✴ From Dundas square to Sankofa square

✴️ Needs context Dundas Square, in Toronto, was renamed Sankofa Square by the City council in June. This came after controversies about Henry Dundas‘s role in the abolition of slave trade.https://tinyurl.com/bdz2uske Dundas was a Scottish politician involved in the debate over slave trade in Britain in the 1790’s. While he was pro-abolition, he thought it would need to be gradual (https://tinyurl.com/yck4whfx); which is now criticized by historians and activists claiming he actually delayed abolition. It is a debate whether slave trade would have been abolished earlier without him. In 2020, the city of Edinburgh added a plate to his statue to “the memory of the more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas's actions".https://tinyurl.com/yj5ztn2f “Sankofa” is from the Akan language (people living mostly in Ghana). It refers to a proverb meaning "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." https://tinyurl.com/3wv4wf2u While slavery was part of the Akan society (https://tinyurl.com/bdddmxmv), the Sankofa symbol is widely used to call for a reflection on the past. Now, is renaming a square the same as “canceling history” as the author claims? This is another debate.