Amid the push to remove statues and symbols with historical ties to racist concepts and ideas in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, the city of Montreal has faced growing criticism to remove the name of Lionel Groulx (1878-1967), a French Canadian Roman Catholic priest, historian and Quebec nationalist who harbored strong antisemitic views, according to a CBC news report early last week.
Revered by ardent Quebec nationalists and separatists, controversy surrounding Groulx's antisemitic opinions first arose in 1990, in what became known as the Delisle–Richler affair, when famed Jewish-Canadian author Mordecai Richler and French-Canadian historian Esther Delisle accused several pre-World War II Quebec intellectuals, including Groulx, of virulent antisemitism and sympathies for Vichy France.
Richler and Delisle claimed that in 1933 Groulx, at the height of support for Fascism in Quebec, wrote under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier an article entitled "So That We May Live...", which was published in the journal L'Action nationale [National Action], and encouraged Quebeckers, especially French-speaking Quebeckers, to boycott Jewish businesses in the city as a means for dispelling the "Jewish problem."
In the article, Groulx (under the name Jacques Brassier) said that "To resolve the Jewish problem, it would suffice if French Canadians regained their common sense. There is no need of extraordinary legislation; no need for violence of any sort. We will only give our people the order, 'Do not buy from the Jews'…And if by some miracle our order were understood and complied with, then in six months the Jewish problem would be solved, not merely in Montreal but from one end of the province to the other."
Supporters and sympathizers of Groulx's historical role in Quebec have argued to the contrary, citing a line he wrote in the following sentence, which said "Antisemitism is not only not a Christian solution [to the Jewish problem], it is a solution that is negative and ridiculous."Other academics claim Groulx's antisemitism was not racial in orientation, but religious, and therefore was not equivalent to the racial antisemitism seen in Nazi Germany prior to and during WWII.
There have numerous unheeded calls to change the name of the metro station over the past decades, which was opened in 1978 and corresponds with the name of the adjacent street. In November 1996, the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada sent an official request Executive Committee of the Montreal Urban Community to rename the station, due to Groulx antisemitic past.
Another call to change the name occurred in 2008, which was rejected by the city of Montreal due to an apparent moratorium on name changes enacted in 2006.
The City of Montreal said in a statement to CBC that it recognizes "we are living in a period of significant social transformation," but that the name change is difficult logistically.
"The names of metro stations are based on geographic references, that is, the names of nearby streets or institutions," said Geneviève Jutras, spokeswoman for Mayor Valérie Plante. She added that these names are easily recognizable by metro users, and an important part of the metro network.
The man leading the call for renaming the station, local Montrealer Naveed Hussain, has circulated a petition online suggesting a change to Oscar Peterson station, a Canadian jazz pianist and eight-time Grammy Award who grew up steps away from the station. Peterson passed away in Toronto in December 2007, at age 82.
Hussain's petition has gathered more than 10,000 signatures since last Tuesday. Since 2013, there have been five name changes to Montreal metro stations, with the last occurring in 2014. Hussain added that the city has changed names to represent Canadian and Quebec identity in a better way, noting the change of Amherst Street in 2019 to Atateken Street, the Mohawk term for brotherhood.