nfitz
Superstar
Hang on - the station is literally at the intersection of Alfred Nobel and Albert Einstein - but they wanted a name with symbolic importance?
CTCUM had a long history in the 1970s and 1980s of avoiding English names - even when they were most appropriate. Vendome was the merger of two stations (One at Sherbrook Avenue and one at the now closed Westmount station). The merger was technical/political, as they wanted an interchange station with the CP commuter line, and Westmount vetoed it being in Westmount. But Vendome Avenue was a little known short street at the time. The entrance was actually a block over at Marlowe until very recently. The next station up was called Monkland (on Monkland Avenue), but they finally switched to Villa Maria - perhaps "Monkland" didn't fit Quebec's secularity. I'm not sure how Snowdon slipped through ... though it's an odd choice, given that Snowdon Street is 3 blocks to the south. The obvious name for the station is Queen Mary - as that is the main artery there.
Metro Plamondon on Victoria Avenue is perhaps the oddest, as Plamondon was a little-known residential street, 3 blocks north of the station. The station would have logically been called Van Horne. And why did they go for Plamondon - probably because the two streets in-between are Kent and Carlton!
On the Green line, the station south of Lionel Groulx is Charlevoix. Okay, it's on Charlevoix street - but the line just about runs along Charlevoix - which intersects Avenue Lionel-Groulx! The cross street is Centre Street. Metro La Salle (in Verdun) is also very odd, as you'd think it would be in LaSalle itself - near the Angrignon Park terminus. But apparently it's named for Boulevard LaSalle a couple of blocks away (and running parallel to the line) - but they wouldn't want to call it Rushbrooke. The next station is De l'Eglise - at the intersection of Galt and Wellington.
The Blue line isn't bad, but didn't escape completely. Outremont is at least in Outremont - at the intersection of Van Horne and Wiseman. Édouard-Montpetit was originally going to be called Vincent D'Indy (and the pre-opening maps had that name) - though that's not an English issue, it's at the intersection of Édouard-Montpetit and Vincent D'Indy. But Édouard-Montpetit is a long street, running close to Cote-St-Catherine, Cote-des-Neiges, and Université-de-Montréal stations. I'm really not sure why they changed that one.
It would be interesting to see if they ever built Metro Cavendish what name it ends up with!
Here's the 1982 metro map that was on the trains. Yeah, that's an ugly font - I believe the previous and later version both had the more traditional font. The previous version also showed a different Blue line alignment, turning at Pie-IX up the later White Line (Line 7) alignment to Montreal-Nord - and I vaguely recall it showing the western Blue Line extension to Montreal West (which would surely end up being Montreal-Ouest) - I wish I could find that one. And the following one that showed the Pie-IX (White Line) metro.
I'm looking forward to some of these stations on the 40-year old map opening in the early 2030s!
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