{"id":4147,"date":"2025-06-21T18:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T18:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4147"},"modified":"2025-06-21T18:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T18:55:08","slug":"sick-white-self-hatred-changes-road-signs-in-vancouver-endangers-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4147","title":{"rendered":"Sick White Self-Hatred Changes Road Signs in Vancouver & Endangers Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With \u0161xwm\u02590kw\u0259y\u2019 \u018fmas\u0259m, moral preening overrides safety<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • National Post<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • 20 Jun 2025<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • JAMIE SARKONAK Comment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"\/
    Vancouver city council voted to change the name for Trutch Street to Street, condemning 100 or so residents to a lifetime of addressarial grief, Jamie Sarkonak says.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The City of Vancouver describes its new name for Trutch Street, \u201c\u0161xwm\u02590kw\u0259y\u0259mas\u0259m \u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Street,\u201d as a gift, but it\u2019s more like a curse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On Tuesday, city council unanimously voted for the change, condemning 100 or so residents to a lifetime of addressarial grief. Joining them in suffering will be countless drivers who make their way down the route, delivering, visiting and otherwise trying to get from A to B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The new name means \u201cMusqueamview\u201d in Musqueam, but the city itself admits that nobody is likely to be able to read it in its letter-salad form: \u201cWith no fluent speakers left, this street name is a landmark moment for h\u0259n\u2019q\u2019\u0259min\u2019\u0259m\u2019 revitalization,\u201d notes a web page about the change. (That word beginning in \u201ch\u201d refers to the Musqueam\u2019s traditional language.) It will replace the name of Joseph Trutch (1826-1904), B.C.\u2019S first lieutenant-governor who, among other things, reduced the sizes of Indigenous reserves and denied the existence of some earlier treaties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That remark by the city contained an important admission: the purpose of changing the name of pronounceable Trutch Street into something indecipherable at 40 km\/h is political. The goal is to involve the local population in a moral exercise at the cost of their comfort and safety. Indeed, not even the Musqueam (who insisted on this visual obstacle course, according to Deputy City Manager Armin Amrolia) are going to be capable of reading it. Beyond signalling solidarity against colonialism, impeding the passage of Vancouverites and offending the local Squamish Nation, it\u2019s a functionally useless sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Emergency services have already expressed their concerns that the new name will get in the way of saving lives, largely because 911 callers might not be able to pronounce the name. Most people haven\u2019t learned linguistics to the point where they can pronounce Indigenous mainstays like the theta symbol, the tiny W, the 7 and the triangle. \u201cHelp, I\u2019m at Sixwomkeymasem Street\u201d is the most we can reasonably expect from people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    To address these concerns, the city has suggested a second set of unofficial signs that read \u201cMusqueamview St.\u201d (though it\u2019s unclear whether that solution has been finalized). Emergency mapping systems will use the unofficial English name, but it won\u2019t appear in the bylaw, which will use the official name instead. Licenses will have to be redone, as will insurance and registration slips. Then, there are land titles, bank addresses, credit cards, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anyone sending or receiving mail by Canada Post is asked to write both official and unofficial street names if possible, but to use English if only one line is available (work is being done to accept these new letters, but \u201cmost non-english lettering is not currently recognized\u201d our letter service told me in an email this week). Other internal and external address and map systems \u2014 such as transit or B.C.\u2019S insurance corporation \u2014 might be unable to digest these characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cTo move forward, the project team recommended that these systems use the name \u2018\u0161xwm\u02590k<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    St\u201d wherever possible, and those that cannot will use the name \u201cMusqueamview St\u201d with a footnote wherever possible stating \u201cMusqueamview St is a translated name available for use while colonial systems work to accept multilingual characters,\u2019\u201d reads the direction from city staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Canada Revenue Agency, meanwhile, can only accept Latin characters, numerals and basic punctuation. \u201cIn this case, since Canada Post will be supplying the English version of the street name, that is the format that will appear in CRA records,\u201d said media officer Khameron Sikoulavong in an email Tuesday. This won\u2019t have any impact on tax filing, he assures me, but I\u2019d still feel queasy not using my legal address if I were a resident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s no small matter to expand the letters that a system can use: even for this newspaper, our designer advises me, this article will be a headache to print due to the digital acrobatics involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    EASY COMMUNICATION IS NO LONGER THE PRIORITY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Perhaps Vancouver believes it can force decolonization on others by using this script of what is functionally a dead language. But that hope would be far-fetched: most entities that need to keep legal addresses on file won\u2019t get the memo that there are about 100 potential new system-incompatible entries, and many won\u2019t have the capacity to incorporate upside-down Es into their vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On the readers\u2019 side, all sorts of barriers keep these words from being useful in wayfinding: drivers with minor reading disabilities, eyesight problems and second-language capabilities in English can get around fine with numbers and words like \u201cForest Way\u201d \u2014 but with a jumble of letters with foreign marks upwards of 20 letters long? I think not. Indigenous words aren\u2019t out of the question, either; indeed, it\u2019s a tradition we should keep. Many excellent Canadian place names came to us this way, such as \u201cCanada,\u201d \u201cKitsilano,\u201d \u201cOttawa,\u201d \u201cToronto,\u201d \u201cWinnipeg\u201d and \u201cSaskatchewan.\u201d These, however, have been appropriately anglicized, which no longer satisfies the new generation of decolonial busybodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s clear that easy communication is no longer the priority. This street in Vancouver is being transformed into a \u201clearning opportunity\u201d to force upon commuters, similar to a Grade 1 classroom with labelled staplers and doors, as part of a wider trend. Toronto decided to rename its Woodsy Park to \u201cEthennonnhawahstihnen\u2019 Park\u201d in 2019, resulting in a very awkwardly named library branch. Edmonton in 2020 switched its wards over from numbers to Indigenous words like \u201cIpiihkoohkanipiaohtsi,\u201d which I imagine very few residents can spell or pronounce without seeing the word in front of them. Vancouver has elementary schools named \u201cXpey\u2019 \u201d and \u201cw\u0259k\u2019 \u0259an\u2019 \u0259st\u0259 syaqw\u0259m,\u201d a guaranteed recipe for confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So, now that our wayfinding system has been hijacked by ideologues who see getting around as a secondary, perhaps tertiary purpose, we must look to provincial ministers to help, because only they have the power to do what\u2019s right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Municipalities are not entities that are set out in the Canadian Constitution; they only exist because provincial legislatures say so. And by the same power, provincial legislatures can limit what these cities can do. The same goes for school boards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If names are getting out of hand, provincial ministers can limit the changing of historic names; they can put character limits on new street, neighbourhood and school titles to keep them to a reader-friendly length; and they can ban the use of special, non-english and non-french characters to keep a city\u2019s addresses readable by humans and databases alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    More than a cultural issue, it\u2019s an accessibility issue. Canada has official languages to prevent its people from suffering Tower-of-babel incidents. If city officials have forgotten all this, it\u2019s time for the provinces to put them in their place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With \u0161xwm\u02590kw\u0259y\u2019 \u018fmas\u0259m, moral preening overrides safety The City of Vancouver describes its new name for Trutch Street, \u201c\u0161xwm\u02590kw\u0259y\u0259mas\u0259m \u2019 Street,\u201d as a gift, but it\u2019s more like a curse. On Tuesday, city council unanimously voted for the change, condemning 100 or so residents to a lifetime of addressarial grief. Joining them in suffering will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4148,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4147\/revisions\/4148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}