How does a city find just one way to memorialize a man who did so much for so many different causes?
That was the unenviable task that a handful of councillors took on last fall when they first met to decide how best the city could pay tribute to Jack Layton.
On Thursday, Mayor Rob Ford announced that next week he will ask council rename the Toronto Island Ferry Terminal in Layton’s honour. But that council motion is only the end result of months of behind the scenes work by a committee that Ford quietly convened a few months after the former city councillor and NDP leader’s death on August 22, 2011 at the age of 61.
Over the course of a half-dozen meetings the group considered, and eventually rejected, scores of other sites in an attempt to commemorate Layton’s love for Toronto as well as his tireless advocacy for diverse causes that included the environment, bike safety, AIDS prevention and affordable housing.
“We looked at Dundas Square, we looked at renaming the bike path network. We looked at individual parks,” says Councillor Pam McConnell, a longtime friend of Layton’s who sat on the working group with councillors Paula Fletcher, Norm Kelly, and Frances Nunziata. Sarah Layton, Jack’s daughter, also played a role.
McConnell, speaking over the phone from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Saskatoon, jokes that there was a temptation to go as big as possible the project.
“We might have done the CN Tower, but it already had its corporate name,” she laughs. “And I’m not sure he would like to be named after the tallest phallic symbol in the world.”
As a major public gathering place, Dundas Square was a strong contender, but dominated as it is by billboards and brand logos it didn’t seem to fit Layton’s down-to-earth image.
Renaming a street, or christening a new one in the Port Lands development, was also considered, but the idea seemed out of step with the legacy of a man who championed cycling over the supremacy of cars.
Besides, none of the potential streets were grand enough.
“You’re not going to rename Yonge Street, and you’re not going to rename University Avenue,” says McConnell. “Any of the streets that we found that could be named didn’t measure up to the greatness of Jack.”
For many, the landmark most associated with Layton will always be Nathan Phillips Square, where grief-stricken Torontonians scrawled thousands of messages to him in the days following his death. McConnell says the square would have been a fantastic opportunity but the committee agreed it was already appropriately named for Toronto’s first Jewish mayor. David Pecaut Square, which council dedicated last April to the founder of Luminato, was also not an option.
Locations were scouted in and around City Hall, where Layton spent nearly two decades as a councillor before winning the NDP leadership in 2003, and the most logical site seemed the building’s rooftop garden. But the committee decided too few people visited there for it to be a fitting tribute.
When the ferry terminal was finally suggested, McConnell says it was an “aha moment.”
“It was such a perfect match. It married together Jack’s love of the vibrancy and the diversity of the city with the tranquility and the environmental sustainability of the islands,” she says. “It is also a gathering place, where people of the city go to that tranquil space that he loved so much and that he fought for.”
But McConnell is clear the ferry terminal is not meant to be a static tribute. The committee’s intention was that the rededication will spur the kind of city building project that Layton was famous for.
“I think the naming of the ferry terminal after Jack will be a catalyst for building it into an iconic place in our city, as opposed to the pretty shabby existence that it now holds,” McConnell says.
It also doesn’t preclude naming other civic sites after the late progressive leader. McConnell predicts that in coming years there will be a housing coop built in his honour, and that “other quiet places in Toronto where he meant a great deal” will soon bear his name.
“I think this is just the beginning,” she said.
