Women get a few more items in city toponymy
Since the launch of Toponym’elles in 2016 a few more women’s names have been added to the city toponymy. Women are now at 7.6% of the nomenclature rather than 6% – not much of a rise, but we only have so many streets, parks and other features to be named or renamed.
(Question: do you think they included all the “Notre Dame” names in the count?)
Ian 14:50 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
No, it’s just proper names.
You can see the list here:
http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=1560,11245605&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
So names like Notre Dame, Ste Dom, Ste Kitty, Rachel, Marianne, etc. don’t count because they aren’t after specific women. That said, it doesn’t include Jeanne-Mance or Square-Victoria, which I find odd.
Ephraim 15:29 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
Well, Ste-Elisabeth is named after Elisabeth Moyen… shouldn’t it count? (Versus Square St-Elisabeth, which is actually named after a saint.)
SMD 15:58 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
The Toponym’elles list is a bank of names to be used in the future (full URL: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=1560,11245605&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&p_search_type=T&p_search_value=83&p_page=-1). The article doesn’t mention the determination criteria for current names, so we don’t know if the Notre-Dames and Saintes are counted. It also mentions that just over 50% of Montreal place names are currently named after men, so I suppose the rest are named after historic or geographic features.
Kate 16:12 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
Ian, Marie-Anne Roy was a sister-in-law of Jean-Marie Cadieux, who owned a large piece of the Plateau back when, and named a bunch of streets after members of his family. The Plateau street is not named after Marianne, although given the number of French folks living in the area now, I wouldn’t be surprised if people thought so.
Rachel was also connected to his family somehow. They were both real women.
(Rue Napoléon is also named after a member of the Cadieux family, not the French emperor, although given the number of French folks, etc. etc.)
Ian 17:15 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
I know that bit about Marie-Anne Roy from you, actually! What I meant was since it’s first names maybe they aren’t counting them. I don’t know. write them a terse letter 😀
As I recall you had mentioned that one of the Ste streets was also just named after someone, not a saint(e) at all – another north-south west plateau street, maybe?
And was was the name of the other street that had its name changed because of all the brothels on it? Ste Dom?
Ephraim 18:55 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
Most of the saint name streets are fakes. St-Denis is named after Denis Viger. St-Paul is after Paul deMaisonneuve or rather… Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, if you want to go with the full long name. St-Hubert is after Hubert-Joseph Lacroix, who ceded the land (though I was always told that he was the first to build outside the walls, but maybe that’s just lore.) St-Jacques is after Jean-Jacques Olier de Verneuil
Maybe we should consider renaming these streets after who they were named after… I mean, they are dead now.. after all.
A lot of this goes back to François Dollier de Casson, who was asked to do the naming. Supposedly he did try to name a street after himself (or his personal patron saint, based on his name)… and was forced to add Xavier to the end of it… and hence St-Francois-Xavier in old Montreal.
Kate 19:33 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
They’re not fakes, Ephraim. There was just a tradition of naming things after someone’s name saint. So St Helen’s Island is named after Hélène Boullé, St-Urbain Street after Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne, and so on.
Ian, iirc Mae West mentioned Cadieux Street in some movie, with reference to the Red Light district, so the name was changed to de Bullion, after a 17th-century marquise who donated money to the Hôtel-Dieu. This is what I remember hearing, anyway. I will have to look up the details.
Kate 19:58 on 2020-03-04 Permalink
Oh by the way, Ian – Saint-Dominique is a guy.
EmilyG 00:35 on 2020-03-05 Permalink
On the list that SMD mentions, there’s at least one religious figure (Aataentsic, an Indigenous goddess, is the first name on the list.)
Kate 08:24 on 2020-03-05 Permalink
EmilyG, SMD, there are a fair number of women on that list who have no connection at all with Montreal. I noticed Mary Anning and Josephine Baker just at a first glance.
We do honour the occasional non-local, but I think we should mostly honour locals with the occasional exception for someone outstanding and universally revered like Nelson Mandela. We used to do saints and kings, but modern criteria have to be different.
EmilyG 16:07 on 2020-03-05 Permalink
I also saw the name of a novel on that list (don’t remember which list item it was. It wasn’t a novel I heard of before.)
Ian 18:29 on 2020-03-05 Permalink
I admit that after 30 years of living in this neighbourhood I never realized it was St Dom not Ste Dom. I stand corrected, thank you, Kate 🙂