Vancouver School Board unanimously approves Lord Roberts name change

The Vancouver School Board has approved changing the name of one of the city's oldest schools.

Trustees voted unanimously Monday to change the name of Lord Roberts Elementary, a school in the city's West End originally built in 1901. 
 
The vote followed a multi-year process that now allows schools to change their name if the community requests it. 

"I appreciate that there's lots of work that's been done," said trustee Lois Chan-Pedley. 

"The evidence is clear that it's time to give the school a new name, and I really look forward to watching this process unfold."

A new process will start to select a new name for the school, though the parent advisory council has expressed a preference for having a new name connected to local geography instead of a specific person. 

Lord Roberts was celebrated as a British general during the Boer War, which saw the British Empire defeat independent republics in southern Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. 

While his military leadership was celebrated by many in the British Empire due to his successes, greater focus has been placed in recent years on his use of concentration camps in South Africa.

"Lord Roberts hasn't made sense for as long as people have been against naming schools after people who ran concentration camps," said Ian Rowe, a member of the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council, who was chair of Lord Roberts' parent advisory council when the campaign began in 2019.

New naming process

The Vancouver School Board created an interim process for renaming schools, which led to the changing of the names of Matthew Begbie and David Lloyd George Elementary, before adopting a permanent policy that was used for Lord Roberts.   

"We really appreciate that the school board has put in a renaming process," said Rowe. 

"They've never in the past had a way to change the name of a school, and it's definitely about time, but we're very glad that it's here."

Lord Roberts was one of eight schools in Vancouver named after a lord, with just five in the rest of British Columbia. 

While most communities in B.C. have a majority of their schools named for local geography or people connected with the area, in Vancouver, nearly half the schools are named for either British people or symbols or for other people not connected in any way with the province.

"As we look across all of Vancouver, we have schools named after a whole bunch of dead white guys," said Rowe. 

"I'm confident we can come up with better names to help people find schools or better recognize the place that we live."