By James Matthews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Sam Slick name is entwined as part of Dysart’s history.

And that’s that, according to township council.

As such, council decided when it met Nov. 28 to continue with the Sam Slick Park moniker despite calls to have it changed as a means to shed an association with a fictional racist and misogynist character written by the county’s namesake.

Erin Lynch, the Cultural Resources Committee’s chairperson, and Jim Blake, the committee’s vice-chairperson, continued the lobby to have Sam Slick Park renamed in recognition of the Haliburton region’s Indigenous people.

But council decided against renaming the park. What’s more, council’s resolution was that the Cultural Resources Committee cease the work to rename the park.

It was recommended by the committee since 2021 that the park be rededicated and named Gidaaki, which is the Anishinaabemowin name for the land that is now called Haliburton County. It comes from the words “gidaa” which means upwards, and “ki,” meaning land. “Upwards land,” or the Highlands.

The recommendation is a result of research by students of the Social Justice and Equity course at Haliburton Highlands Secondary School and members of the Cultural Resources Committee. 

Traditionally, municipal parks and other facilities named after somebody is done so to celebrate that individual’s contributions to the community and society.

Think about the A.J. LaRue Community Centre and the Gary G. Brohman Athletic Field.

And there’s the J.D. Hodgson and the Stuart Baker elementary schools.

“These are all named after upstanding citizens who made considerable contributions to our community,” Lynch said.

The Sam Slick Park is named for a fictional character from the 1836 novel The Clockmaker by Thomas Chandler Haliburton. And, as per dialogue attributed the character in the novel, that character is racist and misogynist. This is a family newspaper so readers will have to look it up for themselves. And rightfully so.

Haliburton, the village and county, is named after the book’s author. That’s the only connection to the region.

The land for the park was purchased by the Rotary Club of Haliburton in 1961 and donated to the municipality in 1965. 

“We are confident that the Rotary Club members who named the park had not read the book,” Lynch said.

The site has a pair of plaques that bears the current name. One is from the Archaeological and Heritage Board of Ontario and the other is from the Rotary Club of Haliburton.

The committee asked that the Rotary Club of Haliburton plaque be removed from its current location and donated to the Haliburton Highlands Museum to be used as a visual artifact of the history of the park and that the Archaeological Board plaque remain in its current location.

They ask that a new plaque detailing the re-dedication of the park be created.

Given local examples, it isn’t as if officially renaming something is a taboo practice.

Devil’s Creek was changed to Irondale. Pusey was changed to Wilberforce. Pine Lake was changed to Gooderham.

Dozens of road names were changed to avoid confusion when the county joined the 911 emergency system.

In 1998, the Haliburton Highlands Secondary School changed the names of its teams from the Redmen to the Red Hawks.

“If it’s not appropriate to have the Sam Slick plaque that’s there, why is it alright to put it in a museum?” said Mayor Murray Fearrey.

“I know there’s always the concern that we don’t want to erase history,” Blake said. “We have lots of things in the museum which are the history and story of our community. This is part of the history and story.”

Later in the meeting, Fearrey said he believed the consensus on the issue was to leave things as they are.

“We want to leave things the way they are,” Fearrey said. “You don’t learn from history if you keep repeating it. And we’ve learned and we’ve moved on.”

He suggested something could be erected at the park’s bridge that would symbolize closing a “gap” between Sam Slick’s dialogue written by Haliburton and the accepted behaviour today.

Councillor Pat Casey said the character Sam Slick is fictional.

And then Casey said: “If the action of the individual is Mr. Haliburton and his fiction is a story then, to me, are we going to rename the town of Haliburton because it’s connected to the story?”

And further along in the same time span, Casey said: “Moving forward, as a blunt reality, if we don’t want to hear this anymore, do we remove any types of literature or art or whatever out of our museums and our libraries so that erases all of that, which could potentially put us back in the same position 50 years from now because we’ve forgotten about the lessons we learned today.”

“It was supposed to be satirical,” Fearrey said of Haliburton’s novel. “It was not meant to be the way we’re interpreting it today.”

Coun. Carm Sawyer said the high turnout for this year’s edition of the Christmas parade was fantastic with 45 floats and many families partaking, despite the cold wind.

“It sure made us all proud, and that’s what I want to always think about Haliburton,” Sawyer said. “I just hope this thing is put to bed and let’s move on.”

“So many other things to worry about,” Fearrey said. “Like people without housing, people who can’t buy groceries because they can’t get gas for their car to get to work. We’ve got a lot of bigger issues than that (park name).

“Let’s move on. It’s not that it isn’t an important issue, but it’s important to, I think, from what I’m hearing to maintain our history. And that’s history, whether we like it or not.”

Casey said he supports placing a plaque on the bridge that acknowledges the region’s Indigenous history.

“And we can tie that to Sam Slick, what’s there, too,” Fearrey said. “That we are bridging the gap. We’ve changed.”