Irish immigrants want new Montreal subway station named after one of their own

Station may be named after deceased Quebec Premier Landry

MONTREAL – Some in Montreal’s Irish community want the city’s new subway station to be named after one of their own. Instead, the station may be named after recently-deceased Quebec Premier Bernard Landry, who is said to have blamed the 1995 sovereignty referendum loss on immigrants during a verbal outburst.

In November, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante announced that she wants to name the Griffintown station of the upcoming Réseau express métropolitain (REM) light rail transit after Landry, premier from 2001 to 2003. Plante said the station was close to the city’s multimedia district, which Landry founded, and thought it would be a fitting way to honour the politician who died in November 2018.

But historians and community groups don’t think Landry had a strong connection to the neighbourhood, and would prefer a name that better represents Griffintown’s history. Located in Montreal’s southeast, the area has historically had a large mainly-Irish immigrant population, but also includes significant Jewish, Italian, Greek, and Chinese communities.

“I’m sure Bernard Landry is respected in some parts of the community, but he had no connection to Griffintown whatsoever,” Fergus Keyes, a director of the Montreal Irish Memorial Park Foundation, told the Montreal Gazette.

Landry, it is also being pointed out, is said to have resented ethnic minorities’ lack of support during the failed 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum. He verbally lashed out at a Spanish hotel worker, the Gazette reports, in the wake of that loss. Then-Premier Jacques Parizeau had said ”money and the ethnic vote” were to blame.

Now Keyes, backed by members of the local Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, believes the station should be named to honour the area’s immigrant history.

In a statement, the Fédération Histoire du Québec said it also supports an Irish name for the station, which could honour the 6,000 typhus victims that died in Montreal in the 19th century, after escaping the Irish Potato Famine.

“Associating this station with the history of the Irish community would be a recognition of this community and a testimony of their proud contribution to our history,” the statement read.