Peter Black
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
Peterblack@qctonline.com
It’s a little-known fact – who remembers trivia buff Cliff from Cheers? – that before they renamed their world-shaking search engine, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called it BackRub, referring to how the algorithm mined the backlinks of the World Wide Web. No, I don’t understand it either, and who remembers the term “World Wide Web?”
The pair and fellow Stanford University computer geeks wisely rechristened the program Google, which is a misspelling of “googol,” a word for infinite numbers. The rest is history – and you can BackRub that!
Some folks of a certain age would remember taking a flight on TCA – Trans-Canada Airlines – founded in 1937 as a division of Canadian National Railways before it became, by an act of Parliament pushed by Jean Chrétien in 1964, Air Canada.
It’s not unusual for companies to change names, for whatever reason. Here in Quebec there are two recent examples of prominent corporate leopards changing their spots, with obviously different motivations for doing so.
Back in 1944, Dr. Jacques Tremblay, a Quebec City physician, created a medical insurance plan to help impoverished people and called it SSQ – Les Services de Santé de Québec. That little local insurer grew and grew, until with assets of $11 billion, it became an attractive potential partner for another Quebec City-based insurance company, La Capitale.
The two policy-pushers merged in 2020, and seeking a fresh start and new image for the combined company, went on a search for a name. What they came up with was the benign but somehow mysterious name Beneva, a completely made-up word. The company announced the change in December 2020, and embarked on the rebranding campaign which took full effect at the beginning of 2023.
The company explained the genesis of the new name: “Beneva has two parts to it. Bene is associated with benevolence, kindness and benefits, while va is a French word associated with movement.”
New handle aside, the merged company ranks eighth among Canadian insurance giants, with assets of some $26 billion. Tremblay surely would be astounded, but what about policies for the poor folks?
While the new name Beneva is an attempt to inspire and celebrate the tradition of familiar corporate entities, another significant corporate name change is clearly an attempt to bury a less glorious past.
Imagine this headline: “No investigation of political interference allegations in AtkinsRéalis affair: RCMP.” How about: “Jody Wilson-Raybould resigns over AtkinsRéalis interference”? You guessed it. AtkinsRéalis is the new name of SNC-Lavalin, the Quebec-based engineering firm that got itself and the Trudeau government into deep doo-doo a few years ago.
The first headline above marks more or less the final chapter in the affair, with the Mounties confirming there was not sufficient evidence to pursue a criminal investigation of the prime minister’s dealings with then-justice minister Wilson-Raybould regarding SNC-Lavalin’s legal woes. The federal ethics commissioner had concluded Trudeau had violated the conflict of interest act.
SNC-Lavalin’s name change, according to CEO Ian Edwards (a unilingual Brit), denotes a big shake-up in the company, whereby it sheds losing endeavours and doubles down on winners.
In case you were wondering, the SNC stood for Arthur Surveyer, Emil Nenniger and Georges Chenevert, the engineering partners who created the company in 1946, built on the company Surveyer started in 1911. In 1991, the company merged with rival Lavalin. It was and still is, one of the biggest engineering outfits in the world.
The new name, unveiled last month, combines the company’s big British acquisition WS Atkins with another made up word – Réalis, which the company says is “a word ‘inspired by the city of Montreal and the company’s French-Canadian roots.’ Réalis also resembles the verb ‘to realize’ or ‘to make happen’ which emphasizes our focus on outcomes and project delivery.”
Hoping there’s no AtkinsRéalis scandal looming in the future, the company once known as SNC-Lavalin looks forward to all the benefits a name change can bring.
Trudeau, one imagines, may be wishing it were so easy to get a fresh start for the brand with a name change. Like Joly, Champagne, Freeland, Carney or Anand.