[URBAN NOTE] "Exactly 346 people voted for Berlin to be renamed Kitchener"

[rfmcdonald]

The Waterloo Region Record's Jeff Outhit notes that, exactly one hundred years ago today in the middle of the First World War, the southwest Ontario city of Berlin had its name changed to Kitchener against the will of its inhabitants. (Via James Nicoll.)

Residents voted narrowly to change Berlin's name in the midst of the First World War to prove loyalty and stem the backlash against a city with deep German roots.

Canadian soldiers were battling Germany, dying amid distant thunder on the Western Front in Europe. Canada, consumed by anti-German sentiment, eyed Berlin darkly, uneasy about buying goods stamped Made in Berlin, suspicious of its young men who were reluctant to enlist.

It was the darkest time in the city's history. You can see the city on edge in a new exhibit by that name at the Waterloo Region Museum. It runs through December.

The space is laid out like a maze. That's meant to disorient you just as people would have felt in 1916. "We want people to feel confused," said Tom Reitz, museum manager.

The exhibit has what you might expect, relics and artifacts, and what you might not, modern podiums and touch screens to explain how the name change still resonates. There's film and art and sound and conflict.

There's the printing plate from the ballot that produced the new name. There's a napkin ring that might have been crafted out of a stolen, melted bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I, but probably wasn't. The Kaiser's ghost hovers above it all.

Reitz is from German stock. His great-grandfather immigrated as a carpenter and lived on Wilhelm Street in Berlin. He wonders: how did his ancestors feel about abandoning Berlin's name? Did they vote?

"What did they think of this?" he asks. The answer is lost to time.