Man wants to rename Christophe-Colomb
A Concordia political science student is undertaking a one‑man campaign to change the name of Christophe-Colomb Avenue because of Columbus’s responsibility for slavery and genocide. Ray Coelho is proposing to return to an older name for the street, boulevard Des Ormes.
Update: Kevin’s comment below is crucial information.
Further note: I emailed La Presse about him, and the journo replies: “la décision de publier a été prise puisque cet individu n’est plus impliqué dans ce parti et que cette initiative n’a pas de lien avec ce parti.”
Kevin 09:21 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
This petition is organized by a guy who belonged to a neo-Nazi party.
https://www.antihate.ca/neo-nazi_party_active_in_montreal
Kate 09:32 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
Kevin, thank you for this information!
Shouldn’t La Presse have known that?
Kevin 10:20 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
It wasn’t hard to dig up his background, but maybe the staff just stopped when they found other articles about his petition and they assumed someone else had done due diligence.
thomas 10:36 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
He also has a campaign to end fluoridation in Montreal. https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-expenses-to-end-fluoridation-in-montreal
Kate 11:25 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
Oh, he is a nutbar. I’ve emailed La Presse about the info Kevin found.
Anyway, I didn’t think we had fluoridation in Montreal. I was discussing that with my dental hygienist just last week.
Nicholas 11:48 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
The city of Montreal does not have water fluoridation, but the treatment plants in Dorval and Pointe-Claire, which serve some independent West Island municipalities and are owned by Montreal, do.
qatzelok 13:36 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
Did you know that CC was a slave trader before becoming a “discoverer of continents?” So that street sign is commemorating a slave trader who instigated genocides.
After reading what Keven provided, I don’t think we should name any streets after Ray Coelho either.
nau 14:21 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
Would be a bit odd to change the name back to Des Ormes, given that there likely aren’t any elms left on it. Maybe they should change the name to Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, even if it doesn’t make it all the way down to Old Montreal. Or maybe they could extend Atateken to cover all these adjoined streets.
Kate 15:35 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
qatzelok, did you think the readers of this blog were unaware of the transgressions of Columbus?
nau, you’re right, the name Atateken could easily be extended alongside Lafontaine Park then right up past Henri‑Bourassa.
Blork 18:25 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
I don’t care what the street is called, but we should NOT rename it NOW, based on this petition, because the last thing we want to do is give this guy any credence or credibility, at all. Full stop.
Kate 19:25 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
There’s also another lurking can of worms although many Quebec thinkers won’t see it this way. If we banish colonialists as diverse as Columbus and Sir John A. Macdonald, we should also rethink the roles of people like Champlain and Jeanne Mance. Merely the fact of speaking French rather than Spanish or English shouldn’t automatically exonerate them.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Tim S. 21:17 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
So is the assumption that this is an attempt to provoke a culture war?
Blork 21:55 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
More likely this is just a crazy guy clamouring for attention.
thomas 23:08 on 2023-07-24 Permalink
Considering his ties with the anti-vax movement and Pierre Poilievre, I suspect that he is gathering email addresses and phone numbers to perpetuate his anger-driven fundraising.
walkerp 08:20 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Ah yes, Thomas, you nailed it.
MarcG 09:14 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
If so, won’t his list be full of ‘woke’ people, rather than fellow right-wing reactionaries?
Blork 09:36 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Exactly, which is why I repeat my assertion that this is just a crazy guy clamouring for attention.
Michael 09:58 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Atataken is such an ugly street name.
They could have spent 5 mins choosing something that fits better.
Sean French 12:35 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Mr Coelho was one of my original co-admins of my Facebook group Decolumbize. He was ejected and banned by me as of yesterday. I’m in total shock. As a leftist Indigenous activist, I’m totally disgusted by his history.
We confronted him yesterday, and he tried to say it was in 2018, and that he stopped associating with the NP after they “changed”. But I can see in the Elections Canada website that he received 28 votes on behalf of the NP in the fall 2019 election.
I do ask you all to support the name change, but not through Mr. Coelho’s petition. Support it by standing with the Indigenous people of the region when we start pressuring for change.
I can’t believe the damage this character has caused to my genuine effort to remove a name that honours genocide. I’ll keep trying, and definitely without the “help” of Coelho.
EmilyG 13:47 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Ugliness is subjective.
Atateken is a carefully chosen name. It fits well.
Kate 13:59 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
I agree that Atateken is fine and I’d be very pleased if the name could extend up to the Back River.
Thank you for your thoughts on this, Sean French.
qatzelok 14:00 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Sean French, I totally support the name change. That we still have names like Columbus on our street signs demonstrates that most people are still painfully unaware about how Canada and the USA were built on genocide and extreme racism.
By the way, we haven’t had a revolution in Canada or the USA since the days of non-stop genocide, so we still have the same government model as we did then.
Arie 14:06 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
I think the idea to change the street name is perfectly valid and needed. We are on stolen land and there is no reason to keep exposing the people who have been affected by colonialism to have to keep seeing the names and images of their abusers anywhere. I don’t agree with changing the name to anything that isn’t approved by the Kanienkeha:ka. Above and beyond basic justice, which should be enough, we will not survive climate change if we don’t restore Indigenous sovereignty worldwide. Changing the name is the LEAST we can do. The dude never even set foot anywhere near here. Don’t use Mr Coellho as an excuse to keep this awful man’s name up on one of the longest north-south streets in the city.
Ian 17:00 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
Actually it’s worth npting that qatzi hasn’t mentioned just HOW BAD of a slaver Columbus was – his governorship in the Caribbean was so notoriously brutal even by Spanish slaver standards that he was actually recalled to Spain – in chains.
“Natives were regularly whipped for what Columbus considered minor offenses — but stealing a vegetable or animal could result in cutting off a Taíno’s nose, ear, or hand; the offender was sometimes forced to walk around with their severed body part in shame. Columbus took and gifted Taíno women to his crewmen, who would violently beat and rape them. Pregnant Taíno women who were taken captive gave birth to babies who were sometimes thrown to hungry dogs. Columbus established a business in the sale of 9- and 10-year-old Taíno girls for sexual slavery. He also kidnapped and enslaved Taínos themselves — personally initiating the transatlantic slave trade in his voyage back to Europe.”
full article
Orr 18:01 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
I understand that Samuel de Champlain spent some time in the Spanish Caribbean before coming to North America and was himself disgusted by the horrific crimes there by the Spaniards and developed a mindset to create something different for the French colonization of North America. That was my takeaway from the David Hackett Fischer book Champlain’s Dream.
Chris 23:07 on 2023-07-25 Permalink
>we will not survive climate change if we don’t restore Indigenous sovereignty worldwide
Honestly, that’s magical thinking. Everywhere around the world homo sapiens is destroying the climate. The indigenous people of China, Indian, Africa, are in charge of those places, and they are all polluting plenty. It’s a species-wide problem of ours.
Arie 15:02 on 2023-07-27 Permalink
You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Goodbye.