Opinions mixed as Regina councillors look to discuss Dewdney re-naming

As Regina city councillors gave notice that they want to talk about re-naming Dewdney Avenue at the next meeting, some business owners along the street were eyeing up the idea.

At the city council meeting on Wednesday, councillors Andrew Stevens and Dan LeBlanc served a notice of motion to re-name Dewdney Avenue.

The argument is that Edgar Dewdney was involved in the development of residential schools, and thus shouldn’t have the honour of a street named after him.

Those who live and work on the road would be the most affected by the change.

When asked on Wednesday, some business owners disagreed with the idea.

“I think it should stick the way it is, especially for any of the businesses that have been on Dewdney – we’ve been on the corner basically known as Winnipeg and Dewdney for 40 years, going on actually 45,” said Terry Potter.

He said making the change doesn’t make any sense to him and he worried about creating confusion.

“I don’t think anybody that knows of Dewdney Avenue knows that the guy was part of the residential schools, I would think,” he said.

Les Lemaire agreed the name should stay the same.

“It’s been Dewdney forever, everybody knows Dewdney,” he said.

His business would have to make a lot of changes if the street changed, according to Lemaire, including anywhere their street address is listed.

When asked what he thought about the reasoning behind the change, Lemaire said he didn’t know much about it.

“Things have happened and maybe it wasn’t good but you can’t change history, you can only change the future,” he said.

Other business owners agreed with the move.

“Given the background of the name, I would say changing it is the right thing to do,” said Phong Lee.

He said there would be impacts to the businesses on Dewdney if the change was made.

“However, with the current technologies and the current way of doing business we can actually mitigate that risk very quickly,” explained Lee.

The push has been on for years for the street to be re-named, with campaigns dating back to at least 2018.

The City of Regina has already removed Dewdney from some city works, including a park and pool in 2021, renaming them Buffalo Meadows.