An Ontario township has taken its first official step toward renaming a pair of islands that honour Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the brother of King Charles, who was stripped of his royal titles and later arrested over his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The names of Prince Andrew Island and nearby Gordonstoun Island should be dropped as soon as possible due to the “infamy” attached to the former prince, said Selwyn Mayor Sherry Senis.
The township is submitting an application to the Ontario Geographic Names Board to that effect, following a unanimous council vote on Tuesday to request the monikers be dropped before the much-longer process of finding new names can get underway.
“I just believe it’s the right thing to do,” the mayor said in an interview on Thursday.
Prince Andrew Island, an uninhabited rock that rises out of the Otonabee River, got its name in 1978, a year after Mountbatten-Windsor spent a semester at the local Lakefield College. Nearby Gordonstoun Island was named after the Scottish school that he, King Charles and their father Prince Philip famously attended.
Senis hopes to christen the islands with new names that are more relevant to the community. The township just north of Peterborough will work with the local Curve Lake First Nation and other stakeholders to generate a short list of names, which residents will be able to vote on, she said.
The push to rename the islands came late last year after Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was stripped of his titles, the mayor said. The former royal has denied allegations made by the late Virginia Giuffre, who said she was a teenager when she was trafficked by Epstein and sexually abused by the then-prince.
Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in the United Kingdom last month on suspicion of misconduct in public office after a series of disclosures related to his relationship with Epstein. He was detained for about 11 hours without any charges but remains under investigation.
Senis said the former prince’s fall from grace landed the small township in the international media spotlight,as she fielded calls from the New York Times, the U.K.’s Sunday Times and even media outlets in the Netherlands, wondering what Selwyn would do about the controversial island name.
The mayor said she hadn’t even made the connection between her township and Mountbatten-Windsor’s controversy until reporters started calling her.
“It’s such a small little piece of property,” she said, noting that most residents weren’t aware that Selwyn had a Prince Andrew Island. “They’ve got some trees on them, but nobody lives there and they’re not used for anything.”
Senis said she’s confident the Ontario Geographic Names Board will have no qualms approving the township’s request to have the names dropped, noting that board staff have already spoken with the municipality and they are “quite willing to deal with it in a timely manner.”
Once the community has settled on new names for the islands, the municipality will submit a second application to the board to have the new monikers made official, Senis added.
There’s been interest across Ontario in renaming places that honour the former prince.
The City of Toronto has received two applications calling for Prince Andrew Place, a street in North York, to be renamed.
The applications are under review and the renaming process can take one year or longer, said city spokesperson Kalinka Madej.
In Caledon, a proposal to rename Prince Andrew Drive was rejected by councillors over concerns it would cause hardship for four households on the street, according to a local media report that noted homeowners would have to update driver’s licences, property titles and more if the street name changed.
A 20-minute drive south of Selwyn, the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough announced in 2019 that it was severing ties with Mountbatten-Windsor, who previously served as a royal patron for the museum and honorary chair of its national council.
Last year, Mississauga City Council approved a motion to dissociate Duke of York Boulevard with the former prince, who voluntarily surrendered that title before King Charles later stripped him of the rest. The motion included the removal of all “plaques, honours and non-critical signage tied to the former royal on city property,” council said at the time.
– With files from The Associated Press.