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The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together.— William Shakespeare

On visiting my home city of Winnipeg for the first time since before the pandemic, I noticed that a major road, Bishop Grandin Boulevard, no longer exists. Or rather it exists but has a different name: Abinojii Mikanah, which is Anishinaabemowin for “the children’s way.” The boulevard, along with a couple of smaller thoroughfares, was renamed by the city council in 2024 after consultation with Indigenous groups. The grounds for renaming are that Vital-Justin Grandin, who died in 1902, was a proponent of residential schools and has joined others, previously celebrated, in posthumous infamy.

I have no special affection for Grandin’s memory nor even an informed opinion on the justness of his demotion. Growing up in the anglophone half of Winnipeg, I’d never heard of the prelate, and his eponymous boulevard only came...