"Stupid."

Johanne Lemay doesn't waste time getting to the point. She and her husband Eric have been visiting family on Rue Alexis-Carrel, a quiet suburban street across the river from the nation's capital that has just been told it no longer exists.

"It's ridiculous," adds Eric with a disgusted shrug.

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"You live here for 20 years and they just find out about this guy now?" says Johanne. "It's crazy."

This "guy" is Alexis Carrel, who more than a century ago won the Nobel Prize in physiology for his groundbreaking work in suturing damaged blood vessels. No one knows how many lives his scientific work saved.

What they do know is that the French surgeon believed in eugenics, a twisted notion of selective breeding for humans, and that he became an active member of the French government after Hitler's invasion of France in 1940.

A few short blocks away, past an emptying-out school that could serve as a postcard for all that is welcoming and tolerant about Canada, a slightly longer street, Philipp-Lenard, is also coming to an end. The real Philipp Lenard is also a Nobel laureate, having won in physics in 1904 for his research into cathode rays. Alas, Lenard was also a great supporter of Adolf Hitler and even served as chief of Aryan physics, whatever that is, within the Nazi Party.

"Never heard of them," Eric Lemay says.

Nor has a couple who have lived in the neighbourhood since the first signs went up. They hesitate to offer their names, as the issue is a sensitive one along Alexis-Carrel.

"We live here fine for 23 years and then they find out something from the 1940s and so we have to change?" says the man. "What a waste of money!"

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Alexis-Carrel will soon be renamed after Albert Einstein, and Philipp-Lenard will become Rue Marie Curie – both considered "safe" Nobel names.

The developer thought it would look prestigious if all the streets were named after Nobel laureates. No one ever thought to check out what they were up to outside the lab.

There have been complaints. Quebec's Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs spoke up. Petitions were carried from door to door but did not meet the two-thirds majority that would force Gatineau city council to make the change. Neighbours remain, pardon the expression, at opposite sides of the fence on the issue.

This month, the local councillor decided to act, petition or no petition. He put forward a motion and it carried easily 14-5. Another triumph, arguably a valid one, for the world's most politically correct country.

Or are we?

Is it not odd that, just across that Ottawa River, not quite in sight of this trim middle-class neighbourhood, the county is run out of a rust-coloured stone building that never seems to raise an eyebrow. The Langevin building is directly across from Parliament Hill and and has housed the Privy Council Office and prime ministers for decades. It is named after Sir Hector-Louis Langevin, 1826-1906, one of the Fathers of Confederation.

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Langevin held many of the most powerful offices in the land, including the occasionally tempting post of minister of public works. He was knighted for his dedication.

He was also a bit a crook, first caught up in the Pacific Scandal that downed the government of Sir John A. Macdonald, and later even had a scandal named after him over kickbacks that took place when he was running public works.

Langevin had previously been a journalist – but do we really need to go into that here? Much more importantly, he was a key architect of Indian residential schools when he served as secretary of state for the provinces and superintendent-general of Indian affairs.

Sir Hector-Louis once opined: "The fact is that if you wish to educate the children you must separate them from their parents during the time they are being taught. If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they will remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes … of civilized people."

Funny that never came up this past month.

Canadians have often been quick to rename the politically incorrect. Kitchener was quite happy to be known as "Berlin" up until the First World War. A remote township in north-central Ontario had been named after Joseph Stalin back when Canada and Russia were allies and stayed that way until 1986, when the legislature moved that Stalin Township henceforth be known as Hansen Township, now named in honour of Rick "Man in Motion" Hansen.

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But we don't always bend. The wise people of Dildo in Newfoundland and Labrador have resisted numerous campaigns to pick a less-suggestive name. They happen to like it, and it brings in tourists with their cameras.

The record for refusal, however, has to go to the little Northern Ontario town of Swastika, a stone's throw from Kirkland Lake. It was an obscure Nazi connection that doomed the streets in Gatineau, but what could be more directly connected to Hitler and the Nazis than the swastika symbol?

The town of Swastika – rather charming for those lucky enough to happen upon it – dates back to 1906. The local mine was called Swastika, even the local pharmacy. But then along came the Third Reich and the word became so distorted that, at one point, Ontario premier Mitch Hepburn called it "symbolic of everything ruthless and dictatorial."

Out of kindness, the province went ahead and changed the name, deciding to rename Swastika "Winston," after the much-loved leader of the free world: Winston Churchill.

The spunky little town told the province to go to hell. When highway crews put up new signs, they tore them down.

The people of Swastika argued, very properly, that, long before the swastika was the chosen symbol of Adolf Hitler, it was a symbol of good luck – and they felt lucky to live there. Besides, the little town was sending soldiers over to fight fascism, so it was hardly as if they had any sympathy for the Nazis.

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One local store even handed out match boxes to customers saying, "Hitler be damned – this is our sign."

And remains to this day.