A city council that has become synonymous with renaming Toronto’s public assets has gone full circle, renaming two parks after their fellow councillors.

City Hall renamed Scarborough’s Rosebank Park this month after Cynthia Lai, a one-term councillor who died in 2022. In June, part of Lawrence Park Ravine was dubbed Jaye Robinson Park, after a longtime Don Valley councillor who died last year.

Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus of politics at Toronto Metropolitan University, said despite the inherent conflict in having councillors name landmarks after their own, the system we have is the right one. He argued something like a renaming committee made up of people from the community wouldn’t be as accountable as elected officials.

“It’s legitimate to question and to scrutinize,” he sai

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