Secularity bill won’t touch toponymy
The CAQ says its secularity bill, expected later this week, won’t go so far as to mandate changing the hundreds of saints’ names used for towns, streets, schools and other features of public life.
-
Kate
Reply
SANTÉ QUÉBEC COVID NUMBERS
Deaths in Quebec:
20,015
As of April 17
Numbers from Santé Québec
Updated irregularly now
Canada Covid epidemiology update
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Francesco on Bagels and pizzas on the chopping block
- dwgs on Logan Mailloux makes NHL debut with Habs
- Ian on Ecostupidity in aces
- DeWolf on Rent: Legault is still at sea
- DeWolf on Ecostupidity in aces
- Kate on Parts of SRB Pie-IX fencing to be replaced
- Blork on Parts of SRB Pie-IX fencing to be replaced
☠️
INCIDENT TOTE BOARD 2024
Island homicides
8
Pedestrians killed
4
Cyclists killed
0
Pages
Other levels of gov’t
Sideblog projects
Enviro Montreal is a Twitter feed that follows environment news.
Archives
Pages rescued from montreal.com
Meta
Blork 09:23 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I can’t say that bothers me. It’s one thing to say that the crucifix hanging in council chambers or the national assembly is there for “heritage” reasons or whatever, but it’s a whole other thing to mandate wide-scale sweeping place and street name changes. That is hugely disruptive and expensive, and is pretty much pointless.
One can happily live on rue Saint-Charles in Saint-Guillaume without feeling like you’re under the yoke of Catholicism. Those are literally just names, and they do say something about the history of Quebec (and I am not in favour of erasing history). Completely different from going to City Hall to defend your hijab while being lorded over by a crucifix.
jeather 09:27 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I also agree that changing the street etc names is unnecessary. Has there been any serious push to do so? I hadn’t heard of that.
dwgs 09:29 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Agreed. It would be nice if we could agree that we should refrain from naming anything new for the saints though…
Kate 09:31 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Not that I’ve heard, jeather. The article says the bill will be worded in a way that doesn’t allow existing names to be challenged on its behalf, is all.
However: I think schools ought to stop having religious names, given that we no longer have Catholic school commissions and religion is no longer taught in public schools. Many CSDM schools are still named after saints or other Catholic entities or concepts. I wouldn’t want to send my kid to École Christ-Roi or whatever.
dwgs 09:41 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
@Kate, and the newest school in NDG was named… St Raymond. They say that they named it after the neighbourhood, not the saint per se but come on, you couldn’t find something better?
Blork 09:47 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I totally agree to stop naming new streets and institutions after saints. And I do not object to renaming existing schools, but only if they don’t rename them after people. Can you imagine how many “École René-Lévesques” and “École Jacques-Parizeaus” we’d end up with?
jeather 11:11 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I am still sort of annoyed about renaming of University given this. I agree that NEW places shouldn’t be given saint names whether after the town or the street, but let’s just stop renaming old public things please.
Out of curiosity, what does the secularity bill say of the cross on the mountain? (I do not object to it and assume it will be excluded in some way or another.)
Kate 12:09 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Bill’s not out yet, jeather. I gather from this item and the CAQ’s general take that a lot of existing Catholic stuff will be grandfathered. But we’ll see.
Ian 12:10 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I don’t think it’s a good idea to rename streets or towns for the same reason – when they renamed Saint-Louis to Laurier after the town of Saint-Louis du Mile-End was amalgamated, a good chunk of historical awareness of place was simply erased.
Joey 13:11 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I can’t say I see a lot of value in maintaining the name of my kid’s school, Ecole-Saint-Enfant-Jesus, which some smarmy person will be all too happy to tell me is named after a *parish* and not, you know, the son of god. Re-naming public schools after people, places or things that are not merely the most direct form of tacit Christianity can be a very good thing for all involved. It would give the students, teachers and staff a chance to develop and adopt a real identity beyond merely being the school near the church of the same name.
Granted, I’m Jewish and thus much more sensitive to these issues than most people, but the extent to which the fundamentals of Christianity (at least the kids’ version) are deeply ingrained in our public, secular school system is troubling, especially when there is so much hostility toward minority religions in Quebec. Our public schools don’t teach religion, but they do reinforce that Christian holidays and traditions – Christmas, Easter, etc. – are the norm. Obviously that’s unlikely to change. And kudos to our school’s openness to diversity and increasing cultural awareness and sensitivity (and for allowing my family to come present the story of Hannukah to my son’s class) – but it would be so much more rewarding to explain to my son that his school is named after a notable resident of our neighbourhood, and not someone else’s deity.
Anyway, the moment the City erects a public school called Ecole Muhammad, I will gladly drop my beef.
Tee Owe 16:01 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Jeather – the Guardian report on this but get it wrong, that the cross on the mountain is also a crucifix – a cross is a cross, a crucifix is a man being crucified on a cross – very different IMO
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/25/montreal-take-down-80-year-old-crucifix-from-city-chambers
Sorry, don’t know how to insert a link, but you can copy-paste it
Ian 16:58 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
@Joey I’ve been pushing for my kid’s school to allow me to come give a talk to the ERC class on secular humanism but they won’t allow it. We have had Muslims, Jews, and Christians of varying stripes, but no atheists, agnostics, or humanists.
Chris 18:32 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Ian: what reason do they give?
BB 18:46 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
“Granted, I’m Jewish…”
So was Jesus, incidentally.
“Anyway, the moment the City erects a public school called Ecole Muhammad, I will gladly drop my beef.”
So, you’re not taking a principled stance after all. You simply have a beef with Christianity.
Yes, there are more names for public spaces alluding to Christian themes and personalities but that is simply commensurate with the contribution of Christian ideology to Quebec society and Western Civilization in general.
No need to be thoughtless iconoclasts and condemn everything to the memory hole, erasing that historical awareness of place and other things that Ian refers to.
Faiz Imam 19:19 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
As we have covered before, there is a huge dearth of women and indigenous people in our place names, not to mention other visible minorities.
In the past we have been quite ready to remove British and English names and replace them with french ones, was that not erasing history? I think there is a huge opportunity to hit two birds with one stone here. But its a question of political will and a cultural consensus of what peoples and values we choose to highlight.
Chris 19:20 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
“Our public schools don’t teach religion” Don’t they? They should, academically of course, not as indoctrination.
Joey 19:27 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Well, my beef was with the politicians and commentators who claim the high ground of “laïcité” all the while reinforcing the predominance of Christianity in our supposedly secular society. But it turns out I was distracted from the real beef, as always, with blog comment trolls. Thanks for keeping me focused!
@Ian could be a fascinating charter case.
Kate 21:34 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Chris, certainly kids should be educated about the major religions, their beliefs and customs. It’s part of being a well-rounded citizen and a Montrealer to understand about the part played by religions in our society.
But Ian, it’s shocking that the ethics class can’t have a segment on living without religion. That’s important and I wonder what can be done about it.
CE 21:50 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
I wouldn’t hold my breath getting a school name changed. I took a French class at École St-Louis and had a teacher who was lobbying hard to get the school renamed in honour of Émile Nelligan. Despite the fact that Nelligan was a renowned québécois poet, his work was studied by the students in the school, and he was born across the street, the school board insisted on keeping the school named for a French king who wasn’t even actually a saint.
thomas 07:08 on 2019-03-26 Permalink
@CE perhaps the school is named after Louis IX who is a saint.
Kate 07:12 on 2019-03-26 Permalink
There used to be a Catholic parish called St-Louis in the area. Their first church, on Roy near Laval, burned down decades ago, and they put up a new one at the corner of Roy and Berri. This was sold off to a non-Catholic denomination years ago. So the parish doesn’t even exist any more, yet the school goes on carrying the name.
Ian 09:41 on 2019-03-26 Permalink
There used to be an école Saint-Louis on Fairmount & Saint Dominique where les Habitations Émile-Nelligan is now so in a way, CE, I guess your teacher got their wish … as for the high school still on Fairmount, I always thought it was named after the former town of Saint-Louis-du-Mile-End, not the parish, specially since that’s within the Saint-Enfant-Jésus-du-Mile-End parish, I think.