Mount Trudeau?

That's right.

Despite the passionate opposition around renaming Mount Logan as Mount Trudeau following the death of former Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in September 2000, some maps are showing up with Logan named Mount Trudeau.

Environment Minister Currie Dixon first came across Mount Trudeau on a wall map he purchased in 2009 while at university completing his masters in political science.

He sent the Hammond World Atlas Corp. an email asking the company to correct the error, but never heard back.

It was only a couple of weeks ago when the matter surfaced again in the form of a letter from a Watson Lake resident to the government complaining an atlas he bought recently identified Canada's tallest mountain as – yep – Mount Trudeau.

The Yukon's legislative assembly unanimously passed a motion last week calling upon the mapping company to correct the error.

"I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was not politically motivated,” Dixon said of the mistake. "But it is an error.”

It may not be a big deal for some, but his Yukon Party caucus does consider the matter significant, and wants to see it corrected, Dixon said.

A suggestion back in 2000 by then-prime minister Jean Chretien that Mount Logan should be renamed to honour Trudeau met with swift and staunch resistance.

Many Yukoners – and others – argued feverishly that partisan politicians in Ottawa had no business in naming important geographical locations in the territory, and Chretien's suggestion slowly melted away.

The Hammond Map company was purchased by Universal Map in 2010, and has been absorbed into the international Kappa Map Group.

Kappa vice-president Paul Kolkka said in an interview this week from his office in Pennsylvania that it would be next to impossible now to determine how the error occurred.

The team of map makers employed by Hammond prior to 2010 did not come with the purchase of Hammond's assets, and that team of cartographers has largely dispersed, he said.

"I do not think there would be any way to answer how that came to be in the first place.”

When Hammond was purchased, Kolkka said, the assets required for the production of the Hammond Atlases were not purchased.

The newest Kappa Atlas, released just two months ago, does have Mount Logan properly identified as Mount Logan, Canada's highest mountain measuring 5,959 metres, the vice-president assured, referring to the atlas opened in front of him.

"Anything we do on our wall maps virtually mimics what we do in our books because it is always the same cartographers.”

Yukon Party MLA Stacey Hassard put forward the motion calling on the legislature to call for a correction.

In addressing his motion last week, Hassard reminded his 18 elected colleagues that Mount Logan is named after Sir William Logan.

Logan, he said, was cited in 1998 by a panel of historians as Canada's top scientist, and was sixth on the panel's list of the most important 100 Canadians.

He is best known as the founder of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1841, Hassard pointed out.

"Into the wilderness, Logan carved a path that would be followed by others,” the Pelly-Nisutlin MLA told the legislature.

"His knowledge laid the foundation for later mineral discoveries and more comprehensive studies of Canada's vast geological endowment.

His contribution to his native land was summed up in the eulogy delivered by the Natural History Society of Montreal: "No man has done as much to bring Canada before the notice of the outside world and no man is more deserving of being held in remembrance by the people.

"Just as statesmen or generals have risen up at the moment of greatest need to frame laws or fight battles for their country, so Sir William appeared to reveal to us the hidden treasures of nature, just at a time when Canada needed to know her wealth in order to appreciate her greatest.”

Dixon said the Watson Lake resident who wrote the cabinet office was obviously not a supporter of Trudeau's, and was not happy to see the late leader's name used to label the mountain.

It could be argued, said the Environment minister, that Trudeau did the most to prevent the Yukon from achieving constitutional independence from Ottawa.

Dixon said it was only under the short-lived Conservative government of Joe Clark in 1979 that the Yukon gained its autonomy.

In was in 1979 when Jake Epp, then the federal minister of northern affairs, delivered what is commonly referred to by historians as the Epp letter announcing the umbilical cord had been cut.

Mount Logan is Canada's highest mountain at 5,959 metres (19,550 feet).

In 2006, a mountain in the interior of B.C. was named Mount Pierre Elliott Trudeau, measuring 2,640 metres (8,661 feet).

John Devries, a former Yukon Party MLA for Watson Lake, said the friend and fellow Watson Laker who brought the atlas error to his attention was indeed incensed by the faux pas.

"Gerry is a real historian-type researcher and is very proud of Mount Logan, and the fact that Logan was head of the geological survey originally, and a lot of those things, so he phoned me,” said Devries.

He said his friend presented him with photo copies of pages 170 and 201 of the Fifth Edition of the Hammond World Atlas copyrighted in 2007. Both pages described Mount Logan as Mount Trudeau.

"So all these people all around the world think we named our mountain after a Liberal,” Devries chided.

The former Speaker of the legislature said he remembers well the passionate rebuke mounted by Yukoners when Chretien uttered his thoughts about renaming Mount Logan.

"I hate to see a name changed when the name was given to somebody who very legitimately deserved to have his name attached to that mountain,” said Devries.