Change Kitchener's name back to Berlin?

[plam]

The 1916 name change would not meet any criteria today.  How can 346 voters in a town of over 15,000 decide the new name?  That's just wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_to_K...ame_change

Historical injustices are sometimes overturned.  But I doubt this will be one of them.  So I'd settle for either the Benton Street or the Young Street stops to be called Berlin.

Naming stops after things that are not streets makes it harder to find your way around an unfamiliar city, unless the stop refers to the neighbourhood or something. Many of Montreal's metro stations are named after nearby streets (although there's usually a choice of which street).

[mpd618]

The city's branding problem is that it's located in Waterloo Region, making it really easy for everything to be incorrectly attributed to Waterloo the city. If a Kitchener name change isn't part of a solution to that branding problem, then it's a waste of time and effort.

[BuildingScout]

Historical injustices are sometimes overturned.  But I doubt this will be one of them.  So I'd settle for either the Benton Street or the Young Street stops to be called Berlin.

To the contrary you can rest assured that a name change will happen. Sooner or later Kitchener and Waterloo will amalgamate and at least one of them will have to change name. The Harris government had chosen Grand River City but for one reason or another we were in the end excluded from this process.

[Drake]

My objection to the name Kitchener is about who it commemorates—the father of concentration camps and scorched earth policies among other notable achievements.

I am not going to defend Kitchener. I am going to point out that your linked articles compiles a notable list of scorched earth enthusiasts starting with Darius of Persia in ancient times. Kitchener is far from being the father of it. Also, wikipedia the greatest place to read misrepresented yet interesting things, reports that the Polish used concentration camps and that term at least 100 years prior to Kitchener's day.

As far as being recognized for any of these things, outside of this community most Canadians would not know Kitchener was actually a person. Most would recognize Germany as concentration camp enthusiasts and Stalin as a pro at burning down the country he was purportedly trying to save/defend. However that is just one guy's opinion. 

Finally with all due respect to Movember, Kitchener did have one hell of a moustache.

[zanate]

The WR Record facebook page has posted a link to this thread: https://www.facebook.com/waterlooregionr...8339309633

[ookpik]

My objection to the name Kitchener is about who it commemorates—the father of concentration camps and scorched earth policies among other notable achievements.

Also, wikipedia the greatest place to read misrepresented yet interesting things, reports that the Polish used concentration camps and that term at least 100 years prior to Kitchener's day.

I object to your misrepresentation of the alleged misrepresentation. From Wikipedia's entry on Concentration camps: 

The Polish historian Władysław Konopczyński has suggested that concentration camps originated in Poland during the Bar Confederation rebellion (1768–1772), when the Russian Empire established three camps for Polish rebel captives awaiting deportation to Siberia.[8]

So a Polish historian wrote about concentration camps set up by Russians to hold Poles awaiting deportation to Siberia. You're falsely accusing the victims. 

And then the Russians did it again at the start of WWII!

In 1940–1941, the Soviet authorities conducted four mass deportations from the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic, inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Lithuanians, Russians, Germans, Czechs, and Armenians, along with Poles. Approximately 335,000 Polish citizens were deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the north-east of European Russia, by the NKVD. According to general Vasily Khristoforov, the director of the FSB archives in Moscow, exactly 297,280 Polish citizens were deported in 1940.[10]

This is of more than passing interest to me because my father was among those 335,000 (or 297,280) "guests" of Stalin. 

Sorry for the digression but you hit a raw nerve.

[Drake]

I object to your misrepresentation of the alleged misrepresentation. From Wikipedia's entry on Concentration camps: 

I laughed out loud at this.

This is of more than passing interest to me because my father was among those 335,000 (or 297,280) "guests" of Stalin. 

I am sorry to hear this.

[ookpik]

I laughed out loud at this.

As did I typing it

I am sorry to hear this.

No problem. This is one small piece of history that I couldn't allow to go unchallenged.

(There are also those who call places like Auschwitz "Polish" concentration camps. It's true that the camps were located in Poland but they were created and operated by Nazis.)

Now back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

[nms]

I understand that the Harris government felt that if they did amalgamate the Region that it would likely have spelled the end of the careers of various local Conservative MPPs.

[greybird]

I understand that the Harris government felt that if they did amalgamate the Region that it would likely have spelled the end of the careers of various local Conservative MPPs.

At least they dodged *that* bullet.

[BuildingScout]

How about changing the name of the town to BlackBerry, since it would be made of the agglomeration of Waterloo, Kitchener, St. Jacobs, Conestogo, St. Agatha, Breslau, and New Dundee.

[jgsz]

Picking a new names for Kitchener willy-nilly is exactly what happened in 1916. Back then it was any name, except Berlin. The only name change for Kitchener is to restore the name it had, the name that was wrongfully denied its citizens.

Now, if the Region amalgamated into one urban area a 'new' name might be appropriate.

[Canard]

I like the idea, but I'm also very proud to say I'm from Kitchener. Especially to those from Toronto! We have quite the little place here in "The Region".

A neat Kitchener story: A few years ago, I was at a rather run-down factory in the suburbs of New York City working on some machinery there. The tech from their plant and I were chatting about Canada, and when he heard I was from "Kitchener", he went off on this tangent about the history of 1st Earl Kitchener, why the city was named that - basically, a bunch of stuff I didn't know, and I hardly expected to hear from a grunt at a factory. It was kind of humbling that he knew all of that.

[BuildingScout]

Picking a new names for Kitchener willy-nilly is exactly what happened in 1916.  Back then it was any name, except Berlin.  The only name change for Kitchener is to restore the name it had, the name that was wrongfully denied its citizens.

Now, if the Region amalgamated into one urban area a 'new' name might be appropriate.

I agree. I also concur that it's too late to revert back to Berlin as someone else posted. We really are looking for a new name for the combined region. This will likely happen though it might take another 20 years before people get used to the idea.

[panamaniac]

It seems obvious to me that if the Region were ever amalgamated into a single city, then it would be named "Waterloo". Personally I'd like to see the current Region split into two separate municipalities - Cambridge (the city and North Dumfries) and Waterloo (the rest of the former County). But I realize that will never happen.