| As pretty
well everyone is aware the four boats have been named. Victoria, Windsor,
Cornerbrook and Chicoutimi. These names were selected based on the the
criteria of "considering communities that have an association with the
Atlantic/Pacific coasts or a major Canadian waterway that were representative
of the various regions of Canada. Accordingly the theme of Canadian port
cities was selected"
The real story is the submarines were originally
going to be named after an eastern, western, southern and northern port,
namely Cornerbrook, Victoria, Windsor and Resolute (or Resolute Bay) but
for what ever reason the last one was substituted with Chicoutimi.
In fact one of the Canadian Patrol Frigates was
going to be called "Victoria" the idea being each provincial capitol would
have a frigate named after it. However that would have meant two provinces
would have had two ships bearing their cities names, mainly Ontario with
HMCS Toronto and HMCS Ottawa and British Columbia with HMCS Victoria and
HMCS Vancouver.
This would leave all other provinces with one
ship each bearing one of their cities names. e.g. Newfoundland ~ HMCS St.
Johns, Nova Scotia ~ HMCS Halifax, Prince Edward Island ~ HMCS Charlottetown,
New Brunswick ~ HMCS Fredricton, Manitoba ~ HMCS Winnipeg, Saskatchewan
~ HMCS Regina, Alberta ~ HMCS Calgary and.......Quebec ~ HMCS Ville de
Quebec. (Dont know what happened to the territories!)
It came to pass that this might be be seen as
a major affront to la belle province therefore HMCS Victoria became........voila!
HMCS Montreal!!! After all Ontario and B.C. had two...and that would never
do!
Victoria as a provincial capitol had to be resolved
somehow! Eurika! new submarines! Lets call them the "Victoria" class and
name the lead boat Victoria, problem solved. Now we can't get into the
same situation with the submarines as we did with the frigates so we will
name them after ports on the extremes of the cardinal points of the compass.
Victoria is certainly west, Windsor is certainly
south, Cornerbrook is certainly east and Chicoutimi is certainly north,
well a little, sort of.
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