Your Science Report

This section is about your project. We are going to take this step by step.

It will end up being a pretty big project. But trust me. You can do it.

Here are a few excerpts from past student projects (with permission):

On James McGill, founder of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning
(McGill University)

I do believe it is important for someone to understand the history of their culture, but I agree with my father (that names don’t matter much) as it is the present that is the most relevant.

After reflection on my findings, if an element of toponymy (i.e. a university) is founded by someone they deserve to choose whatever name they desire. For streets as they are used for direction should be numbers like in New York City.

This seems more logical and numbers normally don’t make people mad. Rather than saying toponymy is a cultural issue, I prefer to say culture is a toponymy issue. The toponymy will be based on the culture of a nation. I find culture is incredibly important, but I don’t believe toponymy should be given the importance it has presently.

I am impacted by culture everyday, in ads, in music, in movies and by the name of the streets I travel. But I won’t choose a university because of its name but rather its ranking and present merits.


Justine Gehring, Fall 2015

On Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Living in Montreal you might never notice that, but it’s ok. If you were to start at Atwater Street, the end of Westmount and the beginning of downtown, and walk east towards Berri-UQAM, you would realize that downtown toponymy is a sort of spectrum starting with English street names like Mackay and Metcalfe and then finishing with French names such as Jeanne-Mance and Saint-Laurent.

Downtown Montreal is an English to French street name spectrum, which makes a street name like Peel not only culturally relevant but also geographically. Peel Street also has historical relevance, however many people do not know of Robert Peel and his political contributions.


Dilano Walfall-Whyte, Fall 2015
 
On Rufus Rockhead, owner of Rockhead’s Paradise night club.

From the 1930s up until the 1950s, a once very well-known nightclub called Rockhead's Paradise was Montreal's most popular destination to be if you wanted to sit back, relax, and enjoy vibrant jazz music. The owner, Rufus Nathaniel Rockhead, was a Jamaican immigrant born in 1899 and who died in 1981 (Commission de toponymie du Québec CTQ, 2012).

Working as a Canadian Pacific Railway porter (Mathieu, 2010), he would carry many different things, which in turn led him to “running grog.” With money accumulated from jobs, he obtained a tavern license thanks to his lawyer's friend, who worked at the liquor commission. He then opened Rockhead's Paradise in 1928 on St-Antoine at the corner of Mountain Street (Stewart, 1973). (…)

The CTQ is a service provided by the government that does not have much funding. By surfing through their website and looking up less popular street names, you will easily see that a lot of them do not have much explanation as to why this street was named as such. While the majority will not pay attention to the importance of a city's history, labelling street names to right historic figures in the right parts of town is quite important. Our city and its thousands of streets are the living signs of our cultural heritage, and must be respected.

Where the CTQ fails to thoroughly document every street in question due to a constrained budget, it is our job, as fellow Montreal residents to make sure that these symbols are indeed relevant to Montreal Culture. That is why this research report is definitely useful. It was able to uncover that the street name is in fact relevant to Montreal culture. The street is located in Little Burgundy, where Rockhead’s Paradise existed. It is a strong Jamaican immigrant area, exactly in line with Rufus Rockhead’s origins.

Raphael Roel, Fall 2015