No action from Belleville council on call to change Meyers Pier name

The pier is one of several locations named after John Meyers. These include an island, mill, brewery and several streets. Photo by Thomas Goyer, QNet News

By Thomas Goyer

BELLEVILLE – A call this week for city council to change the name of Meyers Pier because of the name’s link to slavery failed to result in any action.

Laura Hatt and Jay Gannon told council on Monday that the pier’s name is not an accurate display of Belleville’s values. The pier on the Bay of Quinte at the foot of Front Street was named for John Meyers, a city businessman in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Meyers is credited as one of Belleville’s founders, but part of his story is that he owned slaves.

“A person looking at the monument of a slave-owner might reasonably think that the town responsible celebrates racism,” Hatt told the councillors.

Meyers had an important role in Belleville’s history, she and Gannon said.  But Gannon added: “Do his accomplishments completely outweigh the fact that he enslaved four black people?”

The pier’s name “completely misrepresents white history and erases black history,” Hatt said.

In addition to requesting the renaming, the two asked that a plaque be placed at the pier to honour the struggle of the Levis, the family that Meyers enslaved.

“It is impossible to overstate the horror of Canadian slavery,” Gannon said.

The councillors did not comment following the presentation, aside from Mayor Mitch Panciuk asking whether Hatt and Gannon think other places in the city bearing the Meyers name should also have a name change.

Gannon said yes, adding that as more public attention is drawn to Meyers’s history, he hopes others will join in questioning the use of the name.

Council voted to simply receive and file the information.

Meyers was one of the leading names proposed when Moira Secondary School was renamed  in 2018. But when Meyers’s slave history was brought to public attention, his name was removed from contention and the school was eventually named Eastside Secondary.

Hatt was one of the members of the group that opposed having the school named after Meyers.

Orland French, an author and local historian who was at Monday’s council meeting, told QNet News he doesn’t agree with Hatt and Gannon’s argument.

“I’m not in favour of rewriting history simply because it is not suitable to us now,” French said. There are many respected historical figures whose actions in their time would not be acceptable today, he added.

However, placing a commemorating the Levi family is a worthwhile initiative to add historical context, French said.

QNet also spoke this week with Frankford resident Kaitlyn Rose, the great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of John Meyers. She said she feels indifferent about whether the pier is renamed, but would like the plaque about the Levis to be put up. 

“What I want to see is a plaque that discusses that he owned slaves, so that someone who doesn’t know who John Meyers was can know a more accurate history,” Rose said. 

She admitted that Meyers’s legacy is complicated. 

“I think we can recognize that John owned slaves, which is awful, but also that he was a man of his time, and judge him accordingly.”