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“There is a certain redundancy. There is a Parc de Vimy and a Vimy Avenue. There’s an overlap. That is too many Vimys,” Savard said.

“Vimy Avenue will remain, on that I insist, because it was a great battlefield, a historic site that must be honoured. But once is enough.”

Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier and federal Liberal politician, wrote on Twitter that changing the park’s name from Vimy to Parizeau is “an insult pure and simple.”

Jeremy Diamond, executive director of the Vimy Foundation, a charity that promotes awareness of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, said place names are important in stirring curiosity about history among younger generations.

“You take away the name, and you take away the opportunity to find out about that story,” he said.

What people would learn, he said, is that the Vimy victory in 1917 was a first because it was achieved by Canadians fighting as Canadians, not as British subjects.

“It was a victory for Canada hailed around the world, with newspaper headlines saying, ‘Canadians take Vimy Ridge.’ There was a sense of collectiveness about what we did together as Canadians … We were seen as our own voice, our own country.”

To discard that history in favour of “someone who talked a lot about separating from Canada” would be “unconscionable,” Diamond said. He noted many French-Canadians fought and died at Vimy.

“This is not an English-Canadian story but a Canadian story,” he said.

Outremont borough council unanimously approved the name change at the historical society’s recommendation last October. Savard said all prime ministers and premiers who lived in the borough deserve to be honoured; there is a park named after Pierre Trudeau and a library named after Robert Bourassa.