Category Archives: Let’s make this an election issue

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A new use for the Old Westmount Train Station?

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Westmount Train Station by Jean Gagnon, 2011

As you are doubtless aware, the new Glen Campus ‘Superhospital’ of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is both over-budget and behind schedule, but that was nothing new. Moreover, what I can only describe as an exceptionally poor omission in the planning of the new hospital, access to the Vendome inter-modal station has not been finalized.

I say again, the superhospital under construction adjacent to a crucial multi-modal public transit station was not designed with direct access to the station. And apparently there is a suggestion that one key access point won’t even connect directly with the hospital, but will rather deposit the sick and infirm somewhere outside, so that they can choose which hospital to go to. And I’m wondering whether or not they could make this choice inside a temperature controlled underground passageway connecting directly with the building?

According to this recent Open File Montreal article by Kate McDonnell, planning for public access seems significantly retarded. Despite the fact that public transit use is on the rise and the location of the Superhospital at the former Glen Yard is at a major traffic junction, those responsible for the project are tight-lipped about why this particular aspect was so blatantly over-looked. That there will assuredly be a marked increase in traffic hasn’t even lead planners to finalize plans to handle the greater load.

If you’re going to do something, do it right, and plan for the future. All of the plans mentioned at the public consultation meeting for handling additional traffic and connecting the station with the hospital seem overtly reactionary; small steps and band-aid solutions. We have a golden opportunity to significantly increase the overall economic value of the site simply by better planning for the expected massive increase in traffic. Vendome could become a station as important as Berri-UQAM, with connections to numerous local buildings and several modes of public transit. The land south of Boul. de Maisonneuve between Claremont and Decarie Boulevard is already principally office space, and there’s no reason to think something might not one day be built on top of the station. Point is, developing new station access points at the extremities of the station would assist in traffic diffusion and help prevent bottle-necking, not to mention increase the value of the buildings now offering direct access to the Métro station. Certainly prospectors will be interested in developing the empty lot where Ste-Catherine’s becomes Claremont, and a multi-level underground parking garage would be beneficial as well (may as well dig up the whole thing and do all the work simultaneously, IMHO).

And then at the far Eastern end of the campus site, the derelict and abandoned Westmount Train Station. Would it not make sense to re-open the train station and have the AMT unload there instead of right next to a busy Métro station and bus terminus? It’s less than a five minute walk and would further allow for better traffic diffusion and less bottle-neck.

I’m going to finish this later; check back for updates.

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Montreal’s segregated schools; a problem hiding in plain sight.

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Dejected Parents – Credit to John Kenney at The Gazette

Another year and another round of school closings – what a stable future we’re leaving our children…

There exists in Montréal a damning, apparently hidden problem concerning our public education system – it’s name is segregation and it is a multi-headed hydra of social pathologies.

Just to remind you, it’s 2012. We’re now twelve years into the 21st century. The Titanic sunk a hundred years ago. The Québec government eliminated publicly-funded confessional school boards in 1998, fourteen years ago. Unfortunately, rather than defining school boards along purely geographic lines, the PQ government of the day instead decided to maintain linguistic segregation in public schooling. So we achieved secular education for the public while further entrenching an unnecessary division within our society. Linguistic and class seperations continue to persist in Montreal public schools, and it is leading to over-crowding, high drop-out rates, poor performance, school closings and the gradual erosion of a key component in maintaining stable urban neighbourhoods. Not the victory I was hoping for.

There are at least five public school boards serving the communities of Montreal Island, three French and two English. They are divided by language and geography. Unfortunately, for this and other reasons, the urban Francophone board (Commission Scolaire de Montréal) is over-populated and has some of the highest drop-out rates. The urban Anglophone board is depopulating rapidly as a result of gentrification and the proliferation of private schools in the urban core, and has a similarly high drop-out rate. The three remaining boards are more suburban and have comparatively lower drop out rates than their urban counterparts and are thus more stable though new schools need to be built to ease over-crowding in some sectors. All of these problems are inter-related and could be fixed simply by uniting all boards into a single bilingual public education board for the whole island. It would allow more neighbourhood schools to remain open while stream-lining procedures, materials, infrastructure development, maintenance and specialty educations resources. A bigger common revenue pot with fewer operational redundancies in other words, and best of all we’d finally do away with the last vestiges of Victorian-era public education policy. Why on Earth would we ever wish to educate children in two separate languages and not both is profoundly stupid.

I think on the whole there’s been a general move away from public urban education institutions by the rich and middle class in favour of private, in some cases religious, alternatives, and thus the urban public schools tend to uniquely serve the poor and working classes. The linguistic divisions in turn lead to school closures and increased bussing costs. A recent example; just days ago the EMSB announced three elementary schools would close and amalgamate with other schools. Another example; Westmount High School, a school which serves the communities of St-Henri, Pointe-St-Charles, Notre-Dame-de-Grace, Shaughnessy Village and Little Burgundy. For a school located in Westmount, it has surprisingly few Westmount residents in attendance. This is because most of the children who live in Westmount attend private schools. Are there no schools closer to the communities they serve? And what about James Lyng High School, consistently (publicly) rated as one of the poorest, most violent and lowest-scoring public schools in Montreal. Has anyone ever wondered whether it’s location under the Turcot Interchange and near-total lack of a green-space might be having an effect on the students? Can you imagine how hard it must be to concentrate there? If there was a single, secular, bilingual public education option, more students would live within walking distance of their schools, classroom sizes could be reduced and facilities could be redesigned strategically. Moreover, we could create stronger links between children living int he same neighbourhood, inasmuch as we could develop stronger ties to the parents and community on the whole. Some education experts believe the best way to educate at the early level is to do so close to home with as much parental involvement as possible. In the urban context this would further mean children from diverse backgrounds would be educated together, regardless of mother-tongue, parental-income or ethnicity. A unified board could present itself as the legitimate pedagogical representative of the citizens and would further have the resources necessary to persuade middle and upper-class citizens to enroll their children in a fundamentally progressive and egalitarian schooling system. A unified board would be far better suited to petition the provincial and federal governments for additional funding, not to mention serve to unify diverse teachers union, allowing for more effective collective bargaining and a larger pension fund.

It’s time we got honest with ourselves – segregated education is no longer working and it lies at the heart of a public education crisis in our city. School closings rip communities apart and are traumatic for the children involved. If we could get beyond our shortsightedness and see what the future will require of our children, then we know, fundamentally, that the only way forward is through a massive re-investment in innovative public education. Linguistic segregation is perpetuating an under-educated urban working class and we should no longer tolerate it.

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist

Words almost failed me (some disturbing trends)

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Lise St-Denis – Credit to Adrian Wyld

First: Lise St-Denis crosses the floor to join the Federal Liberals, indicating she came to her decision after realizing that her constituents voted for Jack Layton, and Jack Layton’s dead. Her constituents, suffice it to say, feel differently.

It brings up an interesting problem in Canadian politics. An individual MP is free to defect to another party whenever they like, and in turn face the possibility of loosing their seat at the next federal election. But they don’t need to run again in a by-election, and this to many Canadians is seen as unfair. Of course, when it’s playing in your favour, you’re not likely to complain too loudly, and therein lies the rub so to speak. It can be advantageous to everyone, yet comes at the cost of uniting opposition against the practice in the first place. Tricky indeed. Ms. St-Denis is putting a lot of faith in the Grits at an odd time, given the NDP leadership campaign is in full swing and, for that reason, the Grits are at a disadvantage vis-a-vis current media coverage. Unless they plan on maintaining their relevance by poaching candidates from other parties, I’d suggest Mr. Rae and Ms. St-Denis look to their constituents and their past and come up with some new ideas, and quick too. The NDP will be flooding Canadian media with new ideas for the next three months.

What I don’t get is how any elected representative could ever think this is a good idea. Yes, in a sense, Canadians are supposed to vote for the individual within their riding whom they believe best represents their individual goals and aspirations, regardless of the candidate’s party affiliations. But that doesn’t mean party affiliation is completely meaningless either, as the party represents the unified wishes of like-minded Canadians. This requires the development of a pre-existing trust between party and candidate, a trust that is supposed to be carried on by the elected candidate when they go to work in Ottawa with the other elected officials of the party. Now Ms. St-Denis is working for a party whose platform her constituents did not approve of. I suppose it doesn’t matter – she doesn’t live in her riding anyways.

Second: Joel Gauthier resigns from the AMT amidst growing criticism after the Train de l’Est project balloons to more than twice initial planned costs (about $715 million at last count). The train won’t be ready to go until Autumn, of 2013. The public statement from the AMT is simply that he resigned his position. Whether this is corporate parlance actually meaning he was forced out and/or paid to leave remains to be seen, though I feel my suspicions would persist regardless of any apparent explanations. Imagine yourself in his shoes, at the top of the AMT. What would it take to get you to resign such a position?

Do you still get a healthy severance package if you resign?

And what gives him the right to resign? He’s not elected, yet he’s apparently in charge of a regional transit authority built with provincial tax revenue. Given his resignation, how wil he be held accountable for his negligence? Or is the resignation the penalty? Seems inadequate given just how badly this project is going. Keep in mind the exorbitant yet total cost of the Métro extension into Laval cost about the same yet serves considerably more people.

With regular delays, inadequate services at individual stations and a general lack of rest facilities throughout the system, not to mention cost overruns and consistent delays with regards to infrastructure development, one wonders if the citizens wouldn’t be better off if the head of the AMT wasn’t also an elected member of the city council? At least that way the people would have the final say.

Third: the English Montreal School Board has decided to close three schools, and more school closings will likely take place in the coming year. As you can imagine it affects schools in working and middle-class neighbourhoods where there simply aren’t enough ‘English’ students to justify continued operations. Some parents are considering relocating while others will now have to pay for additional transit costs. Most disconcerting is the effect this has on children, which no one ever seems to consider. There are major problems with the way we teach children in our society without adding the complexities of long-distance travel, relocation and the likely disruptions to many friendships. These may seem trivial concerns to individuals or corporations, but school closings invariably have a destructive effect on communities and our society as a whole.

I can only repeat an earlier statement: we can’t keep doing this, and our kids would be better off if they were multi-lingual to begin with, so why not start right now? A single metropolitan city with a unified, multi-lingual, secular and cosmopolitan public school board. Anything less is inefficient by design and will only serve to further erode the public’s trust in public education.

We must end segregation in Montreal’s public schooling system, forever. Eliminating the socio-cultural segregation which plagues our public schooling system would do us all a favour by allowing a more immersive learning environment where our children will be pushed as hard as you might expect in the private sector. We could streamline operations and eliminate redundancies, not to mention pool resources and offer better salaires. And best of all, we won’t have to keep closing schools and we’ll further eliminate a continuing source of school-based gang violence.

The common thread of these three cases is the corporate structure and individualistic mentality of the decision makers of our public institutions. Whether its the head of a regional transit agency, an elected representative or the members of a school board, all seem to be acting with self-preservation in mind. There is no altruism nor any legitimate effort to take responsibilities for their actions. It’s no different than the revolving door of Chancellors who have passed through Concordia’s administrative division and walked back out with multi-million dollar severance packages. They were clearly only in it for the money. Apparently everyone is these days.

And that’s how you gut a society of its inherent socialistic tendencies – remove the elected altruists and appoint money-counters, for if we’re lucky they may throw a few dollars our way.

Sometimes I wonder how many good ideas and brilliant minds have slipped out of reach or otherwise would never consider a job working for the people out of distaste for just how self-serving politics has become these days. This kind of behaviour seems to be the norm, and the people are far too exasperated to really do anything about it.

A shame really.

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Resurrect the Arrow: A made-in Canada solution to the F-35 problem.

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The photo above is of two examples of the CF-105 Arrow, also known as the Avro Arrow, a supersonic jet fighter designed, built and tested here in Canada in the mid-late 1950s. It was a milestone in Canadian aviation and a great success for our high-technology industrial sector. The project was abruptly terminated in the late-1950s by the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, who saw the project as emblematic of Liberal ‘big-government’ spending. Moreover, with the advent of long-range ballistic missiles and the launching of Sputnik (and subsequent Space Race) at the end of the 1950s, there was a widespread belief that ground and space based missiles would determine the strategic balance of the future. Thus the Arrow, the Iroquois engine and Velvet Glove missile system programs were all scrapped (literally, the aircraft were cut to pieces, engines smashed, blueprints burned in bonfires).

Avro Canada Ltd would go belly-up by 1962 as they had thrown almost all their efforts behind the project. Efforts to sell the Arrow or elements of the design to foreign nations were in fact prevented by Diefenbaker’s government (a Tory gov’t preventing free-market capitalism and over-regulating our high-tech and defence sector industries, funny) and many of the chief engineers would find work throughout the United States and Europe working for other major defence consortiums. Among others, former Avro employees would help design fighter aircraft in the UK, France and the United States, in addition to designing the Apollo Command and Service module. Indeed, as you can see from this Wikipedia entry Avro was involved in myriad state of the art technologies and were global aviation leaders.

A long time has passed since the Arrow program was cancelled. In its wake Avro would be sold to Hawker Siddeley (a British corporation), Canada acquired inferior American-built interceptors two years later (which employed nuclear weapons, not a popular move in Canada) and later, Canadair would take over construction and testing of Canadian-built versions of American-designed fighter models, including the Hornets we use today. It has been more than fifty years since we were so bold to dare develop our high-technologies sector by direct government investment and support as we once tried with the Arrow program.

And today, an opportunity has presented itself, one we seem to be very interested in squandering outright.

I don’t need to tell you about the multiple inter-related controversies surrounding the Harper government’s intention to procure 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (check this out for all you need to know), but I will mention this; the plan currently involves leasing engines and weapons, providing service and maintenance contracts to non-military (perhaps non-Canadian) contractors and is already significantly over-budget given how few aircraft we’re to receive. Trudeau’s defence department ordered 138 Hornets between 1982 and 1988, and most of these aircraft subsequently underwent a total overhaul, update and modernization program about five years ago, leaving us with approximately one-hundred serviceable and still lethal aircraft. Furthermore, Canada has always used twin-engine, long-range fighters to defend our territorial sovereignty. The F-18 provided additional benefits, given that it was aircraft-carrier capable (meaning Canadian pilots could deploy from American carriers in time of war) and could fulfill multiple roles, such as interception, strike, close-support, reconnaissance etc.

The F-35 is an inferior aircraft to the F-18 in many ways, and what’s most maddening is that the F-35, at best, could only be a tactical alternative to F-18 (ergo, we deploy F-35s to bomb Libya and leave the F-18s to defend our airspace). Back during the Cold War this is typically how we operated, using two-types of multi-role aircraft, one for tactical missions and the other being used for more strategic defence roles. While the F-18s will need to be replaced by the end of the decade, replacing them with an unproven, still largely experimental and expensive fighter is obscenely irresponsible. Now while Canada has been involved in the F-35 project for some time, we have no legal responsibility to procure them, and it just so happens a more modern version of our current aircraft (The Super Hornet) is available, proven and could even be built here (given Canadair/Bombardier’s previous involvement in aircraft construction). That, or we could be bold and build precisely what we need in large enough numbers we can then re-coup production and R&D costs by selling surplus aircraft to friendly foreign nations.

What I don’t understand, however, is why a Conservative and apparent patriot like Stephen Harper isn’t chomping at the bit to realize a new Arrow. Frankly, you’d think this is stuff his wet dreams are made of.

What a hero he’d be for Canadian industry! What a great Canadian, correcting a terrible mistake from his party’s past. If only his head was in the game. What’s generally accepted is that the Arrow was the ideal fighter for Canada, and Canada is still just as involved protecting its airspace and conducting, and so we still require an aircraft with similar capabilities.

The recent discovery of a set of two Arrow ejection seats in the UK has re-ignited the persistent rumour that an intact Arrow may have been smuggled out of Canada and flown to the UK, possibly with Hawker Siddeley’s acquisition of Avro Ltd. In the years since the project’s cancellation, bits and pieces of Avro’s projects have turned up across Canada, including the Avro Car, the Avro jet-powered truck and many pieces belonging to the Arrow and Orenda Iroqouis engine projects. Enthusiasts have been trying to generate enough funds to re-assemble a working Arrow with the engines for years now, but without significant capital it is unlikely said enthusiasts will go much further than scaled-down wooden mock-ups. Stage props really.

Even if we don’t build new versions of the Arrow, at least give us the chance to build something for ourselves, to demonstrate our expertise and innovation. Our nation needs to be given goals, and the citizens must feel a tangible pride for what their nation accomplishes. Failure to involve yourself in the affairs of the People in this manner is negligent. So again I ask is it wise to allow our nation to procure the F-35? And would we rather deal with the consequences of that purchase, or create our own solution?

At the end of the day, you can’t assume you’ll get much vision from free-market enterprise. Someone must instigate a nation’s dreams.

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Canada, the Caribbean and the Caicos

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It’s 25 degrees and partly cloudy right now in the Turks and Caicos. Yesterday, daytime temperatures in Montréal didn’t rise above -15, and the wind chill plunged the mercury closer to -20. It was very difficult to enjoy a breath of fresh air, or a smoke and coffee, something I value greatly when working.

Suffice it to say my day-dreams lead me to look forward to seeing Spring again, and in particular Spring in the City, something I’ve missed for several years now. I’m not complaining about the weather, I choose to live here and I’d gladly put up with the worst Canadian Winter to enjoy a Montréal Summer. That said, I’d like to have the option of taking a vacation in a Canadian province located in the Caribbean.

I can hear you all thinking, ‘surely he gests!’

I’m not. I’m dead serious. And this particular example is demonstrative of a fault – a lack of imagination – emblematic of Canada as a nation.

Let me back track a bit.

Above is map of the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. The Turks & Caicos are located just below the Bahamas and close to key Caribbean nations, such as Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They are a British Overseas Territory and an important offshore financial centre, with a population of 45,000 souls. Most importantly, the islands and their residents currently lack self-government, and efforts to link the territory with Canada go back to 1917. Before we go any further, it should also be stated that there is a strong local interest in joining Canada.

That’s right – they want to become a Canadian province, and have been interested for more than forty years.

Why we haven’t capitalized on this incredible opportunity is both complicated yet ultimately maddening. One of the key issues preventing this voluntary annexation is that it would apparently require re-opening constitutional talks and would require all provinces agreeing to the annexation. Some believe that this would necessarily require re-opening direct constitutional talks with Québec (in essence, a replay of the Meech and Charlottetown Accords, which for those of you old enough to remember, effectively led directly to the 1995 Referendum, and was thus a colossal failure for the Mulroney Administration). This apparent fact led Nova Scotia to propose that the islands would join the province if it ever voted to join Canada directly, but the fed at the time failed to move the project any further. I suppose admitting the Turks & Caicos into Confederation as a province could potentially upset citizens of our Northern Territories, but then again, why not make them provinces too?

Another issue, one I remember being hotly debated in a shitty pastiche of then-novel Fox News styled interrogation-journalism on Global several years ago, was whether Canada should become ‘a colonizing nation.’ I remember being put-off by the tangental nature of the debate and hearing echoes of civil rights movement slogans diligently misused for effect. One of the talking heads was arguing that the tiny nation should become independent. Independent? Why? Liechtenstein has a similarly-sized population, but unlike the Turks & Caicos it has a highly developed economy and is the wealthiest per-capita nation in Europe. The Turks & Caicos has an infant mortality rate more than three times higher than Canada and is largely dependent on its tourism industry (which attracts a disproportionate amount of Canadian tourists to begin with). If they joined as a province, Canada could use its substantial resources to better the lives of the Islanders and create a more diversified local economy.

Moreover, we have a geo-strategic interest in the region, one that I fear most Canadians never really consider. For a Northern country, we are heavily implicated in the Caribbean. Consider the island nations adjacent to the Turks and Caicos – Cuba, a nation with whom we’ve had especially excellent diplomatic and trade relations since the Revolution. Haiti also figures prominently with regards to Canadian implications in the Caribbean, as there are more than 100,000 Canadians of Haitian descent and Haiti receives an exceptional amount of Canadian aid money. If the Turks & Caicos became Canadian, we’d be that much closer to where we’re needed, and where Canada could use its wealth and status to help stabilize the region. Canada’s military, the RCMP, Coast Guard and DFAIT would quickly seek to establish their presence on the islands, and for good reason. Crime has been on the rise for a considerable amount of time and in March of 2011, the two most senior police roles in the nation were handed over to Canadian law enforcement officials as part of a larger plan to eliminate corruption in the islands. A stronger local presence could mitigate the potential danger of international smuggling cartels passing through crucial Caribbean shipping lanes. Then there’s the fact that a local presence could quickly respond to major ecological and natural disasters, and act as a conduit for increased Caribbean immigration. We could develop new markets for our goods and services and develop new infrastructure mega-projects to serve the islands and the region, such as a new international airport or deep-water seaport. And I suppose while I’m listing off what could be, I may as well add that if the Canadian Space Agency ever wants to launch its own rockets, we could use a launch site a little closer to the Equator.

Just sayin’…

Yet despite the numerous advantages of further implicating ourselves in the Caribbean and putting the legislation in motion to create a new province, we sit around waiting, seemingly forever, completely unsure of how to proceed. For the moment, we lack vision so we need to turn to our past, to other countries to propose interesting ideas or solutions. Where are the Made-in-Canada solutions? Why don’t we break with our conventional understanding of who we are an look ahead to reality? I can’t see how a move such as this would be detrimental to either Canada or the Islanders.

What do you think?

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A Resolution: to be Even Better than the Real Thing

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Apologies for the lack of new content over the last couple of weeks, but what can I say I think we’ve all been busy right?

A good friend of mine is back from San Francisco and we’ve been talking cities, comparatively speaking. We touched on a wide spectrum of issues and key differences between the two cities that he related to me as something our citizens may wish to consider for our own community (or perhaps that I may wish to consider when putting together my eventual campaign platform). Issues of design and philosophy, but also of prerogative, presentation and appeal.

Among others, he asked me the following; why are the really top-flight, high-end and gourmet restaurants of our city located in areas generally inaccessible to tourists? By contrast, he inquired why it was that our apparent ‘show-street’ (Ste-Catherine’s) was crammed with chain retail stores, family restaurants and other locales better identified by a corporate logo rather than the quality of the services within? For the life of me, I can’t think of a single excellent restaurant on all of Ste-Catherine’s from Fort to Berri. There are times when Ste-Catherine’s is completely inactive, a slightly better lit variant of Boul de. Maisonneuve in the same sector. Less than thirty years ago this was not the case. Has our city been ‘bylawed’ into an unrealistic hodgepodge of distinct districts-cum-cubicles? What has made Ste-Catherine’s a less than ideal location for good restaurants, fashionable clubs and vaudeville theatres, as it once was teaming with life, quality performances, food and diverse entertainment? What sapped its nightlife? And why is it that quality, in this city, is never located in a position of distinction?

As an example, Dorchester Square’s dining options are severely constrained on the high-traffic Peel side while some new options on the low-traffic Metcalfe side remain largely hidden. Within the square only a tired casse-croute that never seems to be open, despite immense daily pedestrian traffic and a high concentration of office workers that could easily support a restaurant in this most public of public spaces. In Central Park, they have the world-famous Tavern on the Green. See what I mean? For a city that prides itself on exceptional nightlife and fine restaurants, we do a shit poor job making it obvious to find. And why should such things be hidden – does it make the find more valuable to the patrons? Are restaurants supposed to be exclusive or hiding in plain sight? Is any of this good for business?

Consider Place Jacques Cartier, arguably one of the most beautiful public squares in the Old Port. Have you ever eaten at any of the restaurants there? How many of them are quality local institutions compared to the number of tourist traps serving subpar food at inflated prices? Why do we, the citizens of Montréal, allow this? I can imagine in another city, perhaps a more thoughtful city, a public space of such quality and importance as this one would be filled with perhaps some of our very finest restaurants and shops. I ask again, when was the last time you went shopping in the Old Port? There’s nothing worth buying down there. There are few if any services, despite a stable local population and a stable daily traffic of locals going about their business. And yet, one of our most visited neighbourhoods and districts is far from emblematic of the city a seasoned local knows and loves. It is a very large tourist trap with all the good stuff barely identifiable, as if Montréalers are attempting a covert reclamation of the antique city. One of my favourite Old Port haunts is identifiable only by a set of antlers over the door. I love subtlety, but this is too much.

There’s something wrong if we can’t get tourists to the Mountain or to Parc Lafontaine or Ile-Ste-Helene. Why must these be our secrets? What are we trying to hide from the global stage? Why are these places inaccessible to tourists who may be unwilling to travel more than thirty minutes in a given direction from their hotel. Does our city really require so many secluded parks? And why does the city invest so much time in re-branding areas already well visited by tourists while doing nothing to lead tourists towards other equally well defined but locally-oriented neighbourhoods?

It seems as though there is a highly compartmentalized, perhaps sanitized, version of quaint Montréal we present to tourists and visitors on a scale that resembles cartoonish stereotypes of American excess. We don’t show the outside world what makes us powerfully unique and a thoroughly desirable place to live. No, instead, we put a dinky local spin on what remains a bad interpretation of American pop-culture. Its the Three Amigos, the Nickels and the thankfully forgotten foray into Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Café territory that I think make some of the distinguished addresses of our city thoroughly un-Montréalais. We need to stop designing our city along what’s popular elsewhere, because at best we can only reproduce a pale imitation.

But people love us for who we are, and love coming her specifically for what sets us thoroughly apart from the pack. A good deal of the tourism experience in this city, based on what I’ve read in guide books, is the insistence on exploration. In general I agree with this kind of mentality, but why not open the market the better competition for key commercial real estate a little closer to beaten path.

Consider our local film industry, constantly advertising our city as a universal stand-in for any other city on either side of the pond, but never advertising Montréal for Montréal’s sake (and as we should know by now, capturing the aesthetics of Montréal on a whole is a difficult proposition, despite the beauty so apparent to any visitor). I’m tired of being told I’m looking at New York or Paris when I know I’m looking at Montréal. What sets those cities apart is that their citizens are perennially dissatisfied with the status quo, and we’re desperately trying to slow ourselves down and take the path of least resistance. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

All great cities need to prepare for and execute a constant self-criticism that leads to impassioned and driven local entrepreneurs to lead individually for the common good. Ultimately, the common good is typically well aligned with the business interest’s bottom line.

And so I’m left to wonder – are we regulating ourselves into oblivion? Have we become so dependent on municipal intervention in all areas of city planning that it has stifled individual investment and creativity?

Government involvement has lead to the re-alignment of whole sectors with the hopes of streamlining operations and making it easier for tourists to identify, and yet they all seem a degree artificial in the end. New developments favour chains and franchises to independent businesses, yet only independent businesses are left with the will to set themselves apart by offering superior service and products. In other words, we don’t need any more starbucks or second cups – but I do need a new mom and pop coffee shop. New businesses on St-Catherine’s or at the Place des Festivals rarely seem to be anything other that a new franchise for an existing foreign label. Where is the investment in ourselves? Why don’t we take pride in the homegrown innovation as much as we’d like to think. And why doesn’t the city provide local institutions a chance to bid on properties along prestige addresses or major public spaces?

So if I was to ask for just one common resolution, adopted by all citizens equally for this coming new year, it would be that we all do all we can to instigate the changes we want to see for our city, individually or as a societal conspiracy. It would be to resolve to promote Montréal for Montréal’s sake, and to retake our city for our own business interests. Otherwise, we tend to look like a tacky and cheap imitation of everything we despise in the typical American city, and lay down no roots nor foundation for our business interests to grow and prosper.

So this year, let’s be more than what we are, let’s realize what we want and cease our finger-pointing and incessant whining. We can do whatever we set our minds to, and there seems to be a sufficient interest in instigating widespread change to the kind of city we live in. Let’s do what’s ultimately best for us – which is to say let us more thoroughly invest in that which makes us innovative, independent and unique.

I’ve seen far too many new Tim Horton’s open up in a city supposedly renown for excellent cafés this year, let’s try something new.