Name Changes in Montreal Should Work Both Ways

Henry Srebrnik , [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Québécois nationalists in Montreal have been into “name cleansing” for decades, trying to erase street and place names that are English, in particular those associated with the British conquest of New France.

Thus, Dorchester Boulevard, a main downtown artery, was renamed Boulevard René-Lévesque following the death of Quebec’s first Parti Québécois premier. Guy Carleton, First Baron Dorchester, had served as Governor of the Province of Quebec from 1768 to 1778.

More recently, one city councillor has been lobbying to get rid of Amherst Street because it was named after an English officer, Jeffery Amherst, who was commander-in-chief of the British army in North America at the time Quebec fell to the British. Amherst also held the position of military governor of Canada from 1760 to 1763.

Many years ago, Western Avenue became Boulevard de Maisonneuve, named after the founder of Montreal, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve.

There was a failed attempt to change the name of another major street, Park Avenue (already called Avenue du Parc) to honour former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa.

Even innocuous names such as Maplewood Avenue have been erased – it is now Boulevard Édouard-Montpetit, named for an influential Quebec nationalist scholar.

But obviously these same “cleansers” have no problem with names that remind us of the legacy of antisemitism, in Quebec and elsewhere.

Montreal’s Snowdon district, for example, has an important thoroughfare named Isabella Avenue, named for Queen Isabella of Spain. Indeed, there is a monument dedicated to her in MacDonald Park, which fronts Isabella Avenue between Clanranald and Earnscliffe Avenues. Isabella’s memorial, placed there in 1958, can be found at the southeast corner of the park.

I lived on Coolbrook Avenue, which is nearby, until 1982, but for some reason never looked closely at the memorial. When I was in Montreal earlier this summer, however, I took note of it.

This is a completely inappropriate monument, particularly in a neighbourhood with many Jewish residents, as Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand, in 1492 ordered the expulsion of all Jews in the country who refused to convert to Catholicism. Approximately 200,000 Jews left Spain.

Others converted, but often came under scrutiny by the Inquisition investigating relapsed conversos (the so-called Marranos). Many of these people were then burnt at the stake. As a result, no Jews lived in Spain until the 20th century.

Should Montreal really pay tribute to a monarch responsible for ethnic cleansing, torture, and murder? It’s long past time to remove this memorial stone and replace it with something more appropriate – perhaps in recognition of a Montreal Jewish figure from the past such as Reuben Brainin, H. M. Caiserman, Yehuda Kaufman, A.M. Klein, Ida Maze, or Yaacov Zipper?

And by the way, while we’re looking at some “name cleansing,” shouldn’t Montreal also rename the Metro station honoring the notorious antisemite Lionel Groulx? Thousands of people use this Metro transfer stop daily and probably assume this was a great man. They should be disabused of this idea.

In the 1930s, Abbé Groulx was an avowed admirer of fascist dictators António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal and Benito Mussolini of Italy. He asserted that Jews were a negative influence on French Canadian society. His impact on Quebec’s intellectual elite was immense and Quebec’s politicians in turn pressured Ottawa to deny Jews entry into Canada in the decade before the Holocaust.

It was because of people like Groulx, who created the cultural climate that kept Jewish refugees out of this country, that millions of Jews perished in Hitler’s death camps.

If Quebec is really trying to break with its “tarnished” past, then Groulx should go down the same memory hole as Amherst and Dorchester.