Toronto renames laneways after residents: maybe there’s an idea in there?
I saw this and it made me think of our discussion last week on a new project somehow (un)officially demarcating important people in Windsor.
From the article, discussing one particular laneway named after a local family who own a nearby bakery:
The laneway is one of three in the Harbord Village that recently got a name memorializing community members. The local residents association has been working on a project for the past two years to name all 26 laneways in its neighbourhood, nestled between the Annex and Kensington Market. Currently, the names are being reviewed by city staff (to avoid any duplication) and will likely come before council in February or March.
You can read the article in full on the Globe’s website.
It made me think about how we might consider scaling up or scaling out the project we had discussed — maybe we should try to name all the alleyways in the city?


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That is very interesting! I once thought while reading this post, to name something more ephemeral like a cloud, or a particular storm on a day. Even a particular ray of light that seems to shine through your window at this time of year.
Although naming something like an alleyway hits on more of a permanency thats in such things as a bronze plaques, or statues and monuments.
What are dedications? Could we dedicate a particular weather pattern to someone or something or some day?
The “inscription of artifacts” when presented or addressed to someone. I’m sure if we wanted to, our definition of artifact could definitely be loosened.