Don’t rename Vimy Park
Re: ‘ Parizeau Park’ Proposal Angers Vimy Ridge Group, June 17.
I have no doubt that when Jacques Parizeau died last June, his family buried him in a nice grave with a lovely marker and all the respect they could provide. Meanwhile, there are 11,285 dead of our fighting forces who fought in France during the First World War and have no known grave or marker. Their names are inscribed on the walls of the monument at Vimy. None of them came home to a proper service, nor a marker where family could show their respect. Mr. Parizeau’s sole political desire was the breakup of Canada through Quebec separation. That is showing disrespect of the highest order to the men and women who fought and died. I believe that Vimy Park should remain as such and have the names of those 11,285 souls inscribed through out the park. We cannot have enough reminders — whether by street name or park name — of the battle that brought our nation together. We should not be renaming that park after a man whose goal was to tear it apart. Robert Cleaver, Brockville, Ont. Every six months or so, the mayor of Montreal, who is normally terrific, comes off as totally politically tone deaf.
The city cannot seem to renovate a simple structure named for Mordecai Richler 15 years after his death, and yet now we learn the mayor supports changing the name of a tiny park in Outremont from Vimy Ridge to Jacques Parizeau, who died in 2015. Has the mayor gone mad? It’s akin to if German Chancellor Angela Merkel were to rename a First World War memorial park for the Battle of the Marne in Berlin after a post-1945 former German chancellor. It would be seen both as disrespectful and as a farce. G. DeWolf Shaw, Montreal.