By David Tuan Bui [1]
BELLEVILLE – The Hastings-Prince Edward District School Board is backing away from its plan to rename Moira Secondary School in honour of one of the area’s early settlers, John Walden Meyers.
The board decided in January to rename Moira to Meyers Creek Secondary School. The original change was made because Moira is consolidating students from Quinte Secondary School which is closing down next month. But on Tuesday, the board’s communications officer, Kerry Donnell, told QNet News that the board will no longer move forward with that name change because it had come to its attention that Meyers was a slave owner.
“When we are looking to name a school, we want to ensure equity for all who will be there for students for staff and for community,” says Donnell. “And we just thought we had a real opportunity to take another look at the name while there’s still time to do so.”
The information about Meyers being a slave owner was given to the board by former Moira Secondary School student Elissa Robertson.
Robertson says she called the school board to tell them about Meyers’ background and was told that the board was already aware of it.
“I was told yes that they did know, it was discussed at their meeting and they decided to go forward anyways,” said Robertson.
Calls to the school board to confirm this were not returned.
Robertson said she learned about Meyers through a friend. They then conducted research about him together.
“Well, I think in any community it can be really detrimental to celebrate slave owners so when I heard that, I was concerned,” she said. “In my community, I felt I had a responsibility to speak up about it.”
She wrote a letter [2] on social media and to sent it to other news outlets to spread awareness about Meyers’ past. She says that the community’s involvement is what made the difference.
“The result of my initial conversation when it was just me talking on the phone to them was, ‘I’m sorry you’re disappointed but this is what’s happening,'” she said.
“A few days after the information was out and the community was responding to it. They (the community) weren’t happy about it. Then I received a phone call from the school board saying they were going to review the decision.”
Robertson thinks her efforts had made a difference.
“I was really surprised and I was really glad. I wasn’t sure that they would listen. I know with the name change in general there’s been a lot scrutiny around that,” she said.
“I figured they’re probably used to community concerns around this whole thing and they might brush it off but they didn’t, they listened and that was fantastic.”
Donnell says the board will revisit a new name for Moira when it meets on Monday.