Physician and son succeed in getting Nazi collaborator’s name removed from Canadian mountain

The actions of a physician and his son mean that a Canadian mountain is no longer named after a Nazi collaborator. Dr. Geoffrey Taylor was always bothered that one of his favourite mountain peaks in the Canadian Rockies was named after Henri Phillipe Pétain, his son Duncan Taylor told CBC Radio’s As It Happens. The mountain was named in 1919, three years after Pétain, a French general, led his troops to victory in the Battle of Verdun. Many of the mountains in that area have names that reflect battles or generals from World War I, Taylor said. Pétain may have been hailed as a hero after the First World War, but in the Second World War, he was the leader of the Vichy government and worked closely with the Nazi administration in occupied France. When the Nazis defeated the Allies in the Aug. 19, 1942 raid at Dieppe, Pétain wrote them a letter of congratulations. More than 800 Canadians died on the Dieppe beach that day and another 100 died in captivity, mostly of battle wounds. Pétin was convicted of treason in 1945 and sentenced to a lifetime of solitary confinement. He died at age 95. The mountain straddles the Alberta and B.C. border, and while Alberta rescinded the name in 2019, B.C. only followed on June 29. Pétain’s name is not only erased from the peak, but also from a glacier and creek. The success comes almost two years after Dr. Taylor's death. His son said that Dr. Taylor would be pleased that the peak would no longer carry Pétain's name. "I think he'd be a little annoyed it took so long, but I think he'd be relieved that it's finally done," Taylor said. The Taylors often hiked around Alberta's Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, and Dr. Taylor would quiz his children on geographical names and their meanings, including the mountain with the problematic name. Dr. Taylor and Duncan Taylor started the process to remove Pétain’s name in 2016, when Taylor found a form for renaming geographical features in Alberta. “I basically shoved it in his hand and said if you’re going to complain, complain to someone who can do something about it,” he said. B.C. didn’t have a similar form, but Taylor was able to find people in the B.C. government who were responsible for geographical place names. Alberta and B.C. are now consulting with First Nations about a name to use for the peak. When As It Happens guest host Ginella Massa proposed the mountain be named after Dr. Taylor, his son said Dr. Taylor would not have wanted that. “He was very modest and I don’t think he would be up for that,” Taylor said. Dr. Taylor died after a short illness on July 17, 2020. The University of Alberta flew their flags at half-mast for a week to honour his work as an infectious disease physician and professor. Dr. Taylor co-founded the Northern Alberta HIV program, and was a founding member of the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance program, according to his obituary. Read: From cottage owner to landlord: 10 things to know before renting out your summer place

Physician and son succeed in getting Nazi collaborator’s name removed from Canadian mountain

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