Black community groups want Montreal’s Place des Festivals named after Oscar Peterson

A coalition of Black community groups in Montreal is asking for the Place des Festivals to be named after legendary jazz musician Oscar Peterson.

The groups wrote a letter to new Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada on Monday asking her to recognize three late Black leaders, including Peterson.

They also want to see Dan Philip, a longtime civil rights activist who died last year, and Noel Alexander, the former president of the Jamaica Association of Montreal, honoured in the city’s place-names.

The groups say Peterson and jazz are synonymous, urging the mayor to acknowledge that pairing by renaming the location at the heart of Montreal’s world-renowned jazz festival.

That same proposal was supported by then Opposition party Ensemble Montréal – now in power after Martinez Ferrada’s election victory – in 2020, they say.

“There is enormous support to name the Place des Festivals, where the annual jazz Festival, is held for Oscar Peterson,” said Marvin Rotrand, the director general of United Against Hate Canada. “The Plante administration blocked that in 2021 and instead promised to name a small greenspace on McGill College for Oscar.”

The community leaders are asking Martinez Ferrada to reverse that decision – one they say they didn’t support in the first place – especially since the greenspace remains unfinished.

In a statement to CityNews, the City of Montreal says its toponymy committee and urban planning department “recommended keeping the name Place des Festivals, consistent with the naming criteria established in 2009 and with the decisions made to date for the toponymy of the Quartier des Spectacles, where personal names have been voluntarily excluded from the options in order to preserve the neutrality of spaces used for different types of cultural events.”

The city says it is committed to preserving existing toponymic heritage and ensuring the uniqueness of place names.

“If another public place were to be named in honour of Oscar Peterson, this would create a further instance of partial homonymy,” a spokesperson said. “Indeed, two places already bear the name of Oscar Peterson: Oscar Peterson Park in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood, named in 2009, and Oscar Peterson Square, located on McGill College Avenue and named in 2021. Both names were chosen in close collaboration with Mr. Peterson’s family, as were Daisy Peterson-Sweeney Park and Street, named in February 2019 in the Sud-Ouest borough.”

The coalition of Black community groups is also asking the new mayor to fast-track a motion adopted unanimously at city council in May 2024 to name a place in Montreal after Philip – “a giant in the fight against discrimination.”

“Eighteen months after the unanimous adoption of the motion, we still have no news,” the letter to Martinez Ferrada reads. “None of our organizations have been consulted, and we feel that the work done by this giant to denounce racism and blatant discrimination and to defend equality and civil rights has been somehow devalued.”

The coalition says it’s also waiting on news about naming something after Alexander, the founder of the annual Jamaica Day festival who died in 2021.

The City of Montreal says proposals for new place names must be filled out online.

“It is important to note that the City receives dozens of proposals for place names designation each year, while only about 20 new place names are assigned annually, only some of which are personal names. The City strives to achieve parity between the names of men and women selected.”

While the community groups acknowledge Montreal has honoured Black leaders over the years – with Marie-Joseph Angélique Place and Daisy-Peterson Sweeney Park, for instance – they say, “given the size and history of the Black community in Montreal, there is remarkably little recognition of the community in the municipal place names.”