| Feb 21, 2013


The Limestone District School Board has chosen the name Granite Ridge Education Centre for its new school in Sharbot Lake, which is slated to open in September.

The name has not gone over very well, and has sparked a bit of a media campaign in opposition to the name.

As the machinery continued working away nearby, a small group gathered in the parking lot by the wood shop of the soon to be demolished Sharbot Lake High School for a TV interview with a reporter from CKWS on Tuesday at noon (February 19) in the midst of a snow squall. Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski and Shabot Obaadjiwan Chief Doreen Davis were on hand to lend their support to the protest.

Gutowski said that granite is not specific enough to identify a school. Davis said that honouring the Algonquin heritage of the region in honour of Frances Sharbot, for whom Sharbot Lake was named, would have been preferable. She suggested Tanakiwin, which is also the name of the Algonquins of Ontario website, referring to the homeland of the Algonquins.

These protests all came a bit too late; the opportunity to propose names for the school was given last fall and culminated in a number of names making the short list, which was published in this newspaper late in 2012.

For the record the short list included the following proposed names: Granite Ridge District School or Granite Ridge School, Lakeview District School, Lakeside District School or Lakeside Education Centre, Waterstone District School, Sharbot Lake District School or Sharbot Lake Education Centre, and Hillcrest District School.

According the Limestone District School Board Administration Procedure 552 – Naming of Schools, the short list was presented to the Board of Trustees for a final decision, and that decision was to choose Granite Ridge Education Centre, which has the unfortunate acronym GREC.

At first blush all I can say about the decision is that it is probably a better name than Waterstone District School.

Administrative Procedure 552 provides for a number of criteria for the Board trustees to consider when deciding the name of a school.

The procedures encourage the selection of “i) Names of famous Canadians of either local or national recognition; or ii) Other appropriate identifications; or iii) Names that reflect the positive image of the Board.”

Since there is no famous Canadian by the name of Granite Ridge, Granite Ridge must either “bring an appropriate identification” to the school or “reflect the positive image of the Board”.

The board, which named itself Limestone after all, does seem to think that substrates “reflect a positive image” but in my view, while rocks are certainly solid (Granite more so than Limestone to be sure) they don’t really reflect anything except heat.

So, we are left with the all-important question, is Granite Ridge an appropriate identification for the school or its students?

I hardly think so. No one that I know in this region identifies themselves as “granitelike" or "granite-ish"; no one that I know has ever said of themselves, “I come from the granite country”, or “I am like the granite under my feet”.

How will the students at the school identify themselves? Will they be the Granite Ridge Runners, the GREC o Romans, or the Granite Ridge Rockers.

Maybe, in the end, the trustees at the Limestone Board are just doing the kids from Central and North Frontenac a favour. Knowing that the kids from Sharbot Lake High School have for years suffered ridicule because of the urban bias that we from the so-called “North” all face, the board has given the northern students a name they will have to live down.

This is my ‘Boy named Sue” theory about the Granite Ridge Education Centre, and the more I think about it, the more I like the name.

I like to think that our kids will be hardened, toughened by the experience; they will learn to laugh when those nasty kids from Sydenham taunt them by saying “go back to Bedrock High, Bam Bam.”

The Kids from the Ridge will have to be strong, they will have to be tough, they will have to be, well, hard as granite.

But if the school board doesn’t mind too much, why not change the name to Granite Ridge District School, at least then the acronym won’t rhyme with Shrek.

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