Downtown Brandon Street Faces Possible Name Change
By Ronnie Kayla Neiman
Shortly after the riots and protests surrounding the death of George Floyd in the US, Brandon citizens began a protest of their own. One of the streets in which protest marches took place was in downtown Brandon. This street was Rosser Avenue and as one of the first main streets Brandon had it is a street that holds a number of businesses, such as banks, the bus transit terminal and the Town Center shopping mall.
This street was named after a man who played a large part in the Canadian Pacific Railroad. By researching the background behind the Rosser name the Brandon Sun found that the soldier the avenue was named after not only fought on the southern pro-slavery side during the American Civil War, but furthermore his family was recorded as having thirteen slaves on their Texas farm in the 1850 census. It’s also pointed out in the document that Rosser was fired from the railway for colluding with land speculators to profit off of land sales during the construction of the railway. His termination ultimately led to an incident where he challenged his former boss to a duel outside of a Winnipeg hotel in 1882.
Ultimately the article in the Brandon Sun gives more background research to support its claim that Rosser Avenue should have a name change. It also gives a number of excellent suggestions as alternative names for the downtown street. The article also provides several names of alternative people for whom the street should it be renamed after. These names include people such as Tommy Captain, Doris Pratt (after the beloved Sioux Valley elder who died last year), Billy Beals (after the first Black resident of Swan River who helped create the Big Woody School District), Tommy Prince (after the Indigenous war hero from Brokenhead Ojibwe Nation) and Viola Desmond (after the Black Nova Scotian civil rights activist).
Brandon City Council will be given a presentation on why a local thinks Rosser Avenue should get a name change at Monday’s meeting. The online petition from earlier in the summer fell short with only 308 out of 500 signatures. Right now there doesn’t seem to be many things we can control or do freely with the quarantine during the pandemic but this is something that we can help to have heard and enact meaningful change.