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British Columbia

One of Canada’s most left-leaning provinces also has its most blatantly colonial name. The “Columbia” part is derived from Christopher Columbus, who had barely finished discovering the New World before he started kidnapping Indigenous Cubans. The British part, meanwhile, is a vestige of the province’s days as a far-flung British colony. The B.C. flag even includes a giant sun as a nod to the maxim that the sun never sets on the British Empire.

Brantford, Ont.

Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, the namesake of Brantford and Brant County, usually gets cited on lists of “notable Indigenous Canadians.” He’s most remembered for siding with the British during the American Revolutionary War, but his legacy is still controversial among many Mohawk. Brant owned slaves, he murdered his son and he was accused of selling out his own people for personal gain.

Photo by Christopher Smith/The Expositor

Victoria, B.C.

The B.C. capital is among the hundreds of Canadian places named after Queen Victoria, including Victoriaville, Que., and Victoria Island in the Arctic. Despite being the most famous woman of her era, though, Queen Victoria was an unabashed sexist. As the women’s suffrage movement took flight under her reign, she accused suffragists of “mad wicked folly” and said they needed a good “whipping.” Women, she added, were a “poor, feeble sex” who “would surely perish without male protection.”

Chateau Laurier (Ottawa, Ont.)

Wilfrid Laurier famously said that in the ethnic mix of Canada “there is no longer any family here but the human family.” But he was remarkably selective about who got to join that family. He opposed Indo-Canadian immigration to Canada, reasoning that they couldn’t handle the cold. Laurier also raised the Chinese Head Tax and saw it as a righteous thing for Canada to settle land taken from “savage nations.”