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Tramway Considerations for Montréal’s Birthday

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So it looks like Richard Bergeron has his own ideas concerning our city’s 375th Anniversary, and has proposed 37.5 km of new tram routes ready-to-go by 2017. Apparently, a finance working group has been established, though precisely what this means is anyone’s guess. I would normally be more optimistic, but there’s a new cynic growing somewheres deep down inside me.

Bergeron has earned himself (somehow) a reputation as being something of a ‘tram nut’ (this is how he’s been reduced before – modern media can suck in its efforts to be overly personable). Back in the day, a more optimistic Bergeron was keen on a 250km, $20 billion tram system to cover most of the densely packed urban core of Montréal. If this seems like a lot of tramways, consider that as recently as 1959 we had about 378km worth of tram line throughout the city and some first and second ring suburbs. This was unceremoniously dismantled in `59 largely out of pressure from the American automobile industry (see Great American Streetcar Scandal).

Another recent proposal came about as part of a larger metropolitan transit plan, this time in 2008-2009, when Mayor Tremblay announced a far less ambitious plan of three lines of 20km. That plan was supposed to be complete by 2013.

Something tells me we’re not going to meet that deadline.

That said, Bergeron is persistent and (hopefully) involved in the new plan, though I wonder why not shoot for something far more complete, such as 375 kilometer’s worth. I suppose 37.5km will cause enough traffic headaches for the next six years, especially given how slowly and inefficiently we build these days. But no matter which way you cut it, this is something we desperately, definitely need.

Projet Montréal tram design proposal
Tram design proposal, Projet Montréal

That said, there are some key considerations we need to discuss.

For one, trams or trolleys? Are steel wheels on rails necessarily the better way to go? Or can rubber tyres provide a sensible alternative, better able to climb steep gradients? Rails will undeniably work better insofar as the tram lane is segregated from regular traffic, especially on long straight streets, such as Boul. René-Lévesque. However, climbing up Cote-des-Neiges road or Atwater might be better handled by a rubber tyre alternative. And consider as well that there are models that feature both steel wheels and rubber tyres, and can switch between.

Second, who will run this new transit system? Ideally, the STM runs the tram network as well as the buses and Métro, and as Bergeron has planned, the proposal is designed to intersect with existing Métro stations. A common fare and transfer system seems like a no-brainer, but this needs to be planned from the outset. The last thing we want is an expensive tram that requires a separate fare. This could be enough to kill the system entirely.

Third, will installing the system be enough to get people to give up on using their cars? Probably not without an expensive and effective mass media campaign and municipal bylaws regulating when cars can enter the city (however the city decides to define this is really up to them). In effect, this system may prove itself far more useful, if not overtly desired by the citizens, if we go so far so as to actually employ measures to keep people from driving their cars. Offering excellent service and clean trams is one way, convincing the citizenry they have a fundamental responsibility to each other to use public transit is an entirely different measure.

Fourth, and related to the aforementioned points, it may be wise to install trams on streets we intend to be new pedestrian axes – such as Ste-Catherine’s. Though business associations perpetually live in fear of street closures, road work and any other threat to the overwhelming predominance of motor vehicles on our city streets, the fact is that cities larger than our own have been able to mitigate environmental damage from mass automobile use by offering excellent public transit, with trams playing a vital role ferrying people quickly between the urban core and the first ring suburbs. I would not use Toronto as a model, incidentally, when there are so many European and other American examples to go by.

Point is if City Hall wants to really make this work, they have to provide an alternative they can enforce to the point where few will question the logic. That anyone today can feel justified in arguing against capital investment in new public transit initiatives is, in my honest opinion, a measure of our stubborn regressiveness. We need to exercise this demon from our collective conscience.

We simply can no longer afford not spending money on massive public transit projects. Furthermore, we need to grow some local government sack and start finding ways of compelling people to give up on the selfish act of using a car when cheaper, cleaner alternatives exist.

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

Getting Smarter About Public Education in Montréal

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Once again, Montréal parents are caught fighting each other to keep their children’s respective schools open. This time, the parents of St. John Bosco and St. Gabriel schools, located in the working class neighbourhoods of Ville Emard and Pte. St. Charles respectively, are trying to convince the English Montréal School Board each should be saved at the other’s potential closure. How sick.

Parents should not ever be forced to fight each other for access to schooling near their homes, and unfortunately, you see this sort of thing happen frequently in the first rung suburbs of Montréal – there are and have been cases in Ville Emard, St-Leonard, Cote-des-Neiges etc over the years. Under no circumstances do I personally feel this is right or justifiable, the school board should have more sense than to do this to hard-working people who need small community schools for their children. It’s unnecessarily traumatic, can disrupt family and neighbourhood life and cohesion, and in no way serves the interests of the People it is supposed to serve. The positive public effect of small public schools intimately tied to the surrounding neighbourhood is quite simply a necessity for modern urban living, and the benefit of small class sizes is particularly desirable in situations where the majority of parents work full time in potentially unstable work environments. Children in working class neighbourhoods need strong schools integrated into the local community – ideally with teachers and staff who live in the same neighbourhood so that a fuller sense of community attachment can be established, and the apparent transition of authority from inside the home to inside the school is maintained. This is difficult to do when the children have to go to another neighbourhood entirely, and potentially never see the teachers or classmates outside of school. Moreover, by forcing these two schools to merge, it doubtless means class sizes will grow. This is far from ideal. And more often than not residents of these communities find themselves without the resources to fight the school board and save their schools. The EMSB ought to be ashamed of itself.

This is not news – Montréal parents have been fighting each other and the government (physically, figuratively, rhetorically) for more than forty years, stretching all the way back to the St-Leonard Riots of 1969-70. You’d think we would have learned something since then.

The problem is supposed to be declining enrolment and funding for the EMSB, but I’m very suspicious. The EMSB has been caught up in hot water pretty much since it was created, it is hardly a pillar of stability in the Anglo-Québecois community, not like the old PSBGM. What I fail to comprehend is why the EMSB would ever consider closing a school, which is very much a nail in the coffin of a community – and it flies in the face of most modern education theory, which stresses small class sizes as being ideal. Seriously, what are they thinking?

I don’t think we’re being very smart w/r/t to public education here in Montréal, here’s why:

For one, whereas Montréal once benefitted from public education facilities and programs that could easily compete with private schools, today incompetence, corruption and the appearance of instability have led many parents to pursue private alternatives to the weakened public system, which has led to a proliferation of private schools. This in turn has had a deleterious effect on the public system and has further led to many school closings. As such, urban neighbourhoods which have undergone substantial gentrification in the past decades are now without schools, libraries or churches (not that I’m religious in any way, but churches do make for excellent community and cultural centres) given that many have been turned into condos.

For two, we still have a linguistic divide in education, as though we were purposely underselling our real level of bilingualism and multi-culturalism. So why do we still have multiple independent linguistic boards serving a single region – it’s inefficient. If all boards were united into a single operation we’d be in a better position to keep schools open (as overflow from the French sector could be placed in what was once an ‘English’ school), and thus could mitigate the need to build new schools and pay for expensive bussing in the urban core. We could also stabilize class sizes. And all of this would still be secondary to the fact that we would finally be in position to educate bilingually, a necessity for this city. If the City of Montréal were to undertake creating a single, bi-lingual, multi-cultural school board (run as a city department), it would not only allow us to guarantee full bilingualism of generations of children, it would also provide the necessary means and operational efficiency to once again make public education the preferred option for Montréal residents. I would encourage a 75/25 linguistic instruction split for all students regardless of mother tongue, with the majority of classroom instruction talking place in French to counter the dominance of English in North American media. Ultimately, we need to fill our schools with teachers who are comfortable switching languages and can speak both with full fluency. This should be what we want for our children, who will certainly live in a world where both are fundamentally useful. Why even attempt anything less?

Finally, third point, our city needs to run private schools out of business, but this won’t happen unless we have the business sense to plan for long-term development in a city-run school board.

For me, it boils down to this. A child can’t choose the circumstances they’re born in to, and yet the school they go to will be decided by factors well beyond the child’s grasp. If current trends continue poor kids will end up in underfunded public schools while rich kids and the remaining children of the middle class will end up in various private schools, operating beyond the regulatory reach of the government. As far as I’m concerned, all elements of society, rich or poor, would benefit from future generations educated equitably, and private schools should thus be minimized and rendered obsolete by heavily investing in a renewed public system.

Education is basic human right, and I would expect the leaders of my city would do everything they could to ensure our city offered the very finest in public education. But such is not the case, and we close schools to later be recycled into condominiums, leaving neighbourhoods without the societal anchors necessary to build healthy communities and healthier families. By refusing to acknowledge some of the realities of our city, we hold ourselves back, and we’re not doing our kids any favours either.

So, let’s smarten up and try something different. It is the very definition of insanity to expect a different result after repeating an action, and it further leaves people in a rut that may seem impossible to get out of. Plus, we’re Canadian, so everyone’s too embarrassed to propose anything too radically hors-du-commun.

It’s costing us the money we can’t generally see. We could do much better.

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If at first you don’t succeed…

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This is the front cover of the ‘bid-book’ published by the City of Montréal when it was angling for the 1972 Summer Olympics (notice it says XX Olympiad), which would eventually go to Munich and be highlighted by the triumphs of Mark Spitz and the horrors of Black September. Mayor Drapeau, being the tenacious individual that he was, continued pushing for a Summer Games to be held here, despite the terrorism that marred the Munich Games. He would ultimately succeed in 1976 with an Olympic Games that helped restore faith in the games as an instrument of global diplomacy and peace, but it came at the cost of what can only be described as massive cost overruns as a result of corruption in the construction industry (sounds familiar?)

Ultimately, the legacy of the XXI Olympiad was its crippling long-run costs, though we often overlook the work done on infrastructure, the development of high density residential towers in the urban core, the boon to the tourism and hospitality industry and the publicity it generated for city & citizen alike.

The Games were not bad for business Рif anything the cronyism and cost-throttling were great for private enterprises. But as far as running an Olympiad for the cost-benefits to the city, Montr̩al stands head and shoulders above all others as the biggest loser. So much so that the planning committee of the 1984 Los Angeles games studied Montr̩al specifically, in effect trying to be as much the opposite of our games as possible. Los Angeles `84 stands as the most financially profitable games of all time.

So if Peter Ueberroth (the head of the LA-84 Olympic Committee) could use our example to plan for massive success, certainly we can do the same, no? Let’s take advantage of all we’ve built and maintained since – I can imagine another Montréal games could turn a massive profit given how little would have to be built, we can simply use existing facilities. Moreover, with three airports, an expanded public and inter-city transit capability and a significantly larger number of hotel rooms, we might be able to break attendance records inasmuch as we could break revenue records.

So if the City comes to ask what I’d like for our 375th Anniversary, I can only ask for an Olympic organizing committee with a serious bid and a promise to doggedly pursue another Summer Games until we get one. 2024 isn’t that far away.

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, Urban Redevelopment

A Sensible Approach to Redeveloping Griffintown

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Let me make myself perfectly clear; being in favour of enhanced local government involvement in residential and commercial planning is not, in any way shape or form, anti-business. Nor is it necessarily going to lead to nepotism or otherwise create a conflict of interest. I need to stress this as a necessity, because we may otherwise spoil a golden opportunity to breathe new life into a dormant sector of the city by being fearful of the appearance of collusion. The city, by necessity, must be intimately involved in all manner of urban zoning planning – leaving it up to developers uniquely is simply irresponsible. The role of the city is to plan the necessary constraints placed on development and provide the requisite infrastructure to secure long-term growth and socio-economic stability within its boundaries. It is the private sector’s responsibility to adhere to these constraints and deliver a bankable product, on time and under budget, to their investors. A key issue to consider is this however; who are the investors? With regards to residential development projects, especially those of the size and calibre to potentially stimulate the rebirth of an entire residential zone, it is not merely the banks and the development company; all citizens who pay taxes to the municipal government are also paying for the city’s involvement in urban redevelopment, such as by rehabilitating old sewer systems, re-paving roads, building parks etc. Thus, in an indirect though significant fashion, the citizens are also investors, and their interests ought to considered as though the citizens are the financial backers of the city, in the same fashion that the banks and investment firms back the contractors, speculators and developers.

The plans to redevelop Griffintown caused a considerable uproar a few years back amongst citizens inclined towards a certain preferred urbanism. Indeed, the Devimco plan was seen as an uninspired condo-tropolis reminiscent of recent construction in Toronto or Vancouver and, though the project was officially put on hiatus as a result of the global economic meltdown, one can’t deny it was also very poorly received. Smaller projects have been implemented instead, and large-scale planning for the area doesn’t seem to have much if any involvement from the City. Perhaps it’s just hard to gauge, but the Montréal2025 plan, the Devimco plan, the scaled-back Devimco plan and the Canada Lands Corporation plan (along with a proposed Cité-du-Havre redevelopment scheme) all seem to be little more than ideas, proposals. Perhaps they are in accordance with a master plan somewhere in the city’s planning department, but publicly, it doesn’t seem that the Tremblay administration is making much headway. I can only wonder why Griffintown’s redevelopment isn’t the focal point of a major campaign on the part of the City to win the confidence of the tax-payers and potential investors, though I think it may have something to do with the number of strategic partners involved and the fluidity of Griffintown’s potential borders.

The region bounded by Highways 720, 20 and 10 looks like a backwards comma and is referred to as the Sud-Ouest. It includes the communities of Griffintown, Little Burgundy, St-Henri, Lower Westmount, Village des Tanneries, Pointe-St-Charles and the former Goose Village. Given the City’s plan to demolish the Bonaventure viaduct, this region will soon include the Cité-du-Havre, the Faubourg-des-Récollets and the proposed Quartier Bonaventure as well. The Sud-Ouest borough also counts the neighbourhoods of Cote-St-Paul and Ville-Emard further West and has a total population of about 70,000 people. This region is served by about a dozen Métro stations either within the boundary or on its periphery and has been going through a partial gentrification for about fifteen years. It is extremely convenient to live in this sector, apartments are generally quite affordable and you are in the immediately vicinity of the Central Business District. New construction is taking place and the borough has already established itself as an up-and-coming alternative to the Plateau. It’s hip and chic to live here. So why aren’t we planning for the area as a whole?

I can imagine it’s in all of our best interests to attempt increasing the residential population in this area – perhaps by significant margin given the availability of open, largely under-used land. But if this is to be the case, we must further ensure an appropriate mix of incomes and living arrangements. For one, there are a great deal of heritage properties which must be protected. An excellent way to go about this is to have the City acquire said properties and keep them rent-controlled. Other initiatives should include mandatory construction of rent-subsidized apartments and middle-income condo/apartments in all new large-scale residential development projects. Further, the city will have to construct new schools and rehabilitate old civic properties to support the new population increase (as an example, the area in question has old community centres, churches, fire stations, schools etc, many of which could be renovated and re-used), while further investing in a massive, sector-wide city beautification project. For too long it seems as though the City has focused uniquely on beautifying areas within the sector that have received significant private investment – this has given the area a very uneven look. Finally, new small-business initiatives would have to created (and backed by the City) to foster a stable local economic foundation. We can accomplish all of this, but it will require greater City involvement and a bird’s eye perspective. If the population could be doubled in this sector and a new Plateau result, it’s worth the investment. The City should use the opportunity to create a massive new residential zone built according to the interests of the citizens and our urban planning experts.

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue

The Big Picture

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I’ve been having trouble coming up with something to talk about. I have to thank Wikipedia author Chicoutimi for updating the entry for ‘Greater Montreal’ with this graphic, which got me thinking on a different level. The City of Montréal is represented in dark blue, with independent communities within the Metropolitan Region coloured pale blue. I would personally consider some of the grey areas to the left (like that part near Oka, or Valleyfield, Les Cedres etc) to be a part of the metro region, and I’m not sure the borders are laid out perfectly, but either way you get the big picture – Montréal anchors a massive metropolitan region with a population of nearly 4 million people (StatsCan predicts it will pass that number within two or three years, with about half that number residing on the Island of Montréal). Moreover, Metro Montréal is Canada’s densest metro region, with about 900 people per square kilometre, and that number is expected to quickly reach about 1,000 people per square kilometre within the next few years.

Perhaps you can imagine my frustration, looking at a map such as this and considering the economic power of 4 million people, when I see all these independent communities. What are they all independently working towards? Are our goals, needs and wants so different? Would these communities even exist without Montréal?

It strikes me as being exceptionally inefficient, and perhaps the greatest obstacle preventing our much deserved international recognition and further economic and political potential. We are held back by ourselves, each hoping to succeed independently when cooperation is what’s best for all concerned. I look at a map like this and can only ask why? Some of those borders were determined by the extent of investment in various residential projects. The people who live there have almost nothing in common (by design) with the people who built the community in the first place. Almost all bedroom suburbs are like this, so to what do they owe their independence? Market forces? The housing market? The whims of the CMHC?

And while these communities can build fences to force citizens of Montréal to pass through patrolled check points (see Town of Mount Royal), or build barriers to prevent motorists from using a much-needed by-pass (see Town of Montreal West), or exist solely to benefit international oil conglomerates which have abandoned much of the eastern tip of the island to ecological ruin (see the Ville de Montréal-Est), the City of Montréal finds itself having to deal with independent communities who all too often behave like spoiled children, completely lacking in vision and inherently contrarian in disposition. Although I would love to one day be mayor, I can only imagine the difficulties this situation creates. Clearly the best situation would be for a single metropolitan government with a borough and ward system for municipal government, with a large congress of representatives to ensure appropriate representation of the massive new city.

If the entire metro region you see above was a single city, we could review zoning and taxation across the entire region, establish a more egalitarian and proportional taxation system based on new data and subsequently establish new zoning ordinances to re-position certain economic and industrial activity to more advantageous locations while simultaneously increasing urban residential densification and renewal. Collecting taxes from a unified population of four million would allow us to independently lead on capital investment for new infrastructure projects, no more waiting around to secure federal or provincial input. Moreover, we’d be able to expand and increase public transit services, possibly even leading to the development of high-speed rail within the metropolitan region before expanding outwards to other cities. Montréal is the number one tourist destination for Manhattanites – so where’s the bullet train to serve and stimulate that sector of the tourism market? Investing today may secure it for tomorrow.

On a final note, consider as well that a metro city such as the one I’m proposing would be well-positioned to take on additional responsibilities, such as education, healthcare and welfare services. Devolving some of these concerns to a new metro city would allow greater day-to-day operational efficiency, not to mention guarantee a new higher standard of public education and full bilingualism of the population. A single metropolitan school board would have the resources to secure higher rates of pay, better facilities and provide additional after-school and specialist services than any of the current independent boards. Do our children not all deserve the same education, or are we willing to allow inequities to persist based on mother tongue and where one lives? How does that benefit society? This is but one example of how a larger city could have the economic and political force necessary to tackle some very complicated socio-economic problems. We need the same kind of thinking applied to health and social services as well – we need to run our own systems, adapted to our needs, united for our own strength, and no longer subjected to long-distance governing. We need operational sovereignty on a localized, metropolitan level – this is the only way to properly move forward and establish ourselves as a global alpha city.

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Ten Attractions and Services we Bafflingly do not have in Montréal { part deux }

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Parts of the logo: podium, running track, the letter M, the three 'peaks' of Mount Royal and the Olympic Rings

So this article has been getting a neat little bit of buzz. If you’d like to see part 1, just click here.

Please leave me any suggestions, comments, questions or critiques. Let me know if you think these are ridiculous or just what we need. If I have any luck I might just one day get myself on city council, and I would like to speak on behalf of the people somewhat authoritatively. Let me know what you think.

So now, the second part of our two-part series on what we’re lacking. Remember, these aren’t in any order of priority.

6. A bilingual university – according to a new study authored by Jack Jedwab of the Montréal-based Association for Canadian Studies, after years of work and billions of tax-dollars spent, only about 7% of Canadians outside of Québec can carry a conversation in French, leading some to question as to whether we are truly a bilingual nation, and why official bilingualism hasn’t caught on across Canada. Oddly enough, the French requirement outside of Québec has led countless Québecois to leave their home province to make use of French elsewhere, and that has doubtless stimulated a greater sense of the uniqueness of the Canadian identity for those individuals. It is also one of the reasons why an estimated 30,000 young Canadians have flocked to Montréal over the last five years to study here – they know learning French is highly advantageous in an increasingly globalized world.

But we need to go further. Montréal has a growing student population and our universities and CEGEPs are over-crowded. New buildings are going up piecemeal, but an entirely new university may soon be required to relieve pressure on other schools. Given the linguistic balance of universities in Montréal (not to mention the fact that there are plenty of English students at French schools and vice-versa, and the fact that, I believe, all Montréal universities accept student’s work in either official language), it only makes sense that we now create a fully, operationally bilingual university. Ideally, this school will require or otherwise encourage students to learn and submit assignments and research in both languages, to work in both languages and to graduate with the ability to effortlessly switch between languages and write in either at a superior level. Moreover, I would want this university to be actively engaged in supporting and promoting official bilingualism throughout Canada, study the process, and conduct research pertaining to the linguistics of multilingualism, its role and function in society. The information and data such an institution could provide would be invaluable, not to mention the practicality of a city such as ours having a recognized bilingual university will only work to further our global orientation and secure international recognition. Can we really afford not having one? Future attempts to secure additional UN branches and other international governing bodies may depend on it.

7. An aviation museum – so Montréal is effectively the world capital of aviation, and I bet you didn’t even know that eh? In fact, the two largest international bodies governing civil aviation are based right here, a stone’s throw from one another. ICAO (on University) is the official UN body governing civil aviation, while IATA (located at the Tour de la Bourse), represents the interests of of the civil aviation industry. In addition, we have two international airports as part of a three-airport system for the city (which is a lot given our population, though appropriate for the region as a whole), have an established local aviation industry (including Bombardier, the world’s third-largest aircraft manufacturer, Bell Helicopter and Pratt & Whitney), the headquarters for the Canadian Space Agency and the satellite-manufacturing component of MacDonald-Dettwiller.

Despite all this, we don’t have an aviation museum to display the many types of aircraft designed, built and tested here. Why not? We have room at three airports for just such a facility, and all the tourists we need to make such an endeavour financially viable. I mean, if smaller markets can support these kinds of facilities, certainly we can. Finally, I’m keen to join museums and interpretive centres with established academic institutions. There’s a plan that’s been on the books stretching back nearly thirty years to build a joint aerospace institute and specialty college, which was originally supposed to be administered jointly by McGill and Université de Montréal. The project was intended to be located at Trudeau Airport as part of the transfer of operations to Mirabel. An aviation museum as part of a larger aerospace college, two potentially lucrative operations capable of reaching a global academic audience inasmuch as a the local tourism market. A place for us to showcase our achievements in a vitally important national industry while simultaneously providing a facility to study our innovations in aviation. It’s ok for us to take pride in what we do best, so why don’t we do better for our key high-technology industries?

8. A monument to humanity – I was initially thinking of a monument to world peace, but I can imagine we’d do better to try and bring many concepts together at once. I’ve always thought a monumental, towering version of the Expo Logo, with the two intertwined runic symbols for man, would be a nice touch. Consider that we once had (and in name only still do have) a Place des Nations, at the Western edge of Ile-Ste-Helene (as you can see in the photo), yet it has largely been abandoned, suffering from lack of easy access (though back then it was a key transit point, connected to the Expo Express LRT). I would love to see Place des Nations brought back to its former glory, but I still feel we need a grand monument to the human endeavour, ideally located in an area close to major tourist sites, with the aim of stimulating urban-renewal through a large city beautification project.

I think the area bounded by St-Urbain, Sanguinet, Viger and St-Antoine (one of the last exposed sections of the Ville-Marie Expressway, adjacent to the Champs de Mars) must be covered over, and a large plaza and park installed here would serve to connect Old Montr̩al, the International Quarter, Chinatown and the Latin Quarter. Moreover, such a development would make the surface parking lots along the Northern edge of Viger prime locations for high-density residential and commercial real-estate towers. The location is symbolic, central and currently an eyesore, not to mention, much like the fortifications that once stood at the Champs de Mars, an unnatural and unnecessary barrier. And we of all cities must have a monument to humanity, cosmopolitanism, world peace, to human rights and civil liberties Рthese are our values, let us celebrate them and stimulate new growth simultaneously.

9. Linear parks (or more precisely, a revision of the 1909 PQAA linear parkways plan) – I found this gem of an idea in a CCA publication called Montreal Metropolis, and I’ll see what I can do about getting a detailed scan put up soon. The Province of Québec Architect’s Association (PQAA) drafted a plan in 1909 to link several major urban parks through a network of parkways – roads lined with trees with segregated lanes for pedestrian and vehicle traffic, along with a centre-line tramway with the idea being that if there was no traffic, the space would be in essence a long linear park.

The PQAA plan envisioned an outer ring running down from Mount Royal along Atwater to a riverside park planned to line the St. Lawrence near the Victoria Bridge. Another branch would extend East to Parc Lafontaine from Fletcher’s Field, then back along Sherbrooke or Ontario until descending towards the Champ de Mars, Place d’Armes and Square-Victoria. Consider this: what if the outer edge of the urban core (effectively, the line that separates the CBD from the first-ring suburbs) was a parkway which would eventually lead you right back to the same spot, and from every point along the edge of this ring road, you were essentially always the same distance from the centre of the city? Moreover, this same parkway could bring you to just about every major park and urban square or plaza in the city. Quite an accomplishment if you ask me, and its a pity this plan was at best only partially implemented (indeed, it really never got much farther than the city planting a lot of Elm trees closely spaced on some of our major thoroughfares, like Parc Avenue and Sherbrooke Street).

The poet Irving Layton once described Parc Avenue in the summer as though he were walking through an arboreal cathedral, the enmeshed branches above forming a kind of floral vaulted ceiling. All this came to an unfortunate end throughout the 50s and 60s, when many old trees were cut down as part of various urban renewal schemes. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the Dutch Elm disease passed through our region between 1978 and 1987, killing many of the city’s oldest trees and much of what remained from the abridged 1909 plan. We could easily put a modernized version of this plan back into action, and the sooner the better. Oh, and on a final thought – why not cover the Decarie Trench from the Turcot Interchange to the Decarie Circle with a massive linear park? It’s an eyesore and it unnaturally divides the city. It could be a point of unity, integrating diverse parts of NDG, Cote-des-Neiges, TMR, Cote-St-Luc and further minimize the carbon footprint of the heavy traffic in the trench (consider that industrial pollutant ‘scrubbers’ could be attached to the ventilation systems needed for an enclosed Decarie Tunnel, potentially minimizing the negative effects of car pollution on a heavily used expressway). And if that’s not reason enough, imagine the entire stretch of exposed trench covered over by an immense park, something akin to the Champs Elysées? The land value of every lot lining the surface road would immediately skyrocket, massive new development projects would transform the area completely. Just imagine the possibilities – long-term redevelopment investment could keep our construction industry completely employed for more than a decade working on the project.

10. A hockey museum & research centre – also a no-brainer. The fact that the Hockey Hall of Fame is located in an old Bank of Montreal building in Toronto is absurd if not a cruel joke. We are the city that built hockey into a modern, internationally recognized and commercially profitable sporting and entertainment industry.

We don’t just have the team with the most Stanley Cups, it’s that the first Stanley Cup was awarded here. It’s that the first modern game with modern rules, officials etc was played here. It’s that the NHL was founded here, that the dimensions of a standard hockey rink are defined by a parking garage on Stanley. We deserve a museum to showcase our hockey history, and given the allure of the sport and it’s international implications, we should probably start studying it too. Thus, we need more than just a museum, we need a place where hockey can be dissected by academics and studied by experts, to develop a fuller understanding of the game and promote its position in our society, as a defining and unifying element of our diverse culture. And if we can put such a facility in a heritage building, close to the downtown action, and potentially secure new investment in an uneven part oft he city, then certainly we’d be fools not to go through with it, right? Well it just so happens the Old Victoria Rink is still standing and conveniently located next to both an empty lot and a massive hotel, but a stone’s throw from the Bell Centre. If there is any concern as to whether the funding can be secured for such a project, I can only counter with a question – has hockey grown in popularity amongst Montrealers over the course of the last thirty years? I’ll save you the time of googling the answer – it’s yes, assuredly. Despite the fact that we haven’t won a cup in eighteen years and only two in the last thirty, hockey is as popular as ever, in Montreal, Quebec and in Canada. So let’s get serious about the game we turned into a phenomenon, let’s celebrate our history, and for god’s sake, let’s find a better use for an old landmark than merely parking cars.

We can do better.