. In fact, the author’s call to ‘remove this blight from our past’ led to 13 news articles and 24 letters to the editor over the course of the next 5 months (3 January–30 May). As will be seen, the situation subsequently evolved from the proposed re-naming of the city to the proposed naming of a civic square and finally to a section of the new city hall that was under construction. These later proposals resulted in an additional 15 articles and 43 letters to the editor from early September 1992 to early May 1993. Thus, if the original article on the difficulty of life for local German-Canadians living in war-time Berlin/Kitchener is taken as the controversy’s starting point, then the early 1990s Kitchener name debate lasted 19 months, with only a 3-month-long break in between the two distinct phases of the controversy.
Debates for and against renaming Kitchener, January 1992–May 1992
The official response and public reaction to the call to restore Kitchener’s previous name was swift. On 3 January 1992, a news article appeared in the K–W Record, which informed readers that the city’s mayor was prepared to consider a plebiscite on the name change issue should the push behind the proposal gain any momentum; while mayor Dom Cardillo was personally opposed to the idea of re-naming the city due to the high costs involved, the implications of such a change would be explored. The mayor added that if a plebiscite were to be passed by council, it would have to wait until the next municipal elections in 1994. The same news article titled ‘Kitchener seeks report on name change to Berlin’ also contained additional information pertaining to the initiative and its chief proponent, Harry Currie. Currie maintained that since he was neither a native of Kitchener nor of German ancestry he could be ‘objective about the issue’ and view it ‘fairly dispassionately’. Currie also asserted that the vast majority of several dozen callers have been strongly in favour of his proposal. . .; [only] four callers. . .were strongly opposed and absolutely irate over his attack on the reputation of Horatio Herbert Kitchener [who he viewed as an ‘incompetent egomaniac’].
Finally, he stated that his interest on the topic was originally sparked in 1985 when the mayor of West Berlin, who he had given a book on the history of Kitchener to, asked him why the name had originally been changed.
The call to restore the city’s original name was quickly picked up by larger media sources, including CBC Radio and Television, and the Toronto Star. An article in the latter asserted that ‘Kitchener is credited with inventing the concentration camp’ and that ‘the southwestern Ontario city is looking into changing [its name] back to [to Berlin]’. 14 The idea that the name change was being seriously considered was soon challenged by a local politician in Waterloo Region, Chicopee Alderman and future mayor of Kitchener Carl Zehr. He firmly stated, ‘We are not, repeat not, changing the name of the city’. 15 The results from an automated phone survey by the K–W Record to the question ‘what do you think of the idea to call Kitchener Berlin?’ suggested that most residents were similarly opposed to any consideration being given to the proposed re-naming of their city: of the 316 callers involved, 233 were against any change, 69 were for Berlin and 14 favoured some other alternative. 16 Of the callers who favoured the proposed name reversal, one argued that it was ‘the only way to correct the wrong that was done many, many years ago’ 17 and another stated, ‘It was a pathetic irony that Berlin was called Kitchener after the inventor of the modern concentration camps [. . . ;] a war criminal responsible for the deaths of some 30,000 women, children and old men’. 18 Although the majority of those who objected cited the ‘wasteful costs’ involved – an understandable concern at that time given the early 1990s recession – or to the reality that Kitchener was now a ‘diverse, multicultural community’, the objection of a significant minority of callers was tied to their associations of the Berlin place name with Germany’s Nazi past. As news reporter Philip Jalsevac explained, ‘there were 30 callers who objected to the name change partly or wholly based on their association of the name Berlin with German militarism, Nazis, the two world wars, the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’. 19 In response to such callers, Currie maintained that history was repeating itself. He maintained that many residents of German ancestry were ‘still concerned about speaking out publicly in favour of renaming the city . . . And I know why. Fear, fear of being identified. . . . I realized it (the racism) hasn’t gone away. It’s still here’. 20
The emotionally charged debate over the name-change issue had only just begun. News that Kitchener’s City Council had hurriedly voted against restoring the name at the end of their meeting on January 13 without having offered notice of their intention to vote only inflamed the debate as a contributor to the K–W Record argued. 21 Indeed, prompted by the ‘flippant attitude’ held by council members on the matter, a lobby group was soon formed with the goal of petitioning for the city’s name change. 22 Significantly, the ad hoc committee – led by long-time resident and retired machinist Elmar Deutschmann – was open to having the city renamed with any place name be it German, Indigenous or something other, so long as people had a choice in the decision; moreover, the group was open to a compromise, including naming an area in front of the new city hall Berlin Square. 23
Many letters to the editor appeared in the local newspaper over the next days, weeks and months; some supported the proposed name change while many more opposed it. The letters that bore such titles as ‘Bear name of city with pride’ and ‘He was no hero’ seemed to only demand counter responses. For example, one of the first letters to the editor, which extended the place name issue to the need for a formal apology on the part of Canadian and provincial governments for the discriminatory atmosphere they had created during the war 24 was met by a lengthy attack on the chief proponent of the name reversal and in particular Currie’s ‘shallow’ understanding of the city’s history. 25 It was accompanied by several shorter letters that either denounced the proposal as a waste of time and money 26 or attempted to defend the city’s namesake as a ‘proven administrator’ 27 and war-time ‘rallying point’ for military service 28 who accomplished much ‘to bring about the final defeat of the enemy’. 29
In mid-April 1992, a news article titled ‘“Berlin” supporters feel repercussions’ appeared in the K–W Record. In it, the news reporter noted that the head of the ad hoc committee that was pushing for a referendum on the name change issue had received a number of threats over the phone, some thinly veiled and others more direct. In particular, Deutschmann was quoted as saying: ‘somebody called me and said they will get me one way or the other. If they have to burn my house down to get me, they will. . .’ The reporter added that the German Canadian Congress had recently endorsed the proposal to re-name Kitchener in its national newsletter; according to the vice president of the Ontario branch of the organization, the act of renaming the city would serve to recognize ‘the large contributions the German Canadian community has made to the development of the area at large and the city of Kitchener in particular’. 30 In addition, the reporter noted that news of the debate had even spread to Germany; an article in the Berliner Morgenpost reported that the call to bring back Kitchener’s original place name had ‘opened a dark chapter in Canada’s history’.
By late May, debate over the name change campaign was ‘still simmering’ and petitions from German citizens were even finding their way to Canada. 31 In particular, Sybille Forster-Rentmeister, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto-based German English magazine Echo Germanica did her best to support the ongoing campaign in Kitchener. The latest issue of her magazine not only contained stories about the history of the German pioneers of Waterloo County, but also clip-out petition slips for the renaming of Kitchener to Berlin, many of which were evidently finding their way overseas to the family members and friends of the magazine’s subscribers. Tellingly, however, Forster-Rentmeister asserted that although support was coming in ‘from far and wide’, the conundrum was that ‘the German population of Kitchener is just as afraid as they were then (in 1916)’. 32
Finding an alternative: from Berlin Square to Berlin Tower, September 1992–May 1993
The initial controversy over the call to rename Kitchener lasted a full 5 months, with a final letter to the editor being simply titled ‘Give Berlin a sudsy burial’ (30 May 1992), a title that played on the city’s annual beer-centred Oktoberfest event. However, the 3-month-long summertime break on the issue was followed by a second and even longer round of exchanges between the two sides of the place name debate; this was in spite of the fact that the call to give back the city’s original name was being replaced by a less controversial means of redressing the 1916 vote. On 3 September 1992, Philip Jalsevac provided an update to his previous articles in the K–W Record on the Kitchener–Berlin controversy. Titled ‘Berlin Square could be name of city plaza’, his article provided readers with several important developments in the evolving story. First, one alderman who had opposed the call to rename the city, was open to recognizing the German heritage of the area through other means, including naming the new city hall’s plaza, Berlin Civic Square. Second, another alderman lent his support to a proposal by the German Canadian Business and Professional Men’s Association to invest in a historic plaque for the new city hall that honoured the ‘German heritage of the community and its early pioneers’. Significantly, the president of that community organization stated that while it was probably already ‘too late’ to rename Kitchener; ‘most of the Germans would feel good about’ other symbolic gestures that recognized the historic Berlin, including the naming of the plaza. Finally, while the Cooperative Council of German Clubs from Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge expressed no opinion on the new proposal, it did not favour the original since it was deemed ‘too impractical’ and could ‘create bad feelings’.
This article triggered a final wave of letters to the editor that lasted a total of 7 months (September 1992–March 1993) with only a brief interruption in the month of October. The majority of the letters that were published opposed the ‘Berlin Square’ proposal. While some provided alternative names (e.g. Sandhills, Vimy Square) including German ones (e.g. alle Leute, Treffplatz) without getting into the politics of the place name controversy, others continued to attack the idea of resurrecting the Berlin name due to their associations of it with the Third Reich and the Second World War. For example, the writer of one such letter wrote, Many friends and relatives of our citizens gave their lives in the Second World War in the struggle to destroy the original Berlin and all the evil associated with it. [The alderman who supports the new proposal] might have forgotten, but not the rest of us.
33
Similarly, another individual wrote, ‘Berlin? Pray not. I heard Hitler’s ranting and raving during the war years. I’ve never forgotten it’.
34
Still others seemed to question the Canadian-ness of those supporting the proposal: ‘I am Canadian and say no to Berlin Square’
35
; has anyone noticed that the principal proponents . . . are postwar arrivals on the scene – not of the pioneer German settler stock. . . ? . . . To now honor the name of that capital . . . dishonors the lives of a significant number of its late citizens now buried in Europe.
36
One of several reactions to such letters linked the ‘hostile statement[s]’ to racism 37 ; in a similar vein, a professor from the University of Waterloo asserted in a lengthier opinion piece that ‘there still are hatemongers in this community. . . Surely German-bashing is as reprehensible as any other form of discrimination’. 38
As the heated debate continued to unfold, the city government assigned its arts committee the task of seeking public input on potential names for the plaza. In total, 135 names from 581 ballots were received by the city’s 30 December deadline. Remarkably, despite the fact that Berlin was favoured by a clear majority (383) of respondents, the committee members chose not to include it in their eight-name shortlist (Mackenzie King, Civic Square, Kitchener Common, Kitchener Square, Black Walnut Square, Celebration Square, Wilkommen Square and The Meeting Place).
39
Alderman Mike Wagner who headed the committee explained that their decision not to include Berlin was influenced by the concern that its selection would ‘stir up renewed tensions’; tensions that were certainly flamed by the visit to the city of the highly controversial English author and noted Holocaust denier, David Irving, 2 months before. As one critic of the decision later wrote, If you look hard enough, you will always find an excuse for everything; this time it was the visit of a British citizen by the name of David Irving. He single-handedly and unknowingly persuaded the city fathers to reject the wish of an overwhelming majority in favor of the ‘anything but’ minority.
40
While Wagner tried to justify the committee’s decision by simply noting that Kitchener ‘is no longer a German community’, 41 he nonetheless sought another solution by proposing that the new city hall’s office tower be named ‘Berlin Tower’. 42
On 18 January 1993, deliberations were made by Kitchener’s city council on the name of the civic square. At the suggestion of one alderman, Jim Zeigler, Berlin was added to the 8-name shortlist along with three additional names (Cardillo, Schmaltz and Heritage). However, a vote subsequently reduced the expanded list down to three names and Berlin was not one of them (Civic Square, Heritage Square and Kitchener Common). A member of the executive of a German-Canadian business association later commented on the addition of Berlin to the list as a ‘token gesture’. 43 While six aldermen agreed on Civic Square, 44 news emerged the following day that one alderman’s absence jeopardized any motion to pass the selected name. 45 This prompted some additional debate, including three letters to the editor with the titles, ‘Civic Square fits as city’s best choice’, ‘Honor [William Lyon Mackenzie] King’ (the 10th prime minister of Canada who was born in Berlin/Kitchener in 1874), and ‘Civic square name stinks’. One individual’s creative proposal to use the Berlin Square name as a tourist draw was also published that week. In it, the author proposed transforming the civic square and its historic name into something more positive by displaying in it some of the 30 sections or so of the dismantled Berlin Wall that the German Government had donated to Ottawa. 46
The committee’s choice of the generic Civic Square name (renamed Carl Zehr Square in 2014) was passed a week after the initial vote 47 and a motion on Ald. Wagner’s proposal to name the office tower of the city hall after the city’s original name was introduced and eventually adopted with the first names for the Berlin area, Sandhills and Ebytown, being used for the east and west wings of the new structure. 48 Given the controversy that the previous two proposals had generated, the decision to sign off on Berlin Tower unsurprisingly spurred additional reactions in the local media that lasted a further 5 weeks. An article titled ‘Berlin name upsets war veteran’ 49 was followed by several final letters to the editor on the subject, including two that predictably linked the name to Hitler’s Germany as evident in the following extracts: ‘Berlin Tower could more appropriately become the Eagle’s nest, in honor of Adolf Hitler’s hideaway in the Alps’ 50 and ‘Let me remind [the aldermen] that Berlin was the headquarters of Adolf Hitler. It was also the headquarters of the hated Gestapo and SS [and the city where] Hitler and his staff formulated the final “Jewish solution”’. 51 For Bartl (1994: 317), responses such as the above, reflected prejudice shaped not only by the two world wars, but also by negative media depictions of Germans, as well as the frequent omission or downplaying by the media, since the First World War, of the German ethnic community’s contributions to Canada.
In summary, the early 1990s place name debate began in earnest with one individual’s call to right what he and many perceived to be an historic wrong. The suggestion to revive the Berlin name in place of a toponym associated with a controversial figure in military history, sparked a fierce debate that gradually evolved from an initial proposal to re-name the city to subsequent ones that called for the cultural memory of Berlin, Ontario, to be commemorated through the naming of a city plaza and later, a section of Kitchener’s new city hall. That such a fierce debate ensued in all three distinct phases of the early 1990s place name debate reveals the significance that toponyms play as markers of memory and collective identity. As a type of toponymic memoryscape, both Berlin and Kitchener had particular significance in how residents on both sides of the name change debate related to and narrated their pasts. For supporters of the name change proposal, which undoubtedly included many German-Canadians who immigrated to the region in the 1950s, Berlin was a name worthy of returning to the map, given the city’s long association as the ‘German capital of Canada’. However, for those opposing it, Kitchener remained the appropriate toponym, despite the historic deeds of the city’s namesake. Strong resistance to the name change proposal certainly tied into a combination of factors (e.g. costs, demographic realities, prejudices), including most importantly, memory and time. As Moon et al. (2015) explain, and as seen in Kearns and Lewis’ (2019) case study from New Zealand, ‘Resistance ought to be expected when a name has been in place long enough to have accrued strong associations with local identity and collective memory’ (as paraphrased in Kearns and Lewis, 2019: 873). Clearly, emotional ownership of the Kitchener place name was just as strong as the emotional ownership that many, particularly from the German community, continued to have towards the original city name.
The re-emerged place name controversy: a social media post (2020)
On 15 June 2020, a videographer for CTV News Kitchener reported on an emergent story surrounding the Kitchener toponym. The short broadcast in front of Kitchener’s city hall was accompanied by some historic footage, an interview with a local historian and a snapshot of a single Facebook message that was threatening to resurrect the place name controversy of the early 1990s – a controversy which had by then been forgotten. 52 The social media post by Kitchener resident Jenna Thomas was addressed to her friends with the aim of ‘shar[ing] some information on our city name and the history behind it’. Thomas’ two paragraph-long post began with an acknowledgement of the wartime anti-German sentiment that had led to the city’s name change, followed by a short note on who the city was named for and why that was problematic: Field Marshall Kitchener ‘was responsible for placing South African women and children into disease-ridden concentration camps and burning down local farms’ during the Boer War; these actions, she claimed, also became ‘a huge inspiration to the Nazi party during their planning of “the final solution”’. Thomas felt that her friends and fellow citizens needed to be aware of the issue and speak out: ‘There is no room in our city for hate and this name sure does have some heavy meaning behind it’. 53 Although the first part of this statement could have applied to the early 1990s controversy in terms of what the local German community faced with the many insults hurled at it, its use in the social media post pertained to a different context. Thomas continued, ‘We should be detaching ourselves from the atrocities committed throughout history but instead we are glorifying those responsible’. She subsequently encouraged the readers of her post to contact their municipal representatives or the mayor, and concluded her post by saying, ‘We are watching as the world is changing. If we cannot take small steps towards such change in our own backyards we cannot expect change on a larger scale’. 54
An online news article with a link to that same broadcast was updated a few hours later with a response from a representative of the city: ‘It’s not surprising that recent world events have us contemplating the origin of our City’s name’. . . . ‘While we in no way condone, diminish, or forget his actions, Kitchener has become so much more than its historic connection to a British field marshall’.
55
One of the ‘world events’ the city official was referring to was George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis 3 weeks prior. That event reinforced the activities of those concerned with social justice matters, especially racial injustice, including one young man of colour who was reportedly sympathetic to the original Berlin name. Nicholas Roy appeared in a follow-up news broadcast the next day and stated: We want to change some of the racial issues in Kitchener–Waterloo, and that would require more than just changing the name, but my big concern is more or less for history’s sake, is Lord Kitchener somebody the city should be named after?
56
City councillors responded to the social media post and to Roy’s call for a referendum on the Kitchener place name by arguing that apart from the costs involved there were ‘more pressing issues to resolve in regards to racism than a name change’; references were subsequently made to the planned creation of an equity and inclusion policy, the development of courses on anti-racism and changes to recruitment policies to ‘remove systematic barriers within the city’s administration’. 57 Although the official response acknowledged that the legacy of the city’s namesake was ‘not one to be celebrated’, this acknowledgement was accompanied by the argument, ‘we cannot erase history, we can only learn from it’. 58 Unlike the early 1990s debate, the 2020 place name controversy was very short-lived and received little other media coverage 59 or any reaction from the ageing German community of Kitchener–Waterloo. 60 While an online petition for Kitchener’s name change, which was initiated by Roy and directed at the city’s mayor and Kitchener City Council, did receive nearly a thousand signatures, the last comment at the time of this writing was already a year old. Significantly, of the 41 comments in the ‘Reasons for Signing’ section, only three referred to Berlin as the appropriate name, with the majority of other comments simply expressing support to rid the city of its problematic, ‘racist’ name. 61 Curiously, a second online petition to rename Kitchener also exists within the same petition website (change.org). It was initiated by another individual only a day after Roy’s petition (‘Referendum on renaming Kitchener’) was launched. Although Lina Elm’s petition, ‘Change the name of the city of Kitchener’ contained more specific information about the 1916 name change and Lord Kitchener’s legacy than the preceding one (e.g. war-time anti-German sentiment, Kitchener’s scorched earth tactics and number of civilians deaths), it did not receive as much attention from supporters of Kitchener’s name change (388 vs 985 supporters for Roy’s petition) and, consequently, contains far fewer accompanying comments (12 in total). 62 Moreover, unlike the first online petition, it did not receive any media coverage despite being directed at all of the individual city council members of Kitchener along with the mayor, city government and regional municipality of Waterloo.
While social justice-related matters, such as racial discrimination and injustice, have received much attention in recent years, the means by which societies come to terms with violent pasts – what is embodied within the United Nations’ explanation of ‘transitional justice’ 63 – is also gaining increased attention. It has been noted that in many settler societies, efforts to confront this past, are often expressed at the grassroots level with calls to expunge difficult memories of place, whether they be embodied in monuments, memorials, building names, street names or even city place names (Burch-Brown, 2020; Carlson and Farrelly, 2022; Mahoney, 2021; Stemplowska, 2021). As already alluded to, this social trend was bolstered in 2020 by the widespread news coverage of George Floyd’s death. As Carlson and Farrelly (2022) note, his death as well as the earlier killing by police of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, had not only sparked widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice across the United States, but also contributed to supportive protests for the Black Lives Matter movement and ‘the subsequent challenging [and toppling] of statues erected to heroes of Empire and supporters of the slave trade’ elsewhere in the world (p. 69). To be sure, these troubling events in the United States also contributed to reinforcing localized efforts in Canada to remove markers of memory associated with individuals, whose names like Kitchener, Macdonald, Russell and Vaughan, embody, for some, the violent histories of European imperialism and colonial rule.
Indeed, that the underlying rationale for the 2020 petitions for Kitchener’s name change was linked to the cause of social and transitional justice, is clear from the following extracts from the respective ‘Petition details’ sections: Lord Kitchener started the world’s first modern concentration camp system during the first Boer War against the civilian populations present there. Sans Kitchener, the Orange Free State’s and South African Republic’s right to govern their own affairs may have yet been realized. Kitchener was instrumental in conquering the Sudan, at the time defending against an encroaching British Empire. (from Roy’s ‘Referendum on renaming Kitchener’) Our people are working toward recognizing and dismantling systemic racism and acknowledging the harm that colonialism has caused Indigenous and Black peoples. A major part of these efforts is putting an end to the glorification of imperialist figures, by removing statues and monuments. The name of this city is a monument to the violent, racist, imperialist history of this country and it is time for us to take this step towards a better future. (from Elm’s ‘Change the name of the city of Kitchener’ petition)
Supportive comments that accompanied both petitions linked the city’s historical namesake to cruelty, racism, genocide, militarism, colonialism and imperialism. Other comments suggested that a name change would send a message of ‘reconciliation to marginalized communities’, help disassociate the city from ‘colonialism, eurocentrism and discrimination’ and contribute to ‘build[ing] a more progressive and egalitarian city’. Thus, the name change petitions, not to mention Thomas’ social media post and media attention given to it, tie into the current prominence of social justice-related matters, including those concerning difficult heritage and memory. Certainly, the official response to the call for a name change, with references being made to the need to combat racism and discrimination, also reveals the different context that underlined the short-lived 2020 place name controversy from the very lengthy and emotionally charged one of the early 1990s.
Conclusion: past, present and future
The rise of critical place name studies in recent decades has served to shed light on the role that toponyms play as markers of memory and identity. Much of this growing body of research concerns the cultural politics that underlie place (re-)naming efforts, especially at the scale of the street. This study adds to this specialized area of research, as well as to the broader, interrelated field of memory studies in two ways. First, this article has contributed to addressing a scarcity of studies on the cultural politics and historical legacy of city (re-)naming. Second, this article has also served to address a similar dearth of research on a growing phenomenon in many settler societies involving the contestation of toponyms whose historical namesakes are associated, by some, with European Imperialism, slavery and/or colonial rule. Regarding the article’s first contribution, this study reveals the complexity of urban place name debates, which can evolve over time, as seen within the early 1990s debate as well as between it and the 2020 controversy. The two place name debates also reveal the significance that urban toponyms can play as a type of memoryscape; a symbolic space of memory, in such cases, that affect how people relate to the past and narrate it. As evident from both debates, such toponymic memoryscapes can be acceptable for some while at the same time being unacceptable and unwanted for others due to the differing meanings ascribed. In addition, in regard to this article’s second contribution, the short-lived 2020 controversy that was explored has served to illustrate one of many recent grassroots efforts in Canada that seek to expunge difficult memories from place, whether they be embodied in monuments, memorials or place names.
In terms of the early 1990s debate, initial discussion over Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s controversial legacy as the alleged ‘inventor of concentration camps’, 64 shifted towards the question of whether Berlin was a place name worthy of reviving. As the long and heated debate progressed, the means by which some individuals sought to redress what they saw as an historical wrong (1916 vote) changed from the initial effort to re-name the city Berlin to subsequent proposals to name a civic plaza and later a section of Kitchener’s new city hall with that toponym. In contrast, the 2020 controversy did not call for any revival of the Berlin place name, nor did it involve the ageing German-Canadian community of Kitchener–Waterloo. Instead, the short-lived call to re-name Kitchener was initiated by several younger individuals who objected to their city being named after an individual whose actions were responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths. What is clear is that the rationales that underlined both calls for urban toponymic change were markedly different, reflecting changing circumstances, realities and social trends. Specifically, whereas the early 1990s place name debate centred more on the cultural politics of reviving the original city name, especially as it related to ethnic memory and community identity, the most recent manifestation of the lingering Berlin/Kitchener controversy revolved solely around the appropriateness of maintaining the present-day name – a concern shaped by the current prominence of social justice-related concerns and activism.
Carlson and Farrelly (2022) recently note in reference to colonial monuments that ‘the very reason [something] may be revered by some can be the same reason it is offensive to others’ (p. 63). Both controversies examined in this article reveal that similar to monuments and memorials, urban place names can also be highly divisive and even distressing. While proponents for the restoration of the Berlin toponym in the early 1990s saw nothing wrong with that historic name given its origins in the area stretching back to the 1830s, for others, this historic toponym was unwanted as it threatened the toponymic memoryscape they had always known. That is, the place name of Kitchener had become an important part of how many people conceptualized the place they lived in, including its past. As Kearns and Lewis (2019) suggest, emotional bonds to place names can become strong, if given enough time. Moreover, for a small but vocal number of individuals, the Berlin toponym was offensive given their association of that name with the capital of the Third Reich, rather than to the nineteenth-century Prussian city Berlin/Kitchener was originally named for. In a similar vein, while most residents in today’s Kitchener are likely either unaware of or indifferent to the legacy of the historical figure their city is named after, for some, the contemporary place name should be considered a sensitive issue, given what has long been known about Herbert Kitchener’s actions.
Although media attention to the 2020 name change debate in Kitchener quickly faded, the issue may very well reappear in the future, particularly should the current trend to replace controversial memory markers, including toponyms, continue in Canada as in other settler societies. Indeed, similar efforts to replace place names include, among others in the Province of Ontario, recent calls to rename the City of Vaughan and Township of Russell due to their historic namesakes’ links to slavery. 65 The limited research in the interrelated fields of critical toponymy and memory studies on place names beyond the scale of the street certainly warrants future research into such cases. A promising area for further study might include not only an analysis of the reactions for and against the individual proposals for urban re-naming, but also a closer examination of the role media coverage plays in either encouraging or discouraging such initiatives. Finally, with regard to the Kitchener toponym, a practical consideration that will almost certainly revive the controversy in the future, no matter what the social trend may be, pertains to long-standing calls for the ‘twin cities’ of Kitchener and Waterloo – the latter being the smaller of the two – to amalgamate. Consequently, calls for the ‘toponymic cleansing’ of a once deemed appropriate but now derided place name for some, may again gain some traction when the question of amalgamation resurfaces in the future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which served to greatly strengthen this article. The author is particularly grateful for the extensive list of recommendations that was made by one of the reviewers. The author also wishes to acknowledge, very belatedly, the importance of having received the Waterloo Regional Award for Heritage Research as a graduate student some 15 years ago. The award contributed to the initial research that was used in the preparation of this article as well as in the preparation of a previous article published in this journal.
