The name Senator Reid has been scrubbed from a park in Surrey “in response to community feedback” about Senator Thomas Reid, said to have played “a key role in injustices against Canadians of Japanese descent before, during, and after World War II.”
The South Newton park will now be known as North Ridge Park, a news release from city hall announced Wednesday (Oct. 29).
“Our city prides itself on our diversity and on being welcoming to all people,” said Laurie Cavan, general manager of Parks, Recreation & Culture. “It’s important that we listen to community feedback and ensure our parks and facilities reflect the City’s values.”
Surrey is also home to Senator Reid Elementary School, where Lorene Oikawa, a researcher of Japanese-Canadian history, recently urged Surrey Board of Education to rename the school.
“Thomas Reid’s racist comments and actions against Japanese Canadians are well documented,” Oikawa wrote in a letter to Surrey school trustees. “It is perpetuating the injustice to have his name on a school.… Our schools must not honour racist individuals.”
Oikawa’s request was to be discussed by Surrey school trustees in September, according to a statement from Surrey Schools.
Circa the Second World War, Reid was a Liberal MP who argued for the complete removal of Canadians of Japanese ancestry from B.C. and the rest of Canada. Close to 22,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry “were forcibly removed from their homes on the west coast of British Columbia, dispossessed, incarcerated, and exiled from 1942 to 1949,” Oikawa noted.
At 6115 136 St., the park in Newton was acquired in the 1980s and opened to the public in the 1990s. The 2.5-hectare North Ridge Park is where people will find a soccer field, walking trails and “lots of open grass space to throw around a frisbee or have a picnic,” a post on surrey.ca notes.
City officials say the park renaming “aligns with the City’s Parks & Facilities Naming Policy, which recommends avoiding politicians’ names in favour of those that reflect natural features, geographic location, heritage, or community input. This change also brings the park into alignment with the nearby elementary school of the same name.”
The news release adds: “The City will continue to review naming concerns and requests for both new and existing parks to ensure consistency with the policy.”
In July, Surrey city council decided that two parks will be home to heritage features and integrated artworks celebrating Strawberry Hill’s Early Japanese-Canadians.
A contract was approved to have Ontario-based artist Kellen Hatanaka complete sculptures for installation at R.A. Nicholson Park (site of “Stone Fruit”) and also Inouye Park (a cast bronze sculpture of a rural mailbox). Both parks are in Newton, where early Japanese-Canadian farmers and community builders lived and worked, in the area known as Strawberry Hill.