What’s in a name?
Naming has become a hot topic in the past couple of years with lots of scrutiny on names of public places such as schools and government buildings. Naming of public spaces, buildings and roadways has been a longstanding tradition to honour certain people who have made outstanding contributions to society. It also creates a sense of place and an identity for the space.
You may have noticed a group of residents have been working on some enhancements to one of the triangle parks along Gladstone Road. During this process we discovered that both triangle parks in Hillhurst, along Gladstone Rd, have no official name. On Google they sometimes appear as Gladstone East and Gladstone West. Of course, the road is also already named Gladstone!
It appears that the Gladstone name may have some indigenous connections and our committee is enjoying researching the history and learning more about the street names origins. However, the committee is undertaking the process of official naming of the triangle parks. The City’s naming process is comprehensive and has some detailed criterion. Although a community can recommend a name to put forward, the City is the ultimate decision maker.
There have been a lot of humorous stories around park naming in the past. A park in Vancouver had a statue of a man reclining on the grass installed. This led to neighbours informally referring to the park as “Dude Chilling Park”. People made-up fun signs to that effect and installed them in the park. Eventually, the City officially adopted the name.
Over this past winter Vancouver had a storm that washed up a barge on the shore in English Bay. The City embraced this situation and made a sign that read “Barge Chilling Beach” calling it a holiday gift to the City.
You may also recall the story of an online ship naming contest where “Boaty McBoatface” became the popular selection. Although that name was the winner of the most votes in the online contest, the name was not allowed by the approving authority and so was instead assigned to a small submersible on the boat and the mothership named after an eminent zoologist instead.
Although we are not encouraging “joke” names to emerge from our little undertaking, we do want to engage the community more broadly and get their ideas for names and themes for these local pocket parks along Gladstone Rd.
With this we wade into all the naming fun. Stay tuned to HSCA social media, website and look for posters in the parks about this upcoming project. If you would like to get more involved, please email ali.m@hsca.ca and we can connect you with the resident-led park naming group.