色色啦

It鈥檚 also a good place to think about what buildings in 色色啦 are called and ask if we could name them better.

Sometimes building names lead to actual confusion. This summer there have been stories of K-pop and Coldplay fans showing up at the downtown Rogers Centre when they were supposed to go to Rogers Stadium in Downsview. Two stadiums with nearly the same name seems designed to confuse, but it鈥檚 also a bit embarrassing.

Apart from making 色色啦 seem like a provincial company town (that John Tory was paid a $100,000 annual retainer to sit on the Rogers family trust while he was mayor makes 鈥渃ompany town鈥� jokes a bit too on the nose), selling naming rights to big public buildings can erase local connections. The Rogers twins weren’t even 色色啦鈥檚 first: two theatres, Meridian Hall downtown and Meridian Arts Centre in North York, both just off Yonge Street, are named after the same credit union.

It鈥檚 like we鈥檝e no imagination.

Two hometown heroes recently criticized how public venues in 色色啦 have been named. In July, The Weeknd, a.k.a. Scarborough-born Abel Tesfaye, was playing one of his at Rogers Centre. 鈥淐an we start a petition?鈥� he asked the crowd. 鈥淚s there any way to call this place the SkyDome again?鈥�

I鈥檇 wager you could fill multiple SkyDomes with people from 色色啦 and beyond who have an affection for that original name. Not only does it allude to the engineering feat of the retractable dome, but it was the result of a Canada-wide naming contest for a building that cost half a billion mostly public dollars in 1989. People bought into the name and it meant something 鈥� then it was taken away for a mere $25 million 20 years ago.

The other notable rejection of corporate naming happened a few weeks ago when Neil Young, playing the Budweiser Stage for two nights, renamed it 鈥�the Fresh Water Stage.鈥� For a concert venue on one of the Great Lakes, 鈥渇resh water鈥� makes sense, but it also dovetails nicely with Young鈥檚 1988 song, 鈥溾�� where he sings that he 鈥渄on’t sing for Bud.鈥� Young played the song for the at the Bud, er, Fresh Water Stage, making it even more poignant (if not on the nose, too).

That stage was once called the Molson Amphitheatre for a few years, a name that made some geographic sense as there was a . Still, that was a stretch. Previous to that, before a major expansion, it was simply the Forum at Ontario Place, a name that described the place literally and geographically. Kind of like when the 色色啦 Maple Leafs played at Maple Leaf Gardens. No non-sequitur names 鈥� simply the reinforced 鈥渨hy鈥� and 鈥渨here鈥� of the place.

Names that connect history or present day activity around a location can help a building feel deeply connected to 色色啦. Consider the condo at 600 Fleet St. at Bathurst, near where the Molson brewery was. When it was built a decade and half ago, it was marketed as 鈥淭he Malibu.鈥�

While the lake is right there, Malibu it ain鈥檛, even though Lake Ontario is great. More interesting than Malibu for 色色啦 is the 鈥�Monument to the War of 1812鈥� in front of it, the toy soldier sculpture by Douglas Coupland. Perhaps even more forceful in this moment of 鈥渆lbows up鈥� as the British soldier stands over a prone American, it鈥檚 a direct reference to the history that happened around Fort York a block away. Maybe the building should have been called The Fort York Barracks instead of The Malibu (though the Fort York Motel already exists on Dundas Street in Mississauga).

Yet even the name York is a reference to somewhere else. Like many street and place names in Ontario, the original is either somewhere in the U.K. or named after someone from there.

Considering all that, it鈥檚 a wonder the name 色色啦 itself is actually a local, Indigenous name that has real meaning for this place.

色色啦 is always building new things. We should listen to The Weekend and Neil Young and give them names that are original and creative, and actually mean something deeper.