Amherst Past a Blot on Lord Amherst Drive

Lord Amherst is becoming a persona non grata in the town that bears his name.

Amherst town council’s committee of the whole is recommending the street name Lord Amherst Drive be changed to Ancestral Drive.

The committee made the recommendation after hearing from the town’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee, which also recommended the name change.

It is part of a review of historical names which have been tarnished by their activities in the earliest days of the founding of Nova Scotia.

Lord Amherst was known to have distributed smallpox infected blankets to the indigenous people of the area. Amherst, like Cornwallis and other early colonial settlers have come under fire for their efforts to eliminate or harm the first nations people who occupied the land at the time of the European arrival.

It is almost universally understood, today, that this is the unceded territory and ancestral home of the M'ikmagi

A final decision on the proposed street name change is on the agenda for Town Council on May 24th.

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