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.
They are 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.
While the 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.”
CityNews has reached out to the City of Montreal for comment.
