Montreal to go ahead with plans to rename street, park named for Alexis Carrel

The City of Montreal is moving ahead with plans to strike eugenist Alexis Carrel's name from its map.

The city's executive committee passed a motion Wednesday allowing city council to vote later this month on new names for a street and park.

That follows up on a promise to erase any trace of the Nobel Prize-winning doctor because of his alleged Nazi ties.

Chantal Rouleau, mayor of the east-end borough where the street and park are located, told the committee it intends to rename Alexis-Carrel Avenue after Italian Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini, known for her work in neurobiology.

A park bearing Carrel's name would be renamed Don-Bosco Park after an Italian saint known for his work with street kids, she added.

Quebec municipalities can vote on a name change and submit it to the province's toponymy commission for approval.

Carrel, a French surgeon and biologist, won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for work in vascular suturing and transplants. He became the subject of controversy for supporting eugenics and the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.

"Alexis Carrel was a French scientist who supported the forced sterilization programs applied by the Nazis against any human being considered 'racially inferior' or 'socially undesirable,'" Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs' Quebec branch said in a statement lauding Montreal's move.

In April 2016, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre told an executive council meeting that Carrel, who died in 1944, was "at minimum, a Nazi sympathizer."

Since 2002, France has moved to remove Carrel's name from its toponymy, while the western Quebec town of Gatineau moved in 2015 to remove it from a residential street.

Gatineau did likewise for Philipp Lenard, a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1905 but was also an adviser to Adolf Hitler and a known believer of Nazi ideology.

In Canada, Carrel's name most prominently appears in Quebec municipalities.

Provincial toponymy records show Montreal-area suburbs Chateauguay and Boisbriand are the last places in the province to carry Alexis-Carrel streets.

Despite attempts since 2015 to seek a name change, a CIJA spokesman said neither jurisdiction has been favourable. Quebec Liberal politician David Birnbaum has also called on the municipalities to make the change.

The mayor of Chateauguay never replied while Boisbriand said it was not an issue in her municipality, said CIJA spokesman David Ouellette.

"We would hope that the City of Montreal's decision ... will incite the cities of Chateauguay and Boisbriand to review their original stance on this," he said.