Tag Archives: Concordia University

A modest proposal, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

What to do with Le Faubourg?

4 Comments
Le Faubourg as I prefer to remember it...
Le Faubourg as I prefer to remember it…

Once upon a time Le Faubourg Ste-Catherine was quite the place to be.

I remember when I first started coming downtown as a teenager (around the turn of the century) Le Faubourg seemed quintessentially Montreal – a large and often bustling urban market with a cosmopolitan food court integrated seamlessly into the urban fabric. It wasn’t a shopping mall even if it had a similar overall aesthetic on the inside, it certainly didn’t feel like a shopping mall from the outside. I appreciated it for integrating so many different functions into a single building, for the masses of people that always seemed to be in there, for how authentic it felt. A few years later when I commenced my studies at Concordia, the Faubourg was still a great place to grab lunch or to study between classes. In my youth, I considered the Faubourg a kind of ‘insider’s knowledge’; with so much of the urban core seemingly oriented towards tourists or suburbanites, the Faubourg seemed almost hidden in plain sight. For an individual who was looking for traces of sustainable urban lifestyles in what otherwise appeared to be little more than a rental ghetto, the Faubourg was a comforting reality – it meant real people still lived in a city I was told had been largely depopulated.

For additional context, see Kris Gravenor’s three-part piece about Montreal in the 1990s.

And check out this boss collection of photos of Montreal in the 1990s.

Anyways, prior to becoming an urban market in 1986, the Faubourg had been abandoned for several years after it ceased being one of the city’s first major downtown car dealerships (the Autorow – where fine McLaughlin Buick’s could be purchased circa. 1927). For a while in the 1970s, there was a plan to redevelop the Grey Nuns’ motherhouse (and quite possible the Faubourg as well though I’m not 100% sure) into a massive shopping and office complex similar to Westmount Square or Complexe Desjardins, a plan which was ultimately fought off by crusading architectural preservationist Phyllis Lambert. The conversion of the former car dealership into an urban market was a major undertaking as it involved both digging below the existing structure as well as building on top of it, in addition to completely remodelling the interior. The new Faubourg Ste-Catherine would be joined to a hotel (an Econolodge if memory serves) built at the southwest corner of Guy and Ste-Catherine Street (today it’s Concordia University’s Faubourg Tower Building), and featured a multiscreen cinema in the basement, in addition to a rooftop bar. Interesting note: the site of the Faubourg Building was once the location of Hector ‘Toe’ Blake’s Tavern, which would have closed in 1983. Also, the multiplex theatre in the basement closed and was converted into lecture halls (no shit!) in 2001, four years after Concordia bought the building to house the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

Neat, isn’t it!?

Back to the Faubourg’s mid-1980s renaissance. Conversions of this nature were fairly common in Montreal in the late-1980s through to the 1990s; other prominent examples of this kind of ‘integrationist’ approach to rehabilitating the urban environment would include the construction of the World Trade Centre and Intercontinental Hotel in the Quartier Internationale, the Alcan headquarters, Promenades de la Cathedrale and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, though the widespread rehabilitation of traditional Montreal triplexes and former industrial space throughout the city during this time is the single overall best example of the phenomenon. After a thirty year period (from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s) of demolition and new construction, Montreal changed course and began trying to do more with what it already had.

The Faubourg’s success (I would argue it had a really good twenty year run before things started going south) is doubtless due to some excellent timing from the outset and the coinciding ascendancy of a massive urban student and institutional ‘ghetto’ (as the area is self-deprecatingly referred to by locals) all around it. Two years after the Faubourg opened it’s doors, flooding Ste-Catherine Street with the smell of fresh bagels, Dawson College consolidated its operations under one roof – that of the former Congrégation Notre-Dame motherhouse adjoining Atwater Métro. At around the same time, the LaSalle College building (which is today co-located with the Chinese Consulate of Montreal) would go up west of Fort, two blocks away from the Faubourg. Within the span of a few years, the western part of downtown Montreal would be completely transformed by a massive influx of academics, professionals and students, both foreign and local. Three years after the Faubourg opened the CCA would open its doors just a block away, and three years after that Concordia completed it’s Library Building. Throughout the 1990s the Shaughnessy Village transformed itself into a sought after urban neighbourhood, while apartment towers and antique apartment blocks further north quickly became de facto student housing. For about twenty years it was all working quite well.

If I recall correctly, around the middle of the last decade the Faubourg was modified with awkwardly-designed rooftop ‘loft’ office space, an entrance was closed off and new storefronts were built opening directly onto Ste-Catherine Street. The interior was left in shambles and the market quickly fell to pieces. It didn’t help that rents were raised to stratospheric levels: $360,000 for 15 months for an operation not much larger than a kitchen and counter up in the food court. The redesign was ill-conceived, in my opinion, and was rather blatantly intended to make a quick buck on the new space it could lease at standard Ste-Catherine Street rates. What it did was add a few ‘brand-name’ retailers on a street already encumbered by so much of the same, and as such the Faubourg lost its ‘indy’ cachet (not to mention the total massacre job on the interior, and the installation of two chain cafés (a Starbucks and a Second Cup) which took a lot of the students out of the food court). The last time I passed by, the inside was a ghost town and a couple storefronts were branded, unfortunately appropriately for this city, À Louer.

I wonder if this move wasn’t done in anticipation of Concordia buying the building to turn it into some kind of a student centre? I remember when I was a member of the Concordia Student Union back in 2005-2006 there was a lot of talk about this proposal, as a member of the Board of Governors ran the company which owned the Faubourg at the time. The school was insistent that the new Faubourg would have commercial rental properties facing Ste-Catherine and that the students would get the rest of the space, though the students wanted the entire space and didn’t want storefronts as part of the deal. It all eventually fell through, but the damage was done.

As it stands today none of it seems to work at all.

And here’s where I see an opportunity.

I think the Faubourg should revert back to being an urban market, but not as it once was. Rather, I think the city should purchase it and redevelop it was a public market, much in the same style as the Atwater or Jean-Talon markets.

And here’s why it’s in the city’s interest to do so: thousands upon thousands of new residents will soon be pouring into the new condo towers going up but a few blocks east of the Faubourg and they need an ‘urban market’ to go along with their ‘urban lifestyles’. I can’t imagine how a public market at the Faubourg could possibly lose money.

What’s killing the Faubourg now is excessively high rents and an illogical renovation which has left the building careening headlong into abandon. If the city buys the building outright for the express purpose of converting into a market, it can reset rental rates to more appropriate levels, encouraging sustainable business development.

But the city can’t go it alone and would need some kind of a ‘strategic partner’. Concordia is the logical choice given it’s ownership of the Faubourg Building and the Grey Nun’s Motherhouse immediately to the south, which is itself currently being transformed into student housing.

Hundreds of hungry students living next to a market…

I think this might work.

A ‘public-public’ partnership between the city and the university could facilitate extending the RÉSO underground city network from the Molson building across Saint Catherine’s Street to the Faubourg, and then onto the Grey Nun’s student residence, linking all the major buildings of the university’s downtown campus (not to mention the Métro’s Green Line) directly with the market.

Think of the possibilities!

Further, there’s still the issue of the office space on the upper levels of the market, and I’m sure Concordia could find a use for them.

Again, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t quickly pay for itself.

The Shaughnessy Village/Concordia Ghetto is, if you can believe it, the single most highest density neighbourhood in Québec, with an estimated 13,000 residents in an area of less than a square kilometre, and the Faubourg lies close to its centre. By 2015 they will be joined by thousands more who will occupy the new towers of our future skyline – L’Avenue, Icone, YUL, Le Drummond, Tour des Canadiens de Montréal, Le Rocabella etc.

A public market at the Faubourg could do for Ville-Marie’s western residential sector what the Atwater Market did for the Sud-Ouest borough.

Anyways, food for thought. Pun intended…

A modest proposal, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Urban Redevelopment

Plus que ça change…

Leave a comment
His Majesty's Theatre, ca. 1910
His Majesty’s Theatre, ca. 1910

A loyal reader posted this photograph in response to a question about where one can find archival street scenes of Montreal. The McCord Museum has the famed Notman collection, which provides an incredibly fascinating glimpse into the lives of Montrealers, and what their city looked like, around the turn the 20th century.

Notman was king instagrammer of his time, in a certain way of thinking.

The photo above is of His Majesty’s Theatre, once the city’s premier theatre and host to some of the city’s first major opera companies and regular performances of chamber music. It had a capacity for 1750 people and two balconies, and over time would host a wide variety of performers, including Sergei Rachmaninoff and Paul Robeson.

Now can you guess where this important landmark once stood?

Here:

Screen Shot 2014-01-01 at 9.03.34 PM

Just up from Saint Catherine’s on the east side of Guy. I don’t know whether this was done on purpose, though I have a feeling it was, but you’ll notice that the facade of Concordia’s EV building seems to mimic the facade of the former theatre. His Majesty’s Theatre was demolished in 1963, around the same time pretty much everything else up Guy was ripped up as Boul. de Maisonneuve was created on top of the new Métro line.

In any event I thought it was at the very least a neat coincidence.

But what really struck me about the photo on top was the trees.

Big badass oaks and elms and maples growing taller than most triplexes, and enough of them to make it seem as though some roads disappear off into the woods.

Many Notman photos have this arboreal quality about them. Streets as diverse as Saint Denis, Sherbrooke, Saint Catherine’s, the former Dorchester (now René-Lévesque) boulevards etc. were once all lined with mature, impressive trees. Parc Avenue was apparently so well forested the great limbs intertwined over the street to provide a kind of canopy that could protect you from even the most torrential of downpours.

I look out my back window onto the alley, a typical Saint Henri alleyway, with trees climbing ever skyward, dwarfing the brownstones below them. In winter I can see to the end of the block. In summer I can’t see further than the end of my building, for everything else is masked in green.

Today there are parts of the city where great trees will likely never grow again, for large buildings stacked too close together block out necessary sunlight. Even on a street as wide as McGill College, the trees planted twenty years ago are all sickly looking; many have been removed outright.

I think we’d be wise to take a long look at these old photos and ask ourselves whether we could afford to be a little greener. Not just for aesthetics, there are practical reasons to want to do this, chief among them to increase the quality of the air we breathe and to provide a bulwark against seasonal flooding. Each tree, each patch of green acting like a sponge and a vent at the same time.

Perhaps our city needs to be reforested…

Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Stories, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Sovereign Socialist featured article

North of Sanity: Dr. Bernans’ Kafka-esque Concordia Encounters

Leave a comment
This picture was named 'Concordia Monsters' by the source. This is not my opinion.

This article was originally published by the Forget the Box news collective.

Dr. David Bernans is an unassuming man with more than a decade’s worth of involvement in student activism and student politics in general. A few years back he wrote a book, North of 9/11, a piece of historical fiction recounting some of his personal experiences dealing with Concordia University security practices in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and all the irrationality, absurdity and insanity that has manifested itself in countless ways over the past decade.

The rallying cry of “9/11 Changed Everything”, typical of the Tea Party penchant for minimalist deepities (thanks to Daniel Dennett for nailing that idea) is unfortunately not so merely a befuddled expression, but also a kind of sick state-of-mind. Perennial fear, and every John Q middle-manager and white-collar schlock finding a newfound purpose in life by making security and anti-terrorism their personal affair. Perhaps we were spared the brunt of the 9/11 tidal wave, but at the very least on campuses here at home and across the nation, a new mood was established, and Concordia would become a Made-in-Canada example-sans-pareil of the new corporate university’s response to student politics and activism in the post-9/11 world. I can imagine another expression, “the gloves are coming off” repeated with renewed vigour in university boardrooms. One of the pillars of our liberal democracy, a ‘free’ and public post-secondary education, renown as bastions of free thought and expression, would become a new ground-zero for illegal, unethical and ultimately state-sponsored political terrorism and suppression. The new corporate university, at arm’s length of the titans of industry, finance and government, would do its part in stamping out internal dissent and anyone, though students in particular, who threatened the corporate image of the institution. All of a sudden Mr. Bernans found himself persona non-grata in the institution he worked so hard to improve. There’s nothing like altruism and the open-support of potentially unpopular causes to get the attention of corporate PR hacks and university lawyers.

I had the chance to speak with the now Dr. Bernans at the book-launch of the new electronic (e-book) version of North of 9/11, originally published in 2006. The reading to a small group was held at Concordia’s cooperative bookstore, an initiative of progressive students that goes back quite a ways. Though I’ve now graduated from the institution, I can remember the Co-op, as its commonly known, was typically the host of anti-frosh activities designed to get the focus back on learning and away from mind-crushing alcohol-fueled hangovers. So I was surprised to see Dr. Bernans’ book reading was part of the regular Concordia Student Union frosh-week roster. Inside, I met up with the new CSU President Lex Gill and then put two-and-two together. I had forgotten about the progressive victory on campus from earlier this year, when the students finally de-throned the university-approved political dynasty they had created in the wake of the Netanyahu Riots of 2002. Thus, the reading made a lot more sense, though its venue – the Co-op – is apparently still considered to be ‘outside’ Concordia territory, and this in turn is a residual effect of the university’s attempt to ‘accommodate student activists’ in the same way ‘free-speech cages’ accommodated dissenters at any political gathering in the United States over the last decade.

North of 9/11 was to be read publically for the first time in 2006. The book does not portray Concordia University in a positive light – and for good reason. The Netanyahu Riot was entirely preventable, and instead of making an example of it to act as a catalyst for better relations and a renewed effort at political dialogue on campus, it was instead ‘utilized’ by the university administration as a casus belli to instigate an unwinnable low-intensity conflict against student activists. Bernans was spied on by goons hired by university administrator Michael di Grappa, and elements of the administration conspired to buy themselves an election and a means to direct control of student activities through the CSU. I would know, I saw it happen in the Spring of 2005, 2006 etc. As Bernans puts it, the administration found ‘ass-kissing CV-padders’ to become the new face of the student body, and then systematically went after every potential threat.

The book documents the expulsions and suspensions of students for illegitimate reasons, the overt corruption of university administrators and security personnel, and the actions of secret committees with odd-sounding names. It’s the story of deep personal bonds forged during these exceptionally hard times, and the fundamental insecurity of the modern corporate university, which seems to be thoroughly incapable of dealing with a politically active student body. Maybe things are going to change this year with the ‘left’ side of Concordia student politics back in the saddle, holding the reigns of power, or whatever power’s left. We’ll have to wait and see about that one.

In the meantime I’d highly recommend checking out the book if you’re not familiar with Concordia history post-9/11. It’s a fascinating subject, and Dr. Bernans has been able to weave a good story together with scenes inspired by his own experiences, into a solid representation of that troublesome time. Unfortunately, as Dr. Bernans was quick to point out, in many ways the student body of today is still dealing with the shadow of 9/11 and the Netanyahu Riots, the implications of which have manifested themselves with heightened campus (in)security, interference in student governance and an aggressive administration. The victory for campus progressives and activists a few months ago was a major upset, but this doubtless means the university administration will take an overtly hostile tone with the students.

Why does it always feel like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back?

Montréal Stories, Political commentary

It’s shit like this Concordia…

Leave a comment

Happy New Years etc – in case you haven’t heard, birds are dropping from the sky in the Bible Belt. I’m calling it now, God’s pissed and Moses is coming back. I guess this means Assange will lead North America’s progressives into Zion to escape the bondage of the evil GOP/Fox News consortia?

Ha! Boy it’s impossible not to sound like a complete lunatic these days isn’t it?

Found this gem at Con-U a while back:

New sign with braille – check!

Bilingualism – check (kinda).

Dropping the letter ‘g’ to make your institution of higher learning seem more ‘urban’ while simultaneously doing the complete opposite of what our language laws stipulate vis-a-vis the size and visibility of the French language – priceless, mind-blowingly priceless.

Oh, and our President either just got fired or quit. Can’t remember which it is, and what does it matter, either way she’s still going to make $700,000.

Over the break this was a topic I wanted to discuss with my elder relations, hoping to score some inkling as to whether they saw this as emblematic of a larger problem. They said no, and kept repeating how her severance would’ve been determined years ago, before she got the job.

‘I could give a shit’, was my uncouth response. The problem is that people are getting paid ostentatious sums whether they complete their job or not.  Whether Woodsworth was fired or not doesn’t actually matter. Con-U has dumped two presidents in the last three years, with many other VPs leaving for various unspecified reasons. All of them were offered corporate-style severance packages. None of these people deserved the money they received. In the real world, poor people must complete the job in order to be paid for it. If they’re fired, they get to sign-up for Employment Insurance. Woodsworth gets to go to Tremblant.

If the Boomers ever wonder why the youth of today has zero faith in them or the establishment they represent, here’s why.

At night, I curse the Fire God I pray to for gifting my generation with such an insurmountable mess to clean up.

Political commentary

Judith Woodsworth pulls a Sarah Palin @ CON-U

Leave a comment

For the second time in three years, Concordia University is sans president. Another one bites the dust, and much like other presidents and VPs from the past few years, she will receive a major severance package to quit. The Gazette’s Peggy Curran indicates that it seems as though Ms. Woodsworth was under rather intense scrutiny from within, and was in essence pushed out.

Hmmm, $700,000 to quit your job? Is there any wonder why the youth of today have so little in common with The Man, and so little respect for those who run our institutions? The Man thinks it deserves to be rewarded for not completing their job. Just like how Palin quit being Governor of Alaska to eventually have her own reality TV show. Think about what stories like this actually say: don’t worry if you can’t do your job properly, you can always quit and make double what you would have normally earned. Talk about abusing the trust and faith of the people; this kind of thing only happens at the top. Down at the bottom, whether in a factory or in class, failure costs you. Why do we constantly reward the failures of our elites with big-time payouts?

Of course, being from the corporate side of modern academia, who could blame her for graciously accepting the pay-off and jumping ship? I mean, she needs to be free to move up the corporate ladder no?

Just in case anyone was wondering, her $700,000 Christmas gift could have paid the equivalent of 20 scholarships for full time study. I guess we can be thankful that, unlike in the USA, Ms. Woodsworth will be heavily taxed for her ‘earnings’.