The name of Yellowknife’s main street will come under renewed scrutiny at a Monday meeting of city councillors, following a request from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.
According to a briefing note prepared for councillors, the First Nation asked at a February meeting for Franklin Avenue’s name to be changed.
Franklin Avenue is also known as 50 Avenue. The names are used interchangeably by most residents.
In Yellowknife, the name Franklin almost invariably occurs in memory of Sir John Franklin, a Royal Navy officer considered an explorer by the British who died while trying to find a way through the Northwest Passage.
At the February meeting, the briefing note states, “the YKDFN chiefs and council requested to rename Franklin Avenue to Chief Drygeese Avenue, and the city undertook to officially bring this matter forward.”
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The area containing Yellowknife, Ndılǫ and Dettah is known today as Chief Drygeese Territory.
“The Yellowknives Dene entered Treaty 8 on July 25, 1900, when Imeh [Emile], Old Man Drygeese, met with the treaty party in Fort Resolution,” reads an account from the NWT Timeline.
“Later, the new chief, Susie [Sizeh] Drygeese, outlined the hunting grounds around their traditional lands on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, which became the Yellowknife Game Preserve in 1923. Since that time, the Yellowknives Dene have referred to this area as Chief Drygeese Territory in honour of their former chief, who wished to protect the land for Indigenous traditional use.”
When they meet at lunchtime on Monday, councillors will consider taking a preliminary step toward such a renaming: asking staff to do more research and report back.
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The briefing document notes that reconciliation with Indigenous peoples has been among the “core values” of council for years now.
The document recommends that staff be asked to come up with a more detailed memorandum to “ensure all considerations can be identified and proactively addressed.”
Changes that will need to be made if the name is replaced include addresses (and associated stationery) of businesses on the street and updates to software, visitor guides, transit route maps and bylaws, among other documents.
“Approximately 300 properties” would be affected and the matter would need wider public engagement, the briefing note states.
There’s no timeline yet for any change to take place should council give it the go-ahead.
While Franklin is best known for his doomed 1840s quest to discover the Northwest Passage, which killed 129 men, he also spent years wandering the Northwest Territories in the early 1820s as he tried to map the Arctic coast.
Whether it’s time to retire the Franklin name has come up in Yellowknife before.
In 2021, both Chief Edward Sangris and Chief Fred Sangris of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation said Franklin-related names in the city should be changed.
“He’s just another explorer like Columbus,” Chief Edward Sangris said at the time. “Franklin just passed through here – he didn’t stay.”
