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I was thinking about this Friday as currents of anger swirled around the city from some quarters at the announcement from the owners of the Music Venue That Replaced the Forum at Ontario Place (as I have mostly thought of it) that they had signed a new sponsorship deal changing its name from the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre to the Budweiser Stage.

The swapping of one corporate multinational beer conglomerate brand for another awakened a previously invisible love for the identity the place has held since 1995. 鈥淚s this a joke? No details, no consultation, no public input,鈥� tweeted local city Councillor Mike Layton. 鈥淢olson Canadian Amphitheatre changes name to Budweiser stage. Happy 150 Canada! (I appreciate both are brand names, but still),鈥� he went on, apparently contrasting the shameless, of the former鈥檚 ad campaigns with the latter鈥檚 attempts to develop a close marketing association with U.S. patriotism (last year, for instance, for the summer).

You can insert your own variations of a 鈥淲asssap with that?鈥� joke here 鈥� and if you worry the reference is dated, know that the local newsletter 12:36 put 1980s Budweiser spokesdog Spuds MacKenzie in its headline about the story. We all have our own associations, which is sort of what the controversies about naming and renaming things are all about.

I admit to being a bit surprised by people鈥檚 attachments to the Molson-branded name 鈥� since my own experience has been that so much Ontario Place nostalgia has focused on the famous revolving stage and general admission lawn seats at the Forum preceding the Amphitheatre鈥檚 construction. But I fully understand the feeling of being cheated when someone tries to relabel your mental map 鈥� especially, as is so often the case, when the renaming of major and sometimes beloved landmarks is a pure sellout: a cash-for-naming-rights deal that seems to attempt to change the very identity of a place you know well.

Which is why I still call the baseball stadium SkyDome 鈥� not as an anti-corporate protest so much as because that still seems to be the right name for it to me. Honestly, when I was in grade school and that original name was announced, I thought it was kind of silly. (It鈥檚 a dome! And it opens so you can see the sky! Get it?) But it grew on me. Watching a team you love win championships in a place has a way of cementing positive associations.

Moreover, blatantly ignoring the rebranding efforts of marketers as applied to places you care about is a proud and widespread tradition.

I remember the first time I visited New York City, looking up from maps to ask someone how to find the Avenue of the Americas and seeing them think hard before asking, 鈥淥h, you mean Sixth Ave.?鈥� This was decades after its official renaming.

I remember visiting Montreal in the 1990s shortly after the Habs鈥� beloved Forum was turned into a multiplex cinema and realizing every Montrealer I encountered called its replacement arena, the Molson Centre, 鈥淭he New Forum.鈥� I wasn鈥檛 around the city to notice whether there was any disgruntlement or change in behaviour when that facility changed its name to the Bell Centre after six years. But I have noticed that Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport is still mostly called 鈥淒orval鈥� more than a decade after it was renamed.

Encountering these local assertions of the real names for places, no matter what signs the government or corporations insist on slapping on them, has always struck me as a pleasure, like being let in on the set of passwords that identify members of a club who know a city, who have lived in it, who have experienced it. The city鈥檚 landmarks and their names are significant to us not because someone pays a lot of money to put them there, but because significant things in our lives happened there. Big games, transcendent performances, great meals, personal milestones.

My parents never stopped calling the old clock tower at the CNE the 鈥淪hell Oil Tower鈥� until they tore it down, even though it was named for the Bulova watch company for the last two decades of its existence 鈥� and they continued using it to navigate even after it was gone (鈥淲e鈥檒l meet where the Shell Oil Tower used to be 鈥︹��) which did lead to some confusion. Near the same place, the building they call the Allstream Centre is still the Automotive Building in my mind (even though I don鈥檛 think I ever saw a car in it).

There鈥檚 a Loblaws location and Ryerson鈥檚 Mattamy Athletic Centre at Church and Carlton now, but Maple Leaf Gardens is still and always will be Maple Leaf Gardens 鈥� and the rec players I know who have rented the ice there for pickup games still call it that, and the reason they call it that is the same reason they want to play there. Because it鈥檚 a name, and an identity for that place, that still means something to them.

These associations we hold with significant places are unaffected by things like the contracts between building owners and their sponsors. And why should they be? No one paid us to start calling these places some different name; no one asked us for our agreement to any shift in identity for the places that feel like essential parts of our city, even parts of ourselves. Why should we wedge some awkward corporate brand name into our conversation because of a business transaction that had nothing to do with us?

Here鈥檚 the good part. We don鈥檛 have to. They can change what they call these places, but they can鈥檛 change what they mean to us.