Hundreds march in protest of Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway name

• UPDATE |NCC CEO Tobi Nussbaum said Oct. 4 the organizationplansto provide a recommendation on the parkway name by January.

An orange banner obscuredthe SirJohn A.Macdonald Parkway sign in Ottawa on Friday as hundredsmarched from the Canadian War Museum to Parkdale Avenueto protest the National Capital Commission's 2012 decision to name the road after Canada's first prime minister.

There have been fresh calls to change the name as thesecond National Truth and Reconciliation Day, observed Friday, approached.

"We're here because of the actions and decisions made by John A. Macdonald, who committed genocide in this country,"said Albert Dumont, an Algonquin elder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinbe First Nation.

"He actually wanted to erase people from these lands."

Dumont organized the protest in an effort to accelerate the renaming process. Last year,three Ottawa city councillorspublished a lettercalling on the federal government to select a new name for the roadway just west of the city's downtown.

"We're going to walk, and every step we're going to take is going to part of ... a ceremonyto acknowledge the suffering and the deaths of the past," Dumont said.

Inastatement emailed toCBCearlier this month, the NCC saidwork on "a proposed review of the name of the SJAMParkway is ongoing."

Kitigan Zibi member Claude Latour, who attended the protest on Friday, said a name change is overdue.

"Here in Canada, we shouldn't be naming highways after those who participated [in]and well knewthe outcomes of these basically prison camps that we call residential schools," Latour said.

The march was one of several events in Ottawa marking the National Day forTruth and Reconciliation, including a gathering on Parliament Hillto honour Indigenous families impacted by residential schoolsand another ceremony at Beechwood Cemetery.