Toronto may rename Dundas Street West is Hamilton's Dundas next?

Toronto may rename Dundas Street Westbecause of its ties to a racist from centuries past,but what about Hamilton's suburbwith the same name?

A petition with thousands of signaturesabout the street has spurred serious discussions in Toronto. While there are no public calls to have the town of Dundas renamed, the downtown Toronto street and community in Hamilton have the same namesake.

Both were named in honour of Henry Dundas,1st Viscount Melville an 18th-century politician from Scotlandwho used his power to delay the freedom of slaves in Britain. Heentered politics in the late 1700s, gaining status and influence ashome secretary andsecretary at war.

He later became known as "The Great Tyrant" for tweaking an anti-slavery bill that would delay the abolition of the slave trade by roughly 15 years. His actionsfroze the freedom of roughly630,000 slaves. He stillhas a monument in Edinburgh, Scotland's capital andithas been the target of vandalism and a source of controversy.

Dundas no longer formally exists as a town, since Hamilton, its surrounding suburbsand the region of Hamilton Wentworth were amalgamated in 2000, so it's not clear what a campaign to remove the name would mean.

But signs are still up identifying it as Dundas,the name is still in common everday use, it exists as apostal address and is still part of the riding name for the area - Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas.

Ontario's NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whogrew up in Hamilton, supported the idea of renaming the Toronto street on Twitter.

"Henry Dundas blocked the abolition of slavery in the UK by years, a delay that cost tens of thousands of lives. Removing his name to reflect our values isn't about rewriting shameful history we can't do that," she wrote.

"It's about rewriting our present day. Rename Dundas Street."

It's unclear if she supports renaming Dundas, as her office did not respond for comment.

Ward 13 Councillor, Arlene VanderBeek, who represents the Dundas area, did not return calls for comment.

Ameil Joseph, a McMaster University associate professor who studies critical race theory, told CBC News it's important to think about the "how" and "why" of naming and renaming.

"If we're thinking of Dundas, you would have to think about what it was before Cootes Paradise. Thomas Coote was a British officer, also involved in a colonial project. Are we going to rename Bathurst, Jarvis Jarvis who is a slave trader? Yonge? It's all around us," he said.

"When we think about removing statues and street signs, we have to think about how we do it differently, how we can tell the story in a way that's more comprehensive rather than more erasure."

Joseph said it is important to remove monuments that only tell one side of the various ethnic atrocities in Canada's history, butthe emphasis needs to be on replacing them withfull context of past events, instead of only portraying the view of powerful.

"We're in a historical moment where we can unpractice that, but it's all about how. If we're talking about our histories of Hamilton and Dundas, what's beneath that? Beneath that is what's always been here, these are traditional nations of the Mississauga andHaudenosauneenations," Joseph explained.

"A renaming would have to be something that speaks to Black communities who have been here since before Hamilton was Hamilton ... these things are deeply implicated all around us. I don't think pulling things down is just the answer."