Renaming Lionel-Groulx “too confusing”
Renaming a key metro station like Lionel-Groulx would be too confusing, says Émilie Thuillier, heritage czar on the city’s executive committee. Competing petitions continue to either support the status quo, or plead for a change of name to Oscar Peterson.
j2 16:43 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
Ok that’s the dumbest argument ever. We’d never rename anything.
And Lionel-Groulx is difficult for non-francophone tourists to say, it’s not exactly catchy, they’d remember anything better than Lee Noel Groo.
Alison Cummins 16:59 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
j2, I thought it was lin’l grulx?
Yan Carpentier 17:42 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
i don’t give a flying fuck if non-francophone find the name hard to say, Pitorsone.
Alison Cummins 18:29 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
Yan,
Si une des justifications pour garder le nom actuel est de ne pas porter confusion aux touristes, évidemment qu’il y a *quelqu’un* qui se souci des non-francophones.
jeather 21:21 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
Yes, would hate to rename major streets or anything, that would be confusing.
Max 21:53 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
It’s been Oscar-Peterson to me for years now. If I tell my friends I’ll meet them at OP in 25 minutes they know exactly what I mean. Try it. Perhaps common usage might eventually prevail?
JaneyB 00:43 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
@Max – I like it. I’m gonna try that. It could work as Oscar’s or Oscar’s Place too eg: I’ll meet you at Oscar’s in 10.
ant6n 04:14 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Let`s just rename it “Gru”.
CharlesQ 06:43 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
I thought mayor Plante wanted the stations on the pink line to be named after important women. I guess they won’t be able to do that anymore.
Tim F 10:00 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
How about “Peterson–Groulx?
Dan 10:20 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Do I love having the station named Lionel-Groulx? Of course not. But this would be a particularly complicated, confusing and costly name change, that I can only assume for whatever reasons would cost way too many millions of dollars.
Be like Max and call it how you like. Donate those millions of dollars to a charity of his widow’s choosing, or start a neighborhood piano program for kids. Install a statue of Oscar right in front of the doors so tourists are more interested to learn about him than the weird name above the metro doors. Make good use of the money put behind his legacy, don’t throw it down the pit of STM mismanagement and bureaucratic nonsense.
Francesco 11:17 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Too confusing? How? But renaming sections of major boulevards, nah that’s fine. People are smart.
Too costly? How? Putting a sticker on a few hundred maps? But renaming sections of major boulevards, nah that’s fine. The thousands of corporations and individuals residing there are happy to change letterheads and websites and do all the work and cover costs for something they never demanded.
Metro and commuter train station names *have* been changed often in the past — in fact, *most* of the Deux-Montagnes Exo line (Roxboro-Two Mountains line ;)) station names have been renamed. It’s rather not as difficult or as costly as changing street names.
Uatu 13:20 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Just call it petit Bourgogne and be done with it
j2 13:39 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Yan, rude? and maybe misses the point. The assertion was that changing the name would be confusing, my point is it already is. And the city has changed landmark names countless times, clearly. Yours, is that so is Peterson – sure, makes sense – and you hate tourism?
I actually have no interest in calling it Peterson, either way, but an interesting assumption by you. I am a bit surprised of the interest in retaining the name of an, at least alleged, anti-Semite. It seems to me it might be better to have a name that was more universally usable for the last stop for the 747 bus and from the metro.
(Well until the REM destroys that).
Ian 13:54 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Remember when changing the name from Berri-de-Montigny to Berri-UQAM bankrupted the STM and confused all tourists forever? Yeah me neither. This is a war of symbols, let’s not play the logistics game because that’s got nothing to do with it and we all know it.
Francesco 14:14 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
The multiple assertions I’ve read recently that Groulx was steadfast in his protection of “minorities” because he was protecting the “francophone minority in Canada” are truly bizarre.
Ian 14:25 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
There is an ongoing narrative within nationalist circles that Francophone Québecois cannot possibly be racist as they are the victims of racist persecution by English Canada.
This was actually a fairly common argument laid out by a wide variety of minority groups and was used to silence other forms of activism (i.e. “you are distracting from the cause”) but the obvious logical flaws in that kind of single-issue approach is in part what led to intersectionalism… granted that in turn led to a form of identity politics hat unvoices people for a variety of reasons. There are no easy solutions, but claiming immunity from racism because you are from a persecuted group suggests a fairly obvious incapacity for introspection & empathy – at the very least.
That we have the CAQ introducing legislation like Loi 21 with the support of the majority of Québecois shows that the legacy of Lionel-Groulx is strong. For what it’s worth, even Legault claims to be protecting women by enforcing a law against hijabs. Paternalistic, lacking introspection… plus ça change.
Francesco 15:55 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Thank you Ian, well said.
So as a member of the persecuted anglophone minority 😉 I can’t possibly be called a racist for calling Bernard Landry a racist (on another forum). Oy vey my head hurts.
Kate 11:08 on 2020-07-02 Permalink
Just crossed my mind that calling it Peterson could be mistaken for Jordan Peterson, ew.
I like “Oscar” or “OP” though.