Why does Alberta have a prominent geographical feature named after a Nazi collaborator?

It’s just past midnight on Friday, and being struck with insomnia, I figured blogging was as good of a way to pass the time as any other option available to me.

But what to write about?

I’ve shied away from writing about the situation in Iran simply because I don’t feel I have anything new and intelligent to add to the discussion at this time, and enlightenment sure as hell isn’t coming at 12:16 on a Friday night.

So instead I’ll ask a question that has zero impact on the way anyone anywhere lives their lives.

“Why does Alberta have a prominent geographical feature named after a Nazi collaborator?”

For those unfamiliar with the region, the area around the Kananaskis Lakes (not a particularly remote area) in Alberta have a number of mountains bearing names of people or things associated with World War 1. In addition to Pétain, Generals Foch, Joffre, and Haig all have mountains named after them, as do most of the major British ships that participated in the Battle of Jutland, for some reason. Most of these features were named during or immediately after the war, when Canadian national identity was still firmly fixed to that of the British Empire. I guess we just didn't have enough history to pull names from.

While Haig’s handling of the Battles at the Somme and Passchendaele make it debatable whether he’s worthy of the honour of having a mountain named after him, Pétain’s name remains firmly associated with treason, and thus the jury is surely in.

So why does Pétain, almost 70 years after the birth of the Vichy regime, still have his name plastered across topographical maps of my home province?