Belleville council to be asked to rename Meyers Pier

Belleville city council will hear an appeal to change the name of Meyers Pier in light of John Walden Meyers’s history of slave ownership. Photo by Thomas Goyer, QNet News

By Thomas Goyer

BELLEVILLE – Belleville council will be asked Monday to change the name of Meyers Pier.

The pier is named after John Walden Meyers, a businessman who lived here in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who is considered one of Belleville’s founders. It was discovered in 2018 that Meyers owned slaves when he lived here.

City resident Laura Hatt will make the request for the renaming to council. She will also be asking that a plaque be erected to honour Meyers’s slaves.

Hatt was a member of a group that petitioned the local public school board in 2018 not to rename Moira Secondary School after Meyers. The new name had been chosen in a public vote set up by the board when students from the now-closed Quinte Secondary School were being moved to Moira.

Once it became public that Meyers had been a slave-owner, the board voted to rename the school Eastside Secondary instead.

Council meet at 4 p.m. Monday.

More to come.