Monthly Archives: March 2013

A modest proposal, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment, West Island

Un Projet Pour Pierrefonds – Building a Bridge to Ile-Bigras

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I remember a little while back the PQ announced they would not go ahead with a planned ‘urban boulevard’ along the western edge of residential development in the West Island, part of a planned route that would link highway 40 with the 440 in Laval, cutting across Ile-Bizard. Have a look at the image above and trace your finger along the grey edge of development from the 40 to the 440 and you get an idea of the scale and potential impact of such a route. Yes, it would offer a new connection between the West Island and various northern suburbs, but on a high-capacity scale where currently nothing but pastoral low-density bedroom communities exist.

Seems like overkill to me.

I breathed a sigh of relief – finally, one thing our government has done I actually agree with. Quite frankly I think we need to discourage the construction of high-capacity autoroutes, especially if they happen to cut across some of the remaining natural wilderness we still have in this city. I understand why, from a very top-down perspective it would make sense to create additional ring-roads, especially to divert highway traffic away from already congested roads. But in this case, I fear the potential for environmental degradation and endless suburban sprawl is too great. Besides which, as you can see here a bridge could more-or-less connect the 40 with the 640 with a span the Ottawa River joining Hudson with Oka, offering a far larger arc and a method to both bypass the islands, intersecting with key north-south highways further away from already jammed residential areas.

But this is off point.

Of course, there are the more practical issues to consider that may explain why this project was kiboshed – like Pauline Marois’ multi-million dollar Ile-Bizard estate, most of which is located on land allocated by previous governments for the proposed highway extension.

How Ms. Marois came to build such a magnificent house on land that’s supposed to be the property of the transport ministry is a good question I’d sure like to know the answer to.

Regardless, the big winner here is what remains of the West Island’s once fabulous wealth of wilderness. Low-density development should slow down anyways, what with all this talk of a local housing bubble.

Thinking about these recent developments gave me something to wrap my head around.

We still need a means to get from the West Island to the 440, Western Laval, the North Shore suburbs etc. The issue is why we seem locked-in to planning large, complicated, high-capacity thoroughfares when far smaller, simpler, bridges could be used to efficiently connect residential traffic schemes in one suburb with the virtually identical designs across the water.

In sum, the Back River shouldn’t be the barrier it is, and multiple small bridges could be used to provide a ‘back-door’ from the West Island into ‘West Island-adjacent’ communities northwest of Montreal.

And though such constructions would not facilitate commuters heading towards the highways, it may serve to better connect the West Island in general with the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes Line, by providing access to the four stations further west along the line.

Currently, the West Island uses two AMT stations, even though four other stations could be within car, cab or bus-ride range of a considerable population of West Island residents – as long as we built some small bridges to connect otherwise disparate suburbs. I honestly believe some two-lane causeways is all it would take to introduce far, far greater interaction between several diverse communities and further serve to more evenly distribute AMT Deux-Montagnes Line users, not to mention offer new opportunities to expand the STM’s West Island transit scheme into Laval and Deux-Montagnes/St-Eustache. From where I live in Pierrefonds, Deux-Montagnes is roughly as close as Fairview Pointe-Claire.

More bridges on the back river offer superior traffic diffusion and may serve to get commuters heading north along our three primary vertical axes as opposed to heading south towards the already over-capacity highways.

Here’s what I mean.

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This is an aerial perspective of the train bridge that links Pierrefonds with Ile-Bigras and the Laval Islands (and by extension, western Laval and Deux Montagnes & St-Eustache just beyond), a bridge which is primarily used by the AMT and ever-so-rarely by CN. Once upon a time this rail link provided regular service between Montréal and Ottawa and the vast number of little towns along the way, but nowadays service is nearly exclusively to support the commuting class, on a schedule appropriate to their needs. It has created a problem for some West Island commuters, in that if for whatever reason you should miss the inter-modal station at Roxboro-Pierrefonds, and wind up in Ile-Bigras or Deux-Montagnes, you would need to call for a lift or a cab, as service in the opposite direction drops off after a certain time, and there’s no public transit options available that inter-links with the STM. The cost could be as high as $60 and take as long as an hour, depending on where you eventually got off and highway traffic.

This predicament illustrates our over-dependence on high-volume traffic systems at the expense of low-volume, tactical and in our case far more convenient connections. A simple pedestrian crossing attached to the existing bridge and an illuminated pathway is all it would take to save thousands of commuters from this operational inefficiency and further permit traffic diffusion by providing an alternative for everyone now within walking distance of Ile-Bigras, meaning fewer cars jamming up the intersection of Pierrefonds and Gouin boulevards during rush-hour, a problem which far too frequently results in major traffic jams (and on that note, aside from making this strip of Pierrefonds boulevard uni-directional towards the train station at rush hour, why not see if we can extend Pavilion Street through to Gouin Boulevard through part of the landscaping firm’s outdoor nursery here – both of these measures would allow for superior traffic diffusion between the confluence of major inter-suburban boulevards and the principle arteries of the residential expanse north of Gouin).

But on a broader scale it would be better still would be to extend Riverdale Boulevard north of the tracks towards the northwest, intersecting with an extension of Perron Street towards the CN Bridge, ultimately connecting to Chemin du Mistral on Ile-Bigras and then on to Chemin du Bord-de-l’Eau in Western Laval. Far less expensive than a highway and does a better job connecting Pierrefonds with its neighbours, resulting in new commuting possibilities, access to more schools and services, not to mention new business opportunities. The vast, exclusively residential riverside hinterland of Pierrefonds would suddenly have enough through-traffic to support numerous local small business initiatives. There’s no question Pierrefonds would change, I would even argue somewhat dramatically so. Making it easier to get around, and providing new trajectories and traffic patterns with the aim of opening new yet hyper-localized vectors of exchange, would serve to change Pierrefonds by making it more useful, more usable, and further still, more economically sustainable. By adding little bridges a bedroom community can transform itself into a hub of activity.

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As you can see here, there’s a seasonal ferry running from the northeastern part of Ile-Bizard to Laval close to the Ste-Dorothée AMT station at a point in the river so narrow it truly boggles the mind a bridge hasn’t been built. Doing so would allow for residential development on former farmland in an otherwise difficult to access part of Ile-Bizard. A pedestrian crossing from Ile-Bigras to Ile-Bizard would serve to provide even better access to the crucial AMT link to the city – all of which permitting public-transit-focused residential development. A better kind of bedroom community, one in which the train station is always within walking distance.

And a bridge seems to have once been planned to extend Marceau Street to Rue Cherrier in Ile-Bizard, as you can see here in another logical place.

Consider the numbers – there are 14,000 people who live in Ile-Bizard, and they are connected to Montreal via one bridge, two bus lines and a seasonal ferry that can carry but a few cars on a ridiculous two-minute trip that could completed in a matter of seconds in a bus or car. A bridge built at that location could provide 14,000 people access to the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes Line, and Ile-Bizard is one of the few places left in the West Island that can support new low-density development while still retaining a sufficient proportion of undeveloped wilderness.

There are 68,000 people in Pierrefonds, more than half of whom live in the higher density eastern sectors, of which maybe ten thousand people could be better served if they had direct ‘within walking distance’ access to Ile-Bigras or Ste-Dorothée train stations. Providing high-density public transit systems within walking distance of where most people live in turn could provide a host of new small-scale business opportunities focused on a suddenly more vibrant street life it what would otherwise be but a bedroom suburb.

If I’m lucky maybe we can make this an election issue – Pierrefonds needs a new role and direction as part of Metropolitan Montréal.

Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Public art proposal, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Video

Corridart; Charney’s Oeuvre Going Up & Coming Down

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Found this video on the CCA’s YouTube Channel, a film n’ funk track I feel is somewhat representative of experimental documentary film from mid-1970s Canada. It shows the construction and demolition of Melvin Charney’s primary installation for Corridart, the cultural component of the 1976 Montréal Olympics deemed unfit by Mayor Drapeau but a few days after completion (and prior to the opening ceremonies).

As deemed unfit, grotesque, inappropriate by Drapeau the Autocrat, it was completely and utterly destroyed, largely in one overnight sweep when city workers, escorted by police and firefighters destroyed everything with blowtorches and various others pieces of heavy equipment.

For the uninitiated Corridart was quite literally a corridor of art and culture that stretched along Sherbrooke Street from Atwater to Pie-IX, with diverse installations positioned along its length, in addition to indicators of major cultural institutions and temporary performance venues and other facilities and exhibits located on the thoroughfare. It was the cumulative effort of sixty or so well-known local artists and was designed to feature nearly 700 performers of all manner, to entertain the masses moving from the city to the olympic park and back again along a principle ‘showcase street’ (and rightfully so; we’re a city of great and grand streets, avenues, boulevards and thoroughfares, and Sherbrooke is truly of the greatest, most diverse and multi-faceted streets we have). There was a psychogeographic component as well, in that a bridge of culture and ‘linear, public art-happening’ connected disparate parts of the city for the sake of the many tourists moving from the Games to their hotels. The Olympic Stadium was, in a sense, further away from the city than as it is today, as you can see in the video the city itself and its concentration of services was much smaller and further west in 1976.

Charney’s installation went up at the corner of St-Urbain and Sherbrooke in part of a parking lot than it now the UQAM Western Residence. The buildings on the east side of the street are still there, and from what you can see in the video, the area has ‘fattened up’ quite significantly in the last thirty-seven years. From what I’ve read and seen a considerable portion of the more central and eastern parts of today’s ‘downtown’ business district was little more than massive parking lots back in the day, all of which have since been converted into more useful things, like hotels, condos, institutional buildings, government offices and class-A office space.

The installation was a representation of the facade of the buildings directly across the street, though reversed as though to produce a mirror image. It was, in part, a statement concerning the drive to tear down old buildings in the city centre seemingly to do nothing more than create parking lots, a statement that irked Mayor Drapeau. Other installations included a replica of the cross atop Mount Royal laid on its side on McGill Campus, over-sized Mickey Mouse hands pointing, almost accusingly, at municipal offices, an audio recording played over loud speakers detailing the cost of the Games to local taxpayers, an apocalyptic bomb shelter entrance. All that said, no one expected Drapeau to destroy so much art. That was the sting – Drapeau felt that since the works had been commissioned by the city it was his right to destroy them, and thus few outside the artistic community directly implicated in Corridart’s creation ever got to see what it looked and felt like.

Drapeau was an ass.

It’s too bad, because had it not been destroyed I think we’d have different memories of the Games – after all, its the festival atmosphere and public art that many remember most fondly when discussing Expo 67.

Corridart wouldn’t make too much sense today, as it was very much intended to be a criticism of its time and place, but the concept of creating cultural bridges through the use of installation art and/or linear concentration of venues (or any combination thereof) is nonetheless one I still find very fascinating and think is very much applicable, novel and rather distinguishing.

After all, we spend a lot of time walking around in climate controlled corridors and our museums keep nearly their entire collections in storage as they lack the physical space to exhibit them; let’s extend the galleries underground.

Corridart’s enduring legacy, that art can be used to direct people’s physical movements, is one I’d like to see far better implemented into our overall city design. A more direct reconstruction of Corridart, based on similar themes and seeking to establish a cultural corridor along Sherbrooke for the benefit of tourists and the artistic community alike could be rewarding endeavour, especially if part of the street were converted for pedestrian only-access over a long weekend. People just love walking down streets normally clogged with cars – there’s a very liberating feeling in it, as though the city suddenly had a new common ground.

But of course, such things require a mayor who isn’t afraid of public art. For all he managed to accomplish, I think Drapeau flinched and showed his true colours when he ordered Corridart’s demolition. It’s an insecure man who finds himself threatened by artistic commentary, even if it is scathing.

Let’s be sure, when we head top the polls in November, we choose a mayor who isn’t afraid of a little art.

Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, West Island

Review: C’est Moi, C’est Chocolat!

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Andrew Searles

Passed by Theatre Sainte Catherine to catch the opening night of Andrew Searles‘ headline show C’est moi! C’est Chocolat! after a long and trying week at work; I was in need of some comic relief and Andrew certainly did not disappoint.

I’ve known Andrew at least since 2000 as we went to the same high school in Pierrefonds; if I recall correctly we became friends during the production of Riverdale High School’s rendition of West Side Story – I was a Jet and he was a Shark and I think we shared all of a dozen words of dialogue in the entire show.

Andrew was a naturally-gifted comic all those years ago, keeping us in stitches behind the scenes as we dealt with the overbearing drama queen extraordinaire who directed the show.

A few years later I found myself regularly attending open mic nights at diverse local comedy clubs as he was just breaking out onto the local scene. Andrew was also a regular at the insular country club in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue where we found ourselves attending CEGEP, opening for the many local comedians who would come perform at the Agora for all those students so eagerly skipping class.

It’s curious now looking back, John Abbott has always been a preferred local filming location as either a typical American high school or rural college setting – I wonder if the sight of all those trailers didn’t subconsciously encourage students there to perform – as a school it’s turned out a lot of local artistic talent. In any event, hard to believe that was all ten years ago.

Ten years of dedicated work has its payoffs – the show was sold out and packed with fans, not bad for a guy from Pierrefonds. Here’s a bit of Andrew performing in Ottawa a couple years back.

Opening acts included Guido Cocomello and Rodney Ramsay, with host Franco Taddeo. I had a bit of fun with the host when he asked if there were any Francophones in the room, to which I responded with a bien niaiseux Ouay! As he had immediately prior been ribbing some guy in the front row whose name was Martin (who I suppose had strong enough French Canadian features so as to compel the host to label him token Francophone in an otherwise culturally diverse though predominantly Anglophone audience), when he asked my name I responded with a properly regional pronunciation of Martin. Got a good laugh, but as always, you had to be there.

Politics, society, culture, race, religion – everything pertinent was discussed. It’s good fodder for comedians, as there’s just so much absurdity, contradiction and idiocy to report on. Sometimes I feel the service best rendered by comedians is to simply report all the crazy, ridiculous shit we deal with on a daily basis. All four comedians did just that, rather expertly too, last night.

Theatre Sainte Catherine is located just west of Saint-Denis along one of several stretches of Sainte Catherine’s Street where the various linear poles of attraction and gentrification have yet to meet and interface, and as such retains some of the character we once associated with The Main. Close as it is to Berri-UQAM, speaking openly in English, to my surprise, elicited the attention of those walking past – no words exchanged but glances nonetheless. That said, during intermission as I was enjoying a puff outside, the biggest, scariest looking bouncer I’ve ever seen walked right up to me and politely asked my for directions (in English) to a club just down the block. He was a close-talker with a Christian Bale-era Batman voice. He nodded casually at two prostitutes who walked by.

Earlier, as I exited the public-transit Ellis Island Métro hub up the block I remarked on the fascinating juxtaposition unfolding before me, of well-dressed red-squared UQAM students passing down the corridors lined with well-appointed shop windows, buskers tuning acoustic guitars and a pants-less, underwear-less homeless man pulling his knees under an extra-wide shirt, babbling incoherently to himself.

It occurred to me – we haven’t lost our red light district at all – it just moved East. Our city’s two-fisted-rialto survives unscathed.

What can I say – it’s a good spot for a comedy show. I saw Sugar Sammy at Olympia a little while back in the same neck-of-the-woods (and on that note, Olympia is an excellent venue – highly recommended). An exciting part of town, but one where you keep your guard up. Not a place to stop and gawk.

The small venue was filled with transplanted suburbanites, friends and acquaintances from high school, now grown-up, modern Montrealers, mixed, mulatto, Métis – a racial, linguistic and cultural gray-scale of integration that permitted comedians who, despite vastly different backgrounds, could entertain an equally diverse audience with satire and parody that easily, deftly, transcended the barriers largely being erased within our own community. The Montreal brand of racial humour seems to have more to do with pointing out (even if obliquely) our similarities rather than differences, or at least reminding us of how differences are truly no more than skin deep, and that making a big deal about how different you are, why you and your people might deserve special treatment, simply isn’t cool.

As you might imagine, Pauline Marois was the public enemy number one of the night.

It quickly became apparent this theatre was filled with ardent federalists and committed Anglo-Québécois, a new generation that learned French and knows where their home is.

As host Franco Taddeo put it, “this show features two Blacks and two Italians, throw in a Jew and the OQLF would shut this down in a heartbeat.”

Though contemporary Québec politics and society were the favoured topics of the night, the show was ultimately wide-ranging, with reflections on the oddball demands of significant others, snotty children and their oblivious parents and why the Pope has the most boss funeral.

One of Andrew’s fortes as a comedian is spot-on impressions of the various peoples of the Caribbean (he himself is of joint Barbadian-Jamaican ancestry); his Caribbean Space Agency skit made my facial muscles hurt, his bit about how unintended sexual innuendo as a result of his mother’s broken English was one of the highlights of the night; quite nearly brought the house down.

Also of note Rodney Ramsay, another Riverdale alum, closed his opening set with a ditty where he read Craigslist casual encounters personals. Gut bustingly funny, though I really hope he was embellishing. Rodney also got on the anti-OQLF bandwagon with a series on ‘language cops’, which you can see here:

He’s also collaborated with local comic Mike Paterson on the Anglo video, which you can watch here:

All told – highly recommended, a lot of talent in a fascinating, exciting part of town. Shows tonight and tomorrow, see it if you can and buy tickets online as these shows are anticipated to sell out very quickly.

Arts & the City, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Video

Raine Maida’s Cold Winds of Montréal

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I’m not 100% sold on it, but heard it the other day and thought, what the hell, let’s post it.

I discovered it was featured in what I can only describe as an overly dramatic Hockey Night in Canada intro from a few weeks back. For your consideration:

Though I enjoy the aerial shots of the city, Sweet Christ, this was laying it on a bit thick.

But the fans got a kick out of it I suppose. I think it was a step in the wrong direction to Americanize our game by developing story-lines for pro sports. This notion that multi-million dollar professional athletes are engaged in near-Herculean struggles to provide you with a vague sense of home-town pride is a tad laughable. The overt commercialization of professional sports doesn’t really allow for a tangible link between team and town as players and management personnel are bought and traded in proportion to the success of the club’s marketing department, and the relative success of their efforts to sell you on someone to root for. It’s always been like this in one way or another, but there was a point in time in which hockey, in this case, didn’t really need to be sold to anyone at all. Build an arena, form a team, people will come and watch. Back then the people out on the ice could very well have been your neighbour. Hell, even the rink typically involved public investment – those bonds don’t quite exist today.

It’s all a crafty pastiche of old-school sports journalism, re-packaged as a soaring montage that will very quickly cut to the show’s principle beer sponsor.

Doesn’t it feel great to drink this smooth Canadian lager? Mmmmmm. Patriotastic.

In any event, back to the HNIC video – yes, we have snowstorms here in Montréal. Frankly, it is our indelible bond with the rest of Canada – we suffer the snow like anyone else – I’m glad the fine folks at the CBC pointed it out. I’m not sure how many Canadians pushed a bus this winter, or risked eating fifty pounds of snow dropping off the roof of a skyscraper, or swam down MacTavish, but I’m sure what they call winter is trying on them as well, in their way. I heard people had to ware scarves one day in Toronto…

As to Maida’s song, well, it’s clear he likes Arcade Fire, but I would argue he probably likes a couple other local bands too, both past and present, who crafted similar sounds with backing brass. Harmonium comes to mind. Ron MacLean referred to Maida as a Montrealer, which I was not aware of but welcome nonetheless. I wonder if he was inspired to move here by another well-known 90s Canadian alt-rocker, David Usher of Moist, who made a bit of a fuss back in the 1996 when Moist ‘officially’ relocated to our city (I’m not sure how long it lasted either, but I digress).

So –

Is this a song about Montréal?

No.

Not in my opinion. The lyrics are very open, lovely in their way, but in my opinion not overly profound (though I’m no lyricist, not by any stretch of the imagination).

But it’s simplicity and straightforwardness gives it its universal charm, as Montreal is largely irrelevant, or at least there’s no link (in my eyes) between the city and what the characters are going through – as I said, it could be anyone, under any circumstances – it could be the cold winds of Timbuktu, or Chicago. Sufjan Stevens might consider giving this the Hootie and the Blowfish treatment, if you catch my drift.

Assuming that it is about Montréal, well, all I’m going to say is I hope we’re not type-casting ourselves as the perennial land of ennui. Ennui doesn’t pay the bills, and malaise never inspired anyone. I’m glad we got hit hard by a bitch of a winter – more snow means a higher water table, a wetter spring, makes for slightly cooler summers but brings the possibility of an Indian Summer, something we haven’t had in a while.

…

In other news the Hip will play a park in Verdun sometime this summer. I’ll see you there.

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Noire, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, What were they thinking?, Worth reconsidering

Annual Fistfight with Police Ends in Multiple Arrests

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Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay Condemns SPVM Police Brutality Parody 2

Once again Montréal was the scene of it’s much beloved annual fistfight between students/activists and the city’s police, leading to a record-breaking 250 tickets being handed out, an as yet undetermined number arrests and several officers taken to hospital for treatment.

Mayor Applebaum could not be reached for comment, but a pre-typed statement indicated he had absolutely nothing to do with unethical and preferential re-zoning legislation, resulting in a multi-million dollar residential development project he most assuredly did not personally benefit from. His press-attaché noted that he had recently become an admirer of MP Peter Penashue’s method of answering unscripted questions from the public.

I kid – no one asked him what he thought.

Who could possibly care – all this was expected anyways.

The Anti-Police Brutality Coalition’s seventeenth annual anti-police brutality march was over pretty much before it got started, which I can imagine any sensible person might suppose, given the heightened police presence in general as a consequence of long-running and utterly futile demonstrations against education-specific austerity measures employed by our most recent minority separatist youth-parliament.

In fact, it seems as though police from the GTA were called in to bolster SQ and SPVM ranks, something I’m sure didn’t sit all too well with a bunch of activists who are convinced of a broad state conspiracy in which all police forces are working together to clamp down on dissent etc. etc.

Yes, we live in more of a conservative state than we’re generally used to, but it is not a police state.

And though the Montréal police do not have the best of reputations when it comes to apparent ‘over-zealousness’ (to use a term recently batted about the local press) in dealing with demonstrators, to do have a very real problem killing people needlessly, be they poor, young, immigrants or orderlies walking to work on a sunny summer morning.

That said, the COBP should know better by now that they have no hope of holding any kind of peaceful demonstration if the people they attract have no actual interest in having a peaceful demonstration.

Among other things, they know full well that the law states the planned march/demo needs to be approved by the SPVM ahead of time. While I’m certain the opinion of the membership is that doing so would be a waste of time, I’m also willing to bet they didn’t bother just to cover their own ass.

In any event, apparently the cops were more than ready for it and employed what I would consider to be excessive force in quickly dispersing an already illegal demonstration. Considering the actions of some of the protestors (but by no means a small number) – including blocking irate drivers rather than simply letting them pass – police action doubtless had the tacit approval of the working classes too busy getting on with their jobs to participate.

I didn’t see much but considering how many local journalists covered the events, I feel like I was in the thick of it. Kudos to all the brothers and sisters out there reporting and recording for posterity the very minutiae of our lives. Once we sober up we might be able to make sense of it…

***

Is it me or this all a bit nuts?

For COBP, does it not discourage the general public from taking their issue seriously (and let’s face it, there aren’t too many organizations out there who are actively engaged in at least drawing attention to police brutality, save perhaps for Julius Grey (for those who can afford his rates) and the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations’ Fo Niemi, who is specifically focused on race-relations)?

Where are their lawyers?

Where’s their legal fund?

When do they hold their fund-raisers or issue their press releases?

What relationship do they have with the voting public? Which local politicians and elected officials also care about this problem of police brutality and have the interest of COBP in their hearts and minds when they’re developing legislation?

If these seem like ridiculous questions (as they might pertain to COBP) then I think you get my point – they exist but to use ‘direct action’ against the police as a single entity instead of using public appeal to push out the truly rotten apples in this bunch.

But of course, if the organization is opposed to very concept of policing in the first place (an easy position to take when one grows up in the nearly-no-crime suburbs, but I digress) then there’s simply no chance an event like this will go anywhere but South.

As for the police, the sheer number of police who are available (and seemingly enthusiastic about such operations) is disturbing – but maybe not for the reasons you think.

Montréal police make, on average, $19.50 an hour, and work about 65 hours over two weeks. They are close to the very bottom in terms of police salary nation-wide (ballpark $33,000 per annum for the young cops who handle the bulk of the work, especially the dangerous stuff). These are, predominantly, family-oriented people who live in the suburbs, and signing up for riot duty is a surefire way of making a little more green to help pay all the bills a typical nuclear family might incur. Toronto cops make three times as much as their Montréal counterparts.

What I find disturbing here is that we have an abundance of police officers who require more work, shitty work, and further still that there’s clearly a burn out in process if police need to be ‘imported’ from at least three different forces in the GTA.

This is bad news. On top of all of this is the anachronistically-named Policeman Brotherhood’s request that the ‘test-schedules’ implemented a year ago become the new normal (something beneficial to the load of new parents on the force, and a plan which has been rejected by the city leading to the possibility of more ‘fashion-protests’ wherein the police don’t wear their new all-black uniforms) and union boss Yves Francoeur’s on-going feud with the city’s director general Guy Hebert, asserting the latter wanted to sack SPVM police chief Marc Parent.

While I don’t think the SPVM will strike as they did back in 1969 (leading to an as-yet un-matched orgy of violence, chaos and destruction in our fair city), more student unrest could result in such drastic action. And why not? All we need is for the police to say they won’t work for a defined period of time and we can sit back and witness the city tear itself to pieces, seemingly for the sport of it.

It would be as silly and needlessly destructive as maintaining an annual anti-police brutality that habitually results in police brutality. It takes two to tango after all.

A thought: next year, what if COBP held a candlelight vigil on St-Jean or Canada Day, in front of City Hall, or in Place Jacques-Cartier (or any other high-tourism location), as opposed to what they currently do, which is in essence to bring a knife to a gun fight, giving the police every reason to use irregularly strong force and then decry the actions COBP instigated.

There are saner ways to achieve social change.

In any event, for your viewing pleasure, a CBC report from the 1969 Murray Hill Riot.

Those were the days… people used to get killed in Montréal riots. It occurs to me that there’s a part of the current student/activist mentality that yearns for the street battles of Paris, Chicago or Prague circa 1968.

That was a long time ago, and time’s have most definitely changed. Their issues are not our own, their methods useful for purposes we no longer have. But there’s nonetheless a palpable sentiment public demonstrations, marches and rioting is all part of the process on the road to social progress.

I doubt it – at least with what I’ve seen here, and I came up in my more formative years in precisely this environment.

Yes, there’s a lot to be royally pissed off about, far more today than eight years ago in my opinion. But we’ve known nothing but widespread and regular public demonstrations for a considerable time. Most have been peaceful, but there seems to be a troubling number that quickly turn south and further isolate the movement for social change from the general, and voting, public.

Such a situation is untenable. If violence is to be avoided, those organizing against state-sponsored violence must do all they can so as not to elicit it. Again, as I said before, we don’t live in a police state.

So why provide the justification for a such a state to exist? We, the youth, have no power but our ability to use modern communications technology to make our point heard, quickly and often with devastating effectiveness. In the last weeks, we saw how idiotic PQ policies quickly wound up making our province an international laughing stock and yesterday saw the birth and death of Amir Khadir’s equally idiotic notion we should commemorate the terrorist and murderer Paul Rose.

We can’t find a better way of getting our point across?

Are we even trying?

Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, What were they thinking?

An Incomprehensible Display of Political Incompetence: Amir Khadir Must Resign

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The slovenly and unkempt Paul Rose, attempting to demonstrate his solidarity with the world's oppressed.
The slovenly and unkempt Paul Rose, attempting to demonstrate his solidarity with the world’s oppressed.

Earlier today perennial last-place contestant Québec Solidaire issued a statement pertaining to the death of the convicted terrorist, felon and murderer Paul Rose.

Further still, MNA Amir Khadir insinuated that he will table a motion before the National Assembly that something be done to recognize Rose’s efforts – as an activist and militant separatist, Rose was also involved in several parties that would eventually become Québec Solidaire, a party I once honeslty thought I’d support. According to Khadir, it’s all about paying tribute to those who helped shape Québec’s identity and history.

Right – this sounds curiously similar to Southerners who parade around Klan memorabilia and Confederate flags as innocent tokens of ‘a spirit of independence’.

The FLQ, a terrorist organization that sought to secure Québec independence through armed insurrection, bombings, robberies, kidnappings and, eventually the murder of Pierre Laporte, has been given a similar treatment by modern day separatists, so fuelled by piss-poor revisionist history they refuse to put the issue plainly.

Too many times they have asserted that Laporte simply died, that his kidnapping and beatings at the hands of a gang of illiterate thugs had no impact on his demise, that he suffocated on his own crucifix, that he had tried to escape and got cut up so badly he bled out.

And now Québec Solidaire is going a step further in what can only be described as the worst kind of political opportunism, seeking to pick up a little more support at the expense of the vastly unpopular Parti Québécois.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Québec Solidaire would call for tributes for a man convicted of murder, there’s the bigger issue in that QS is by extension advocating violence as a legitimate method of either forcing a political issue to the fore or of accomplishing a political goal of one kind or another.

Does it give anyone else the willies QS polled so high amongst student activists? The very same militant students, in fact, who refuse to negotiate and who are equally unwilling to even try and keep their ranks calm during their monthly protest marches.

What shall we do as a society when the next FLQ rears its ugly head? Will Amir Khadir be responsible for a kidnapped education minister?

***

I’m a combination of too tired and too mortified to make much sense here. I honestly cannot believe any self-respecting individual, a doctor and father no less, could possibly have anything positive to say about this horrible man. For the record, I believe in rehabilitation, and I’m more than willing to accept that people can change fort he better. But that requires remorse, something Paul Rose never showed.

We should remind ourselves that René Lévesque set the stage for peaceful political negotiations by coming out, during the height of the October Crisis, and joining his arch-rival Pierre Trudeau in savagely denouncing the FLQ for what it was – a group of uneducated schmucks, petty criminals, who killed and maimed janitors, maids, night watchmen and other working class types before finally killing Laporte. Lévesque made his point clear – he didn’t want to lead a new country if that country couldn’t come into existence without violence. He set a high moral standard most of Québec society agreed with.

After all, Laporte may not have been the most popular politician according to the fringe separatist/anarcho-syndicalist/Marxist-Leninist types who composed the FLQ back in 1970, but he didn’t deserve to die in such a way.

When they kidnapped him from outside his modest suburban home, he was playing football with his adopted son. Paul Rose organized the Chenier Cell’s kidnapping operation.

What a monster eh?

I wonder if Mr. Khadir has ever feared being kidnapped by political extremists while enjoying quality time with his children? I shouldn’t think so.

Politicians and activists get kidnapped and killed in his native Iran. He moved here the year after the October Crisis, so perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt – politicians aren’t typically terribly knowledgeable about e=historical events, even if they were alive while they happened. Fuzzy memories…

***

I’m calling on Mr. Khadir to renounce violence as a means to achieve political goals and resign, immediately. Obviously there’s little hope he’ll do the right thing, but what the hell – it needs to be said, he has no right to represent any Québécois.

It’s grossly hypocritical, inconsistent and so devoid of logic, rational thinking or even a basic understanding of Québec social and cultural norms you’d think these statements came from a recent Republican immigrant from the most inbred counties of West Virginia.

But no, Mr. Khadir is a self-styled progressive, doctor, and seems to be interested in running an independent country. This is what an apparently educated man thinks.

I’m at a total loss. People wonder why I have no interest in being a politician…

Québec Solidaire is dead to me as long as this clown retains his seat.