Editor:
If John Sullivan Deas were alive today, he’d probably be disappointed in the city he called home for seven years. Or maybe I’m wrong, and he wouldn’t care that the folks governing his former hometown have no idea how to spell his name.
I know I’m disappointed.
There are two signs on either end of the walkway and dike that run parallel to Deas Island Regional Park indicating to visitors they are navigating a portion of the Millennium Trail, and Deas Island Regional Park is just ahead. Except both of these signs spell it Dea’s. Yes, with an incorrectly added apostrophe.
I had read in a 2012 column in this newspaper by Doug Husband that Deas was a free black man who came to B.C. from California in 1862, motivated by the combined forces of legislative uncertainty in pre-Civil War times in the United States, and the lure of B.C.’s Fraser River gold fields. He started a prosperous fish cannery on Deas Island in 1871 before moving back to the U.S. in 1878. Seven of his 15 years in B.C. were spent in Delta; he became a citizen and a provincial voter.
My wife, a former reporter and editor and now current grammar guru, has been complaining about these “Dea’s Island” signs for about three years now. She shared a photo of them once on Facebook, indicating her mortification and outrage. Unsurprisingly, the post did nothing to fix the problem, although it generated a few angry emoticons.
A year or so later, she notified Metro Vancouver, which operates Deas Island Regional Park. Metro Vancouver advised this was a Delta issue as the signs were on Delta’s property. So in July 2017, she dutifully reported it to the great void known as the “Talk to Delta” online system. She even uploaded a photo. Aside from an auto reply that her submission was received, there has been no other response.
It’s now February 2018, which also happens to be Black History Month, and the two signs bearing the name of the free black man who has an island in Delta named after him remain unfixed, gathering moss and dirt to indicate the passing seasons.
I recently found a 70-year-old commemorative plaque in a Lower Mainland antique store that used to belong on the wall of a segregation school in Texas before American race laws changed and ended the separation of students by colour.
I returned the plaque to the local school district in Texas, and witnessed the positive impact this small gesture had.
One wonders if this misspelled sign, by demonstrating a lack of care and concern for the accurate portrayal of the free black man who is Deas Island’s namesake, has an opposite impact here in Delta.
In history, it is just as important to make sure both facts and names are correct. That’s education.
So, will the City of Delta please fix these signs? I’m certain Mayor Lois Jackson would approve the expenditure. Or is that Mayor Loi’s Jackson?
Randy Anderson-Fennell
