In the end, city council just didn’t have the courage.

Maybe they didn’t want to burn any bridges.

They took the safe route. Hey, elections are coming up this fall, remember?

Paying tribute to our Eastern European forefathers who helped to build Brandon by naming the new bridges Bachinski Crossing didn’t pass council’s muster last Tuesday night.

Bland won out.

Yawn.

Council decided to stick with the Thompson Bridge concept, named after an explorer who was given credit for being one of the first Englishmen of his ilk to report back to London that there were trees and valleys and rich farmland and rivers and . . . oh yeah, a bunch of people with darker skin called Indians.

There are no recorded interviews with Mr. Thompson, but it can be assumed he was here and gone in a matter of weeks.

In the meantime, the Eastern Europeans began arriving in Brandon in the late 1800s and early 1900s and built a foundation in the city’s north end that came complete with staying power. Their names have dotted the phone books and the school enrolment lists and the businesses and the church registers for more than 100 years, but their names show up on an embarrassingly low number of public edifices, streets and, yes, bridges.

It’s almost as if our city fathers and mothers are ashamed of the names that end in ‘ski’ or ‘chuk’ or a combination of z’s, y’s, t’s and j’s.

It’s easy to understand council’s reluctance to favour one family name over another. Why would Bachinski be good, while Borotsik or Burgess wouldn’t be? Why would someone’s family name be chosen over something, say, geographic?

On the other hand, if you’re looking for cojones, the Manitoba government didn’t hesitate to honour former Brandon MLA Len Evans by naming Assiniboine Community College’s Trades and Technology building after him. Would it be any different had our MLA been Len Harapiuk? Not likely.

More than 70 readers who responded to a Journal poll asking the question seemed to agree that Bachinski Crossing would be a good name. At last count, it was 62 per cent in favour and 38 against. However, such a small sampling shouldn’t carry a great deal of weight, but it’s a small indication of public opinion nonetheless.

The Bachinski family ran a market garden immediately east and west of where the bridges are located and it would be a great opportunity for Brandon to use that name as a representation of the Eastern European influence on Brandon’s early history.

History lover John McNarry, past president of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, would have loved to see city council stand tall and proud and yell through the loudspeakers that Bachinski Crossing was the chosen name. In an email to the Journal, he wrote: “It says a lot about our roots. Also from my perspective, it ties the human history of Brandon and the efforts of so many in the past as to what the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum represents.”

It’s strange that Brandon city council would turn its back on our European ancestoral history, especially considering that probably the biggest annual event in the city other than the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair is February’s Westman Winter Festival, which celebrates the multi-cultural city that we have become. Sure, for one weekend, we embrace and celebrate the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, the Salvadorans, Chinese, Colombians and the like, but Brandon’s Ukrainian and Polish heritage is much deeper than those relative Juan-come-latelies.

The official bridge-naming procedure is for the city to choose a name — as it did Tuesday night — and submit it to the province, which reportedly has the final say. These things are usually rubber-stamp issues, with the provincial authorities rarely, if ever, going against the grain.

However, this might be a good time to start. Maybe the province can serve as a faux senate and give the issue some “sober second thought.” The bridge name could use some colour, and some local historical significance. It’s going to be here for a long time.

Maybe in another 50 years, the city can name the road to Maple Leaf “Rodriguez Way.”