At Monday night’s council meeting the City of Sherbrooke approved the opening of a street named for Immunologist Ralph Steinman, the only Sherbrooke native ever to win a Nobel Prize, in the north end of the Jacques-Cartier Borough. While David Price, the councillor who first suggested that the Toponymy Committee consider Steinman, was very pleased with the decision, the Nobel Prize winner’s cousin, Ernest Steinman, said that he feels the decision is an insult to the family and to Steinman’s accomplishments.
“I’ve told them I don’t want them to name a street in the boondocks up in the country,” said Steinman, himself a resident of the City of Sherbrooke. “To go and name a street after him up in the boondocks, where no one knows where it is, is really a slap in the face as far as I’m concerned.”
Steinman said that he felt it would be more appropriate and a greater honour to rename a major avenue like Portland, where his cousin grew up, or to give his name to a medical building. Instead, the name will go to a dead-end residential road that has yet to be cleared in the housing developments near Lionel-Groulx Boulevard.
Read the full story in Thursday’s Record.
