Montreal taxpayers on the hook for $125,000 metro name change

MONTREAL — What’s in a name? Well, about $125,000 for the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) — and municipal taxpayers.

This is the price tag to change the name of the Square-Victoria metro station to Square-Victoria OACI.

“Quite pricey for four letters,” one STM metro user said Tuesday morning.

View image in full screen

OACI is the French acronym for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees the airline industry around the world.

Why the name change?

Get daily National news

Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you'll never miss the day's top stories.

Sign up for daily National newsletter Get Started

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

The head office is only a few steps from the metro station and the STM’s board of directors decided to add the OACI to the Square-Victoria station name in order to mark the 70th anniversary of the agency — and bring more public attention to its existence.

“It’s an exceptional decision,” STM spokesperson Isabelle Tremblay told Global News. “It doesn’t happen often.”

However, some Montreal commuters are feeling a bit of a sticker shock with the $125,000 price tag for the name change.

“That’s a lot of money when money from people’s taxes can be going to something better, more useful for the city instead of making a sign,” one public transit user said.

The new name can be seen on both the outside and inside of the station, and on STM metro maps.

More name changes

Twenty stations in total will have words such as “de la” or “du” added to their names; however these will only be used officially on press releases and financial reports and other public documents.

These words will not appear on the names of the stations visible to the public.

Take a quick look at which metro stations will get a grammatical upgrade:

Acadie –> de L’Acadie
Assomption –> de L’Assomption
Cadillac –> De Cadillac
Champ-de-Mars –> Du Champ-de-Mars
Côte-des-Neiges –> De la Côte-des-Neiges
Côte-Sainte-Catherine –> De la Côte-Sainte-Catherine
Côte-Verdu –> De la Côte-Vertu
Longueuil-Université-de-Sherbrooke –> De Longueuil-Université-de-Sherbrooke
Mont-Royal –> Du Mont-Royal
Namur –> De Namur
Outremont –> D’Outremont
Parc –> Du Parc
Place-d’Armes –> De la Place-d’Armes
Place-des-Arts –> De la Place-des-Arts
Place Saint-Henri –> De la Place-Saint-Henri
Snowdon –> De Snowdon
Square-Victoire –> Du Square-Victoria-OACI
Université-de-Montréal –> De l’Université-de-Montréal
Vendôme –> De Vendôme
Verdun –> De Verdun