The four-lane parkway that runs along the Ottawa River will get an official name change in September, from Sir John A. McDonald to Kichi Zībī Mīkan.

The National Capital Commission (NCC) board members voted to erase the name of Canada’s first Prime Minister after consultations with Indigenous communities.

“Our Board of Directors approved today the Algonquin name Kichi Zībī Mīkan (kitchi zee-bee MEE-khan) to replace the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway,” the NCC tweeted.

“The name Kichi Zībī Mīkan means ‘Great River Road,’ and was chosen based off an Indigenous naming and engagement exercise.” 

The four-lane parkway that runs along the Ottawa River was previously called the Ottawa River Parkway until former Prime Minister Stephen Harper changed it in 2012 to honour Canada’s first Prime Minister.

However, because of Sir John A. McDonald’s involvement in Canada’s residential school system, activist groups applied pressure on the NCC for a change.

In 2021, activists pulled down a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald after sensationalist claims that 215 Indigenous children’s remains were discovered in Kamloops sent the world into a frenzy.

To this day, not one body from the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site has actually been discovered.

As previously reported by The Counter Signal, following these reports, there were at least 58 attacks on churches in less than a year. 

Of those churches, at least 17 of them were scorched or burnt to a crisp in suspicious circumstances.

In May, an NDP member in Parliament had a borderline psychotic episode, screaming at her fellow MPs to declare the “ongoing genocide” against Indigenous, trans women, and two-spirit people a “Canada-wide emergency.”