LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Bowser and Blue’s Canada Day salute

We’ve written a song for Canada Day, to the tune of C’est la faute du fédéral — a song many of your readers will know. Here are the lyrics:

Here we are again / C’est la fête du Canada

All the women and the men / C’est la fête du Canada

And nonbinary, transgender / Every human everywhere

This is our day to share/ C’est la fête du Canada

Whatever you believe/ C’est la fête du Canada

If you live, and you can breathe / C’est la fête du Canada

It’s what keeps us all together / Even when we are apart

This is our beating heart / C’est la fête du Canada

C’est la fête du Canada / Célébrons, c’est notre droit

Adieu tristesse, bon débarras / C’est la fête, c’est la fête du Canada.

(By George Bowser and Rick Blue.)

George Bowser, Westmount

Keep place names simple and helpful

Re: “Irish community slams decision on Griffintown REM station name” (Montreal Gazette, June 25) The purpose of a place name is help travellers get around by providing clear identification names, one that preferably stays the same over the years. When toponymy becomes a tool and contest of political revisionism and one-upmanship, confusion reigns.

Why are some airports be named after political leaders instead of their location? Why must renaming be made at all — as with Vimy Park in Outremont being renamed after Jacques Parizeau?

Our métro stations are named in a way that helps locate them — street names, universities and, in the case of Longueuil, the city.

The name Griffintown-bernard-landry, for the future REM station, bears two unrelated names composed of seven syllables. To me, it defies all naming logic.

M.J. Mccutcheon, Montreal

‘Lionel-groulx’ métro must go

Re: “A compromise plan to honour Oscar Peterson” (Opinion, June 27)

Jérémie Mcewen and Martine St-victor’s argument about a compromise for the renaming of the Lionel-groulx métro station strikes me as facile.

They refer to Lionel Groulx as “a sometime anti-semite, eugenicist and quite enthusiastic reader of the bigoted French intellectual Charles Maurras.” The word “sometime” is used as though Groulx were a sometime tea drinker in place of his morning cup of coffee.

Like many modern-day racists who hide under the veil of social media anonymity, Groulx wrote poisonous bile under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier. He called for boycotts of Jewish shops and opposed immigration to Canada by non-catholics.

Some will argue Groulx was product of his time. Allowing his memory to be perpetuated in one of Montreal’s busiest public spaces is an insult to common decency and respect. There should be no place for this in today’s Quebec.

Princeton University has announced plans to remove the name of former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson from its public policy school because of his racist views. With proper planning, Montreal should see fit to change the name of a métro station. Steven Spodek, Côte-st-luc

SHARE YOUR VIEWS: letters@montrealgazette.com