Smith, Bryan (2017) Cartographies of colonial commemoration: critical toponymy and historical geographies in Toronto. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 15 (2). pp. 34-47.

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Abstract

Everyday, I move across a cartography that tells me a story, one that I often don't consciously listen to, but do learn from. This story, one of colonial dominance, lives on through the markings of place, particularly the toponyms, or place names. In this article, I seek to explore the role of these toponyms in telling a story of place, one that (re)writes my home, Toronto, as a colonized space, one whose geographic and historic intelligibility is made possible through the inscription of place-names that commemorate the European centre. I demonstrate how the banality of colonial geography works in its powerfully subtle ways by taking the reader on an imaginary subway ride, one that travels across a series of toponyms that highlight how the city recites, inscribes and promulgates a story of colonial presence in a largely obscured but simultaneously hyper-visible way. I argue that such colonial story telling through toponymy is a crucial site at which to engage critically.

Item ID:	54169
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1916-4467
Keywords:	critical toponymy, historical geographies, colonial cartography
Date Deposited:	21 Jun 2018 23:47
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390102 Curriculum and pedagogy theory and development @ 50% 39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390199 Curriculum and pedagogy not elsewhere classified @ 50%
SEO Codes:	93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9303 Curriculum > 930399 Curriculum not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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