Street name change moves to council vote
Four months after saying it intended to follow through on the name change, the city of Montreal announced Wednesday it will rechristen a north-end street named after Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), a French physician whose research earned him a Nobel Prize but whose support for eugenics — and the Nazi regime that practised it — has seen his name excised from a series of memorials here and in France.
Alexis-Carrel Ave. has existed in what is now the borough of Rivièresdes-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles since 1972. Last April, Mayor Denis Coderre said he would move on the name change after discussing the matter with Liberal MNA David Birnbaum, who urged the mayor to follow the city of Gatineau’s lead and remove Carrel’s name from its repertoire of streets.
On Wednesday, a public meeting of the city ’s executive committee announced that the name change would move forward and be submitted to a vote during the next meeting of city council on Aug. 21.
Chantal Rouleau, mayor of the borough where the street is located, said the thoroughfare would be renamed after Rita LeviMontalcini (1909-2012), an Italian Nobel Prizewinning physician who persisted in pursuing her career despite laws in Mussolini’s Italy that barred Jews from holding academic or professional positions. A park in the borough also named after Carrel will be renamed after Don Bosco, a 19th-century Italian priest who spent much of his life working to provide education to children living in poverty and was canonized in 1934.