Toronto festival receives backlash from community after removing 'Polish' from its name

Petition to preserve festival name receives more than 3,600 signatures

Nationalpost.com
July 18, 2022

The decision to drop “Polish” from the name of a historic Toronto street festival was met with pushback from the city’s Consulate General of Poland and the local community.

Magdalena Pszczolkowska wrote a letter to Roncesvalles BIA to “request preserving the annual festival at Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto -- ‘The Roncesvalles Polish Festival’”

Hosting the festival under its new name (now simply called Roncevalles Festival) “will have irreversible consequences in relation to the nature of the event” and may result in lower attendance, writes Pszczolkowska.

“Since many years the Roncesvalles Avenue is well known as the centre of Polish community with prominent Polish institutions, businesses and St. Casimir’s Catholic Church located there.

“This is why the largest Polish Festival in North America has been annually organized on Roncesvalles Avenue,” the letter reads.

Pszczolkowska is not alone. A change.org petition to retain the historic name asked why a festival known for celebrating Polish food and culture would choose to omit the descriptor from its banner.

“The Roncesvalles Polish Festival is the largest Polish festival in North America with over 350,000 annual visitors. By removing its ‘Polish’ character, the Roncesvalles BIA is erasing a symbol of Polish-Canadian culture and undermining Polish identity in Canada,” the petition reads.

The petition received more than 3,600 signatures as of Saturday afternoon.

Roncesvalles BIA has since responded to the concerns and said it will host a meeting next week to consider changing back the name. Roncesvalles Village BIA board chair David Neinstein told Toronto Sun the concerns were being taken “very seriously.”

“We’re listening to everyone’s opinions and we have a board meeting next week and we’re going to discuss the option then and see whether we think it’s the best idea to change the name back and if it’s even possible,” Neinstein said, in part.

“We’re open-minded. It’s righteous concern. Everyone wants to protect their heritage and we didn’t mean to diminish it at all,” he added.

Neinstein also explained the reason for the name change, which, he said was in an effort to combine the festival with Roncy Rocks, which features local musicians and artists.

“We presented it to the 270 (BIA) members in October of 2021, we said, ‘Hey we’ve got this great idea to combine the festivals.’ And we really thought we had a win-win and the motion passed unanimously,” Neinstein said.
But, judging from the backlash, many in the community had grown attached to the name after 15 years.

“Many people in the Polish community didn’t know that this decision was made. They felt that a certain level of consultation should have occurred and did not,” said Etobicoke-Centre MPP Kinga Surma, adding the community is “disappointed.”