The Truth about Trutch: Removing the name of one of the most racist colonialists in B.C.’s history is not 'erasing history'
Joseph Trutch was the worst in a bad bunch so let's rename places and remind Canadians who he was
Few people debate the reality that Canada’s colonial history included cultural genocide of the Indigenous Peoples who lived on these lands for thousands of years before European contact.
There is also much gnashing of teeth over supposedly “erasing history” – as some conservatives put it – by renaming locations that were given surnames of genocidal English colonialists.
We dance around this subject as if we might offend the relatives of John A. MacDonald or Matthew Baillie Begbie, but let’s call a spade a spade. And speaking of spades, dig a hole because there is likely no bigger pieces of colonialist crap than Joseph W. Trutch.
It’s time to bury him forever.
Trutch was born in England, died in England, spent the first eight years of his life in Jamaica, and spent his time around 1867 at the birth of Canada as one of the most repressive and arrogant white men of them all.
“Trutch held nothing but disdain for Indigenous people,” that from a Knowledge Network article on him.
James Douglas retired as governor in 1864 after overseeing the colony of British Columbia for nearly two decades. Douglas was a stereotypical colonial European, crushing Indigenous spirits and lives wherever he could. He did, however, sign 14 treaties with Vancouver Island First Nations.
Douglas was a beam of sunshine compared to Joseph Trutch who rose to power when Douglas retired.
In 1867, Trutch refused to recognize reserve lands that Douglas had set aside for First Nations. In some cases, Trutch reduced the size of reserves by as much as 90 per cent even though Douglas insisted this should never happen.
He also could not comprehend the Indigenous connection to the land insisting instead they were lazy and wasting agricultural potential.
“Trutch did not keep his hatred of First Nations a secret,” the Knowledge Network article continues. “Throughout his life, he described Indigenous people as ‘utter savages,’ prone to wanton violence.
“I think they are the ugliest and laziest creatures I ever saw and we should as soon think of being afraid of our dogs as of them,” he wrote in a letter back to England.
Trutch denied the existence of Aboriginal title and his land policy was too harsh even for Britain’s colonial office pre-1867 and then the federal government in Ottawa after.
Trutch was B.C.’s first lieutenant governor from 1871 to 1876, so it’s fitting that B.C.’s 28th lieutenant governor, Steven Point, publicly recognized what a racist Trutch was when a B.C. city changed the name of its Trutch Avenue to Point Avenue.
"This is an act by the City of Richmond to acknowledge the Indigenous people, that we were here, and to acknowledge Joseph Trutch was a bad guy,” said Point in a 2022 CBC article. “He was certainly a racist.”
Point, whose traditional name is Xwĕ lī qwĕl tĕl, is also a former judge and chancellor of UBC. He was honoured to have a street named after him in Richmond but this renaming should not erase history. He hoped the renaming wouldn’t make people forget the racism and injustice associated with Joseph Trutch.
"We shouldn't bury our history just because we find it distasteful,” Point said. “Human beings have done some horrible things, but we've come a long way.”
In July 2022, the City of Victoria also changed its Trutch Street to Su'it Street, which is the English spelling of a Lekwungen word, səʔit, which means "true or real."
“The renaming of Trutch Street is not only a significant act of decolonization, but also an important step forward in our journey to reconciliation," said Mayor Lisa Helps at the time.
Most recently in June 2025, Vancouver city council unanimously voted to rename Trutch Street in Kitsilano to šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm – pronounced "sh-MUS-quee-um-AW-sum" (Musqueamview Street in English) – in the Musqueam Indian Band's hən̓q̓əmin̓əm language.
Once completed, there will be storyboards along the mostly residential street explaining Trutch’s history and why the street was once named after him. This parallels Point’s perspective that renaming is good, yes, but don't let Trutch off the hook by pretending he didn't exist.
"We did not want to completely erase his name,” Musqueam elder Larry Grant told CBC. “But also keep history in focus, so that people would understand why the name was changed.”
Why didn’t Chilliwack do it?
Before Richmond, Victoria and Vancouver did it, the City of Chilliwack was going to change the name of Trutch Avenue, a one-block street with 16 residential lots that runs off Ashwell Road, ironically right across the road from the Kwaw-kwaw-Apilt reserve.
Chilliwack city council voted at its June 15, 2021 meeting to rename Trutch Avenue with a name of Indigenous significance. The renaming was requested by Squiala Chief David Jimmie, president of the Stólō Chiefs’ Council at the time.
Four years later and nothing has happened, however, that was mid-pandemic so everybody had more pressing matters.
I asked Mayor Ken Popove recently what was taking so long, wondering if the ball was in Squiala’s court to come up with a new name and a plan. He said that was the situation as Squiala has not yet proposed anything to the city. I contacted Jimmie to comment but didn’t hear back.
Of course, if renaming Canadian streets that are named after racist colonial leaders is part of truth and reconciliation, then it’s hardly the place of caucasian mayors (or journalists) to bang the drum and say, “what’s taking so long?”
The change feels long overdue but the decision is truly up to the local Sto:lo people.
‘Erasing history’ trope is nonsense
When the new K-8 school on the Vedder River was being planned, the decision was to name it Stitó:s Lá:lém Totí:lt. Then trustees Heather Maahs (now an MLA), Barry Neufeld, and Darrell Furgason pulled their own Trutch card and decried the name.
Furgason, who expresses Islamophobic opinions and staunchly protects against any criticism of anything ever done by any Christian, called the school name “a very difficult collection of words” and called it “exclusive and we need to be inclusive.”
As with Barry Neufeld who prefaced his now infamous anti-LGBTQ rant by saying “at the risk of being labelled a homophobe,” Furgason got ahead of his objectively racist comments by pre-emptively declaring they weren’t racist.
Trustee Willow Reichelt had a briliant retort to Furgason’s tone-deaf anti-First Nations ignorance at the time.
“It’s six syllables,” she said. “Let’s buck up and learn to say it. The idea that children can’t learn six syllables is quite frankly ridiculous.”
While First Nations children endured cultural genocide being dragged from their families and put into English-speaking residential schools, forced to learn British culture, Furgason thinks reconciliation is not necessary.
“If you feel like reconciliation means that you have to do all these things to demonstrate that hundreds of years ago… ‘these people have for hundreds of years gone to residential schools,’ That’s not a reason to name a school,” Furgason said, with a straight face, incorrectly claiming that residential schools, the last of which closed in 1997, were a policy “hundreds of years ago.”
Disgraced trustee Barry Neufeld also said something.
Former trustee Heather Maahs who is now the BC Conservative MLA for Chilliwack North expressed her Trutch-style colonial thinking, similarly rejecting the notion of reconciliation.
“We want a name that everyone can proudly say and pronounce,” Maahs said.
At that same meeting, Trustee Jared Mumford noted that when he looked it up with his young son, it took the child a few minutes to learn how to pronounce Stitó:s Lá:lém Totí:lt. Several people, yours truly included, posted selfie videos of us correctly pronouncing the new school's name.
When it comes to giving First Nations names to new projects or renaming places and streets, Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow was quoted in recent coverage about the renaming of Trutch Avenue in Vancouver that non-Indigenous people don’t have to worry if they can’t pronounce the new name. Unlike First Nations children at residential schools, white people who can’t pronounce them won’t be shunned or beaten or made to stand in the corner.
You’ve been here for a blink of an eye
There is something comical about the refusal of conservatives to allow First Nations traditional language to be part of naming locations.
Let’s use Haida Gwaii as an example. Haida people have occupied those islands since, as First Nations leaders often like to say, “time immemorial.” What time immemorial exactly means is unclear, but let’s be precise with the historical record. There is evidence of human habitation in North America from 14,000 to 16,000 years ago when low water levels allowed ancient homo sapiens tribes to cross a land bridge from Siberia to what is now Alaska.
In just a couple of thousand years, human beings then settled everywhere from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America. Indigenous populations in North America are linked to Siberian populations by DNA, blood types, linguistic factors. Anthropologists have found parallels between myths and rituals, even housing types of inhabitants of Kamchatka and Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest.
This is not greatly in dispute. All this is to say that there is evidence of habitation by human beings on Haida Gwaii for 13,000 years continuously.
When the British got here a few hundred years ago, they renamed the area the Queen Charlotte Islands. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragically ironic when descendants of European settlers were outraged in 2010 at the change the name of the Queen Charlottes back to Haida Gwaii.
Queen Charlotte had her slave-owning, royal, pompous little name on the islands for 223 years, islands the Haida have lived on for more than 10,000 years. Just one example of many where non-Indigenous people should call the place whatever Indigenous people want us to call it.
-30-
Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.
Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social