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While apparently some key titles at the board were changed a few years ago, such as chief financial officer, among the recent casualties is the sign on the door to the office of Chief Caretaker Karen Griffith at Glenview Public School in the city’s affluent north end.

There, last week, staff noticed that the word “chief” had been blacked out on the door.

(Apparently, no thought or consideration had been given to how students of colour might react to the notion that a bad sign could be simply blacked out, and whether this is tantamount to cultural erasure.)

Presumably, board chair John Malloy will have to review and correct his C.V., where he is still described as former Chief Student Achievement Officer for the provincial education ministry.

Presumably, the board’s chief technology officer and chief information officer and chief social worker will all have to do the same. Etc., etc.

Photo by AP/Mark Duncan

Attempts to find out precisely where in the TRC’s Calls to Action section there is any cry for the de-chiefing of the language in Canadian schools went unanswered. The board spokesman, Bird, tried hard on Postmedia’s behalf to get someone to respond but to no avail.

The best he could do, he said, was to suggest that the move didn’t necessarily come out of the TRC itself, but was “an aspect of a larger conversation staff have had” since the report was issued. Bird said he consulted with a TDSB elder who told him that probably “every Aboriginal person has been referred to as ‘chief’” in a derogatory way at some point in his or her life.