Bitter Thornhill School Renaming Comes to an End
It’s official: The former Vaughan Secondary School in Thornhill will be renamed for Hodan Nalayeh, the late Somali-Canadian journalist and community activist who lived in the area. But it was a bitter, months-long naming campaign, with heated accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism. At a March 2 meeting of the York Region District School Board […]
York Region Trustees Settle on New School Name
A circuitous route marred by accusations of anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism arrived back to where things began when trustees of the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) on Feb. 23 settled on a new name for the former Vaughan Secondary School. It was the same name that was preferred by a plurality of respondents in […]
Vaughan High School Renaming Continues to Roil
While it was not quite the raucous event some had predicted, emotions did run high at times during a Feb. 17 virtual town hall on renaming the former Vaughan Secondary School in Thornhill. The three-hour-plus marathon got off to a spirited start when community activist Shernett Martin blasted local school board trustee David Sherman for […]
It’s time to rename Vaughan Secondary School
Consider a Jewish family living in the fictional town of Blair, Ont., somewhere north of Toronto. It’s 1973, and Jewish children born after the Holocaust have moved north where land is plentiful and housing affordable. That was the year the local school board opened several new secondary schools. The first was named after Frederick Blair, […]
