TORONTO – The Columbus Centre will continue to be called the Columbus Centre. That’s right. After having averted, with a mobilization that lasted more than a year its demolition, the community rejected the renaming of the community center wanted and created by the Italian-Canadians. 

About two years ago the practice of changing the names linked to controversial historical figures, if not even supporters or protagonists of racist or slave ideologies, to streets, squares, community centers began. Last July, for example, the city of Toronto approved the name change for Dundas Street.

Villa Charities – which claims to have received “requests and feedback on this issue” – has also moved in this direction. “As leaders of the Italian-Canadian community, we believed we had an obligation to engage in this necessary and relevant discussion,” reads its website.

From January to April 2022, he conducted a survey through Strategic Counsel, in which he asked respondents for approval to give the Columbus Centre another name.

Support, Villa Charities concluded, was “limited”. “Interviews and polls have shown that a name change would likely cause more division,” he says.

The Genoese explorer is a symbol of identity for some, of colonialism and racism for others. But the history and events of the past, whether good or bad, cannot be erased with a sponge. To think, for example, that only slave traders and slave traders were responsible for colonialism is not correct, because centuries of civilization and wealth have their hands dirty with blood, and of those centuries we are the descendants.

There is no need to tear down the statues or change the name of the streets if we do not change. For better or for worse, Christopher Columbus wrote a very important page of history. Changing the name of the Columbus Centre would be of no avail. For the community of Italian origin – and not only – that large building at the intersection of Lawrence and Dufferin is and will always remain the Columbus Centre.

And as when the bulldozers were coming into action to bring it down, the Italian-Canadian community also decisively rejected this latest proposal of Villa Charities.