It has been a part of the community since 1962, but now there are growing calls to change the name of an Airdrie high school.

George McDougall High School was named after a Methodist missionary who came to Alberta in the mid-1800s. He founded an outpost for the Hudson's Bay Company in Edmonton and helped negotiate Treaty 6 and Treaty 7.

McDougall, along with his son also established the McDougall Orphanage and Home, a residential school in the Stoney Nakoda Nation.

It's that involvement in the residential school system that has many calling for the change, including Steve Durrell, a progressive advocate for the city who ran in the 2019 provincial election.

"It doesn't seem appropriate when we're trying to recognize the pain and suffering that people went through living in these residential schools that we continue to venerate these people and promote their names on schools and public buildings."

Durrell referenced the decision earlier this week from the Calgary Board of Education to immediately rename Langevin School to Riverside School. Hector-Louis Langevin was considered one of the fathers of confederation and had several landmarks in Calgary and Ottawa named for him.

However, those monuments including a bridge in Calgary and an office building in Parliament have been renamed in light of his involvement with residential schools.

There are also calls for Bishop Grandin High School in Calgary to remove its name for the same reasons.

The demand for change comes following the recent discovery of 215 children found buried at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops.

Vicki Bouvier is a Metis woman and professor of Indigenous Studies at Mount Royal University and said the calls for schools to change their name happens for a variety of reasons.

"There's a lot of trauma and hurt within that legacy and so it could be coming from a place of that. A place of retribution, a place of wanting to call attention to renaming in a way that honours Indigenous people and relationship."

atives. What are they doing? How are they being responsible for that which they know now? To me this is really important."

Following the discovery of the 215 children, municipalities across Canada including Airdrie lowered flags to half-staff for 215 hours. Flags were also lowered at schools, fire halls and the RCMP building. Shoes and teddy bears were also left in front of government buildings and homes to honour the children.

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