As new as the terrain of Facebook social advocacy may seem, a movement that has seeped out of its online confines, dented local newspapers with letters to the editor and entered local conversation with startling regularity is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Certainly, while Facebook looks increasingly like a legitimate venue for almost anything nowadays, the barrier between the concerns of the digital realm has become awfully conflated with that of reality. And while such social movements aptly stimulate debate amongst members, they can often lapse into creating insular circles for perpetual self-validation.
The new movement to rename Lionel-Groulx metro after recently deceased jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson is one such self-validating exercise in politically correct masturbation. It acquired its self-important moralizing sea legs on Facebook but now seems poised to enter the local political and social consciousness at an alarming speed.
Based on the inconvenient fact that "Lionel Groulx opposed all non-Catholic immigration to Canada, supported the fascists during WWII and the Spanish Civil War, and acted to deny access to Canada to Jewish asylum-seekers during the Holocaust" and that, "Oscar Peterson was born and raised in sud-ouest Montreal, is jazz royalty, a symbol of triumph over adversity, a Grammy lifetime achievement award winner, a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec," this Facebook group labours to consecrate the legacy of Peterson while undermining that of Groulx with one swift stroke of the pen.
But this type of advocacy is fundamentally spurious. While Peterson-the Maharajah of the keyboard-is absolutely deserving of having his musical legacy recognized, renaming the metro is an idiotic solution. Groulx may have been anti-Semitic and generally despicable, but the precedent that this may set is the slipperiest of slopes.
If the effect snowballs, we may see claims made against buildings, institutions, currencies, metro stops, statues, monuments and other public commemorations that celebrate the likes of anti-Semite William Lyon Mackenzie King, notorious alcoholic John A. MacDonald and even our own beloved, slaveholding James McGill. Hell, cartographer Amerigo Vespucci probably wasn't too progressive on gay rights-why not rename our continent to something more suitable and politically acceptable?
2008 Woodie Awards
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 5
Angely Pacis
posted 3/19/08 @ 7:02 AM EST
Dear Editor-In-Chief,
If there was ever a quintessential incident of self-validating, politically-correct masterbation, you would win the prize for committing it. (Continued…)
Andrew
posted 3/31/08 @ 12:13 PM EST
And it is angryphones like you Angely that give all anglo-Montrealers, whether they be McGill students or not, a bad reputation. If you move to Toronto ASAP, I will pay for the first class ticket. (Continued…)
I agree
posted 5/08/08 @ 7:10 PM EST
I have to agree with the above speaker... this idea is a stupid one, trying to replace the station's name with so many others, not to honour someone, but to remove someone else's honour instead. (Continued…)
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