Port-la-JoyeFort Amherst name change up for discussion

A Mi'kmaq leader's request to change the name of P.E.I.'s Port-la-JoyeFort Amherst National Historic Site will be discussed at a special meeting later this month.

The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada met at the end of June in St. John's but didn't reach a decision on the name change.

• Parks Canada may consider renaming historic site Port-la-JoyeFort Amherst

The board's mandate is to advise the federal government on the commemoration of nationally significant aspects of Canada's history.

It will meet again later this month to make a recommendation to Catherine McKenna, the minister responsible for Parks Canada.

Keptin John Joe Sark said the site in Rocky Point, which overlooks the Charlottetown harbour from the southwest, should be renamed to reflect its Mi'kmaq heritage.

Last January, Sark wrote a letter to McKenna formally requesting the name of the site be changed.

"Gen. Amherst didn't even live here. He didn't even come here. He never visited here, he never came to P.E.I., so why would they bother giving Parks Canada site his name? To me, he was a tyrant and a barbarian," Sark told CBC in February.

The park is named after General Jeffrey Amherst. Historians have found evidencein correspondence with others in the British military in the1700sthat Amherst advocated spreading the smallpox virus to aboriginal people using blankets. However,there is no direct evidence Amherst handed out smallpox-infected blankets himself.

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