A sunrise ceremony was held at the Giche-name-wiikwedong reconciliation garden at Kelso Beach at Nawash Park in Owen Sound on National Indigenous Peoples Day, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. (photo supplied by Francesca Dobbyn)
It’s official: Owen Sound has changed the name of Kelso Beach Park to Kelso Beach at Nawash Park.
Council passed a by-law at its meeting Monday night to formalize it. The city has already been referring to the westside waterfront property as Kelso Beach at Nawash Park since 2018, but its legal name had not yet been updated.
“Historically, the mouth of the Pottawatomi River was the site of First Nations’ ancient Nawash settlement,” says Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy. “The Anishinaabe territory extended from what is now Collingwood to Goderich. In the winter, people moved in small groups in the hunting territories and each spring they returned to Nawash, a central location that was at the time a low-lying, coastal wetland.”
Boddy says it is great to get the official park name change completed to recognize the history of people on this land.
“I often think how much I know about Tom Thomson, or Billy Bishop, or Agnes Macphail, but I don’t know the history of people that came before them,” Owen Sound’s mayor says. “We’re so diverse … and there’s so many stories we need to learn about the people that lived in our community, that shared our community.”
Boddy says city staff will be updating the signage at Kelso Beach at Nawash Park within the next few days.
A dedication and cultural celebration for the park renaming will also be organized at a later date.