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Montréal’s Lost Attractions – Keep this in mind for the 375th!

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Our city has been built on birthday presents.

For Canada’s Centennial Anniversary we got a Métro system and 50 million tourists in six months, not to mention world attention and twenty+ years of urban renewal and densification projects. For the 350th anniversary of the founding of Ville-Marie, we got skyscrapers, new parks and a thoroughly rejuvenated harbour front. In less than six years we will celebrate not only the 375th anniversary of our city’s founding, but the nation’s sesquicentennial and the fiftieth anniversary of Expo as well. What a party! As you may well imagine, the City is looking for suggestions with regards to themes and ideas for the celebration. I can’t think of anything specific and all-encompassing yet (no kidding!), so I thought it might be an idea to explore some of our lost attractions to see if we can’t think of something worth saving now to be operational by 2017.

I’ve listed some examples in no particular order, ask yourself whether we’re better off without them.

1. The Montréal Aquarium – so we once had an aquarium located on Ile-Ste-Helene, a gift from Alcan to the City of Montréal for Expo 67. Today, part of the pavilion remains as part of La Ronde, though every time I pass by it seems painfully under-used. Opened in 1966, the aquarium featured local species of marine life in addition to penguins and a group of dolphins. The dolphins were trained and were featured in many live presentations, and could even access Lac des Dauphins (now best known as the launch site for the fireworks each Summer) through a specially built tunnel. The aquarium shut down for good in 1991 after a decade’s worth of bad publicity as a result of a labour strike which resulted in the deaths of some of the dolphins. When it was opened to the public in the mid-1960s it was a state of the art facility comparable to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

2. The Montreal Funicular – if you ever take the 80 going up Parc Avenue in the Winter take a look at the mountain between Pine and Rachel, you may notice an odd dark line working it’s way up the side. At first glance it may appear to be little more than a rockslide, but make no mistake, this is actually all that remains of the Mount Royal funicular railway, which over a hundred years ago provided the path of least resistance to the top of Mount Royal. A the top was a rickety wooden platform offering a tree-top perspective on the bustling metropolis below. It didn’t last too long, going up against Frederick Law Olmstead’s protestations in 1884 and deemed structurally unsound by 1920 when it was dismantled. While I’m not in favour of cutting up the side of the Mountain to build a new funicular, I wouldn’t mind seeing a return of the No. 11 tram line to speed people to the top of Mount Royal.

3. Le Pélican – this is a full-size replica of Le Pélican, a ship commanded by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, born in Ville-Marie in 1661. The Pélican was abandoned after being holed below the waterline during the Battle of the Hudson’s Bay during the War of the Grand Alliance in 1697 after successfully repelling an attack by a superior English naval force. In 1987 construction commenced in La Malbaie on a full-size replica of this famous ship, which was brought to Montréal and moored here as part of our 350th anniversary. I remember visiting the ship with my brother and parents back in `92 or `93, though it wouldn’t be long before the project failed and the replica was sold to some American theme park. It has since been severely damaged and isn’t being used. One of the big problems for the project was their inability to secure authentic artifacts (or even replicas) for the interior of the ship, and thus had little to offer guests in the ways of demonstrating what life would have been like on a 17th century French warship. I wonder if such a project could succeed today. Isn’t it odd that a seafaring city such as ours doesn’t have a maritime museum?

4. Eaton’s Ninth Floor – when I was a young lad my mother worked in the city, and I thought this to be terribly grand, worth every minute of the commute. Up high amongst the skyscrapers, in with the hustle and bustle, in beautifully designed testaments to human ingenuity and innovation. She told me of eating here, that is was very popular amongst the white-collar crowd. A restaurant designed to look like an ocean liner (which of course translated in my young mind as being fisherman-themed and offering a uniquely all-seafood menu), it would be much later before I saw this gem of Art Deco interior design. The space still exists, though it has been mothballed pending renovation work that never seems to get off the ground. It’s apparently beginning to show signs of decomposition, and has been on Héritage Montréal’s watchlist for some time. It makes me wonder why the city doesn’t step-in and try to successfully operate a full-service, for-profit restaurant. People ate there as long as it was open (more than sixty years) simply because the food was delicious and reasonably-priced, and the setting was jaw-droppingly beautiful. Today office workers munch on Tim Horton’s while looking at their computer screens. C’mon…

5. Corrid’art – a simple project that transformed Sherbrooke Street from Pie-IX to Atwater into a nine-kilometer long outdoor art gallery, featuring the works of some sixty major local artists. It was supposed to be the principle cultural component of the XXI Olympiad, but the entire project was scrapped (literally) at the last minute by Mayor Drapeau, who considered it obscene and ugly. It was up for about two days, and was designed to feature some 700 performances spread out along the route. Moreover, this project had an urban-planning component, wherein it’s design allowed a aesthetic link to be made between the Olympic Park and the Downtown for tourists unfamiliar with the city. Why isn’t this done every year during the temperate months for precisely the same reasons (to showcase local artists and ‘connect’ the Olympic Park with the city?)

6. The Last Vaudeville/Atmospheric Theatres (including The Rialto, The Empress, the Loew’s Palace and Imperial Theatres). Of these four once great theatres only the Rialto and Imperial remain somewhat operational, though neither offer the regularly scheduled programming of multi-purpose theatre spaces you may find elsewhere. The Empress is a perpetual ‘what-if’ and the Palace is now a high-end gym. For a city constantly kvetching about lack of venue space, I wonder again why our city refrains from purchasing these local landmarks to be used as for-profit venues with regularly scheduled programming largely featuring local talent? Imagine if the City took it a step further, using revenue collected from ticket and concession sales, rentals and affiliated businesses to finance the renovations of other theatres? The point is that declaring some building a heritage site is a largely worthless gesture unless you plan on using it for its intended purpose. Either way, if other city’s can save their antique theatres, so can we.

We might not be able to fully articulate why we need these kinds of attractions except to say that it’s ultimately good for business and good for tourism. For me it’s an issue of following through on investments and never abandoning a project that involved or involves tax-payer money.

We’re a unique city in that we can depend on a steady stream of tourists each year, but from time to time we need to ‘spend money to make money later’ – key sectors of the economy need to be stimulated occasionally by city-led redevelopment projects, and these projects have in the past led to some of our greatest achievements. Now might not be the best time to plan an Expo or another Olympics, but you should know we’re better equipped to handle events of that size today than we were when we had them initially. We have better infrastructure, two international airports, an excellent mass-transit system and more convention and hotel space than we know what to do with – this is ours to use to turn a profit for our city, for ourselves. And while we still need to plan large international events to stimulate development on a large scale, there are still plenty of things we can do on a much smaller scale to increase tourism and tourist revenue. And what better place to look for inspiration than our own history books?

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The White Horse of Fort Senneville

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Is it me or are we lacking in ghost stories in this city?

Every year Halloween comes around and I get asked if I know any decent local ghost stories. Each year I come up short. It’s a problem for me, because in my opinion it’s a demonstration of a slightly larger, more complex problem – lack of local folklore. What we know about our city is very often defined in terms of what can be demonstrated – we speak of our city in scientific terms, in measurements, in percentages. When we discuss culture, we often tend towards using scientific terminology to discuss our society. There is a reason for this, or perhaps there once was, when it was necessary to demonstrate our local society as a measurement against a larger, more imposing cultural mass. But I firmly believe those days to be of another era, and that we have the cultural and societal strength and confidence to begin loosening our previous approach. What I find odd is how little is written on points of common cultural experience, of shared history and discourse between the two majority-minority groups that so define our peculiar nation of nations.

Folklore is cultural currency. A strong local appreciation of a city’s folklore, it’s common history, will provide the local arts community with a strong foundation of reference material. Look back at the works of some of our great artists, past and present, many have demonstrated in their seminal works a profound attachment to local culture and society through an understanding of our folklore.

Folklore is extremely important. Its typically packaged as morality tale wrapped in pertinent historical and cultural information, designed to convey an idea about why we live where we do, and why our society is how it is. Montréal, as a result of its history and linguistic divisions, has so far largely turned its back on developing the common folklore. Perhaps this is as a result of the Quiet Revolution, which aimed to turn away completely from the Grand Noirceur and the perceived backwardness of our provincial, agrarian past. But if there is a legitimate interest on the part of Québecois nationalists, sovereignists and/or cultural enthusiasts to protect the local French dialect and the cultural heritage of the people of Québec, what would be better than developing a local folklore, in which the stories are designed to be as relatable to the Montréal experience as possible regardless of which language they’re expressed in. For this, we need to take a good long look at who we were as a city, as a people, hundreds of years ago.

Montréal’s colonial era history has always fascinated me, though partially as a result of it being so overshadowed by American and Spanish colonial era history. We were intimately involved in the early history of the United States, Great Britain and the halcyon days of the Bourbon monarchy in France, and yet we retreat from the realities of the colonial experience.

When I was younger I heard stories of frontier folklore with an American colonial bent, whether in literature or through television and movies. It made me wonder what life was like back then, only here. Who were the ghosts of our past, and what perspective on the human experience could be gleaned through such stories. In my search I came across one story that’s always stuck with me. It’s the story of the ghost of a white horse, said to run down Gouin Boulevard in Ste-Genevieve. There are rapids in the Back River by Riverdale High School, by the park at the top of Boul. des Sources, and they are named after this galloping spectre.

As best I know it, the story goes like this. There are the remnants of a fort built by the French colonial administration in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, once called Fort Senneville. The fort has been destroyed twice, once by the Iroquois (in 1691) and then by Benedict Arnold in 1776 (though at the time it wasn’t in use by any party, and Arnold destroyed it so it could not be used by the advancing British regulars, Canadien militia and Iroquois warriors making their way up from Les Cédres). It was built to defend the vital trading post and community at Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, not to mention the king’s road which linked Ste-Anne’s with Ste-Genevieve to the North and Pointe-Claire, Lachine and Ville-Marie to the East. It was during this first attack on the fort in 1691 that a dispatcher was sent out along the King’s Road to Ste-Genevieve, to warn of the possibility of attack. Riding a white horse he sped off down the trail, only to be killed by the attacking Iroquois. The horse carried on, terrified from violence and the deafening blasts of muskets, galloping down the well-trod trail until it eventually came upon the sleeping village of Ste-Genevieve. As one might imagine, a terrified horse would make enough noise to wake up the residents, and they were able to piece together what had happened what with the mangled corpse I can only assume was being dragged by the horse. The story goes on that the horse dies of exhaustion and that the spirit of the terrified horse would surge forth from the powerful rapids nearby each year on the anniversary of this fateful ride, determined to simultaneously remind the inhabitants to be vigilant and to look for his dead master.

Anyways, that’s what I heard. Two cops my brother found creeping around the fort a few years ago related it pretty much as I just did.

Something tells me it’s a bit of a mess story-wise, perhaps the synthesis of a variety of different local legends. I’d certainly like to know more about this if any of you know.

And aside from that, as far as ghost stories go, well, what would be worse than finding yourself on Senneville Road or Gouin Boulevard only to see the white flash of a mad steed barreling down you? I guarantee at the very least this spirit has certainly caused a couple traffic accidents.

Besides – when was the last time Mary Gallagher turned up? It’s time we find ourselves some new ghosts, no?

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Reflections on Occupy Montréal

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A couple of weeks ago I took a walk with my roommate down to Square Victoria in the middle of a downpour to see if the police had taken any precautions, set up barriers or were otherwise surveilling the area in preparation for the confrontation I was fairly certain I would witness the following day, when Montréalers from all walks of life would participate in an international day of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I think I was legitimately concerned the SPVM would take a cue from the OPP/SQ/TPS G8/G20 playbook and we’d have a repeat of any anti-police brutality march in this city (that is to say, mass police brutality). Instead I found nothing, no precautions. I was surprised.

The next day the weather was generally cooperative, though at times unsure of itself, non-committal. It provided a hallucinatory experience as I crossed René-Lévesque to make my way to a late lunch with some friends, looking West along the boulevard into a sea of golden raindrops filling the cavernous corporate trench with a universe of temporary stars. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen lately.

My first experience with Occupy Montréal had been earlier that day when it was just getting going. It was so typically Canadian, so typically Montréal – overt contrasts, peaceful cohabitation, clean, neat, orderly, pleasant. There were very few police officers, though an unfortunate number of individuals who felt compelled to look like an anarchist stereotype ripped from the pages of a hysterical RCMP training manual from the last Red Scare. My previous concerns about the possibility of any real aggression from police were mitigated when I observed a grandfatherly police captain making gooney faces with a toddler, the child’s mother, a demonstrator, was laughing warmly. We had nothing to worry about.

I returned later in the afternoon to find myself involved in a march that tore through the retail heart of the city, blocking traffic and effectively stopping all activity on Ste-Catherine’s as we barrelled down towards Concordia. Then we looped on Mackay back onto Ste-Catherine’s, made our way down past the Place des Arts, into the Old Financial Quarter on St. James and finally back to the Square. If I didn’t know any better I could swear that the SPVM planned for this and let it happen in order to let the crowd diffuse its frustrations. I’m almost certain it had a police escort come to think of it. What I found curious and clever was how they managed to keep the demonstrators and the Habs fans separate. The numerous people I saw walking around the tent city earlier with head-sets must have had something to do with this very peculiar march. I smell smart, subtle policing, if such a thing can exist.

From what I’ve seen since, I would suspect local authorities are under the impression once Winter sets in most will clear out, as that is without a doubt the path of least resistance. As I walked around on the 15th and since, I’ve noticed that the membership of the MPQ were eager to set-up camp – part of me wondered whether or not it was just exceptionally opportunistic. The MPQ isn’t much more than an army surplus store owner and his merry band of grown-up toy soldiers. The RRQ was around, as were a bunch of unilingual Anglophone student activists missing out on a real opportunity to get to know their new Francophone brothers and sisters. Perhaps things have changed since then, I’ve only passed by a few times since. I was put-off by some drunk shmuck I encountered in the formidable tent-city who was wondering (aloud) why there was gender segregation in the tents. I didn’t want to acknowledge him, so I just looked directly in his eyes and gave him a ‘move along’ look. Hard to resist. It’s part of a common theme I saw throughout my time there – it was almost as if pot consumption was about to become a death-penalty offence, and everyone was doing their utmost to consume as much as they could before the law went into effect. My personal philosophy with regards to the consumption and distribution of narcotics notwithstanding, there was far more consumption than demonstration; I suppose we can just lump antiquated laws regarding marijuana consumption in with the very new laws that make corporations people and allow governments to play fast and loose with the People’s money as just another injustice against the working man by the hypocritical elites, but I’d prefer to stay more focused.

Yes, it’s been said before ad nauseum, but let’s face it – lack of focus is an easy problem to pick at by the mainstream media. If the direction was in place the collective would ensure it had both a list of short and long term demands, in addition to an exit strategy.

Without an exit strategy, there are only two options, one of which you can almost bank on. Either the authorities let it fizzle out on its own (which will be very demoralizing for the movement and the youth), or they clean house. Without an exit strategy, demands, and a cohesive (though, probably multi-faceted) argument, this movement, regardless of where it finds itself, is doomed to fail.

We are fortunate we have been spared the violence that has befallen Oakland, Rome and New York City. Its too early to say what will happen here.

There is something worthwhile in this local version of the Occupy Wall Street protest; it unites youth, it allows the frustrated public a chance to vent. People learn, people teach, people work together. Pass by Square-Victoria and see a veritable self-supporting community in the midst of a commercial no-man’s land. Witness the industrious 99%, backbone of the modern, stable social-democracy. Times are tough and the tent-cities are doing a good job providing. Let the example shine.

I feel compelled to end on a cautionary note, however. It is fundamentally important that the demonstrators, the protesters and occupiers out there know why they personally are participating. It’s all you need to know. Don’t speak of vague notions, don’t list all the problems with the world from a progressive-socialist perspective, just know your own personal reason. You will doubtless find many people who share your point of view and can relate, but to each his own. What is important next is maintaining the media’s focus. Let us show ourselves to the media, to show our personal reasons for protest, and let us go forth and tell them precisely we, as a collective of individuals, would go out and live in a tent city in solidarity with this growing and impressive social movement.

There can be no question we have a legitimate right to protest our current conditions here in Canada. Government is both corrupt and repressive, civil liberties are squashed in the name of public security, our economy is too reliant on corrosive American investment and trade, we allow social policy to be dictated to us like children by Washington and frankly, the less said about what we’ve allowed to happen to our once world-class healthcare and public education services, the better. It is only within the last few years that I have begun feeling ashamed of my country and my people. We’re better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

I’m also less than convinced Stephen Harper is the economic mastermind he purports to be. The middle class is disappearing faster here than South of the 49th, and our elites have a far greater stranglehold on our political and economic machine than I think we care to admit. Our media has been taking cues from the worst shlock you’d find on Fox News; in sum, there’s plenty to complain about, plenty that requires urgent and dramatic action.

But this movement will go nowhere unless those already mobilized can effectively articulate their own messages of protest, justified in media-savvy terms designed for maximal political impact. We have to play the game better than those who are already the established experts.

More on this later.

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Kondiaronk Book Review – Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory

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Don Bell was what you might consider a kind of boulevardier back in the 1960s and 1970s, keeping abreast of the freaks and geeks which make urban living so goddam enjoyable. He compiled a variety of anecdotes into the aforementioned compendium which became a big local and national hit back in 1972. Though I can imagine almost everyone interviewed by Bell is likely dead by now (save for a few old hippies), the characters are paradoxically products of their era and somehow timeless as well. We don’t have the same calibre of local eccentrics like we used to, in my honest opinion, but we’ll never be short on characters. Bell demonstrates clearly the source of so much creative inspiration in his honest and down-to-earth portrayals of a host of characters from early 70s Montréal, from local big shot showbiz types in their halcyon days to the silent and methodical Greek pool-sharks, from old-money dilettantes to new age gurus and the caffein-addled over-night crew staffing the Mile End bagel shops. Don Bell was looking for what the creatively-inclined see in the people and faces of this city, a never-ending supply of complex reactions and adjustments to the human experience. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, at times ill at ease with those living on the fringes of our society, the stories and scenarios he relates seems to steer away from the pulp curb-side reporting of Al Palmer in his Montreal Confidential as though he was interested principally in offering a societal and cultural almanac.

It’s been something I’ve been looking for for quite some time now – to capture that fleeting feeling of knowing the spirit, hydra-esque though it may be, a location may generate. In another sense I find myself looking for the zeitgeist in the built and natural environment, and by extension how such an environment may impact the people and colour their character. I think Marsan was looking for this, and Richler was certainly aware of it, and yet for some reason I don’t think we care as much about it anymore. That or we have forgotten what we came so close to defining. Either way, the people always seem to be at least able to feel in their spines, and know it to exist if only to know its indelible imprint. Don Bell saw the city in the citizen, and how the city, as a living, breathing super-organism, defines lives and lifestyles for its inhabitants. He demonstrates the beacon-esque qualities of a modern city in its prime, and the seedier elements of the underbelly, the harsh-realities of the lives of the people in the guts of a gigantic machine. Required reading for any boulevardier, urbanist, or Montreal history & literature enthusiast. Also, it caused a fair bit of controversy, but you’ll have to read it to find out why.

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Scenes from Occupy Montr̩al РPhotographs VI

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Occupy Montréal, October 15th 2011

To see a series of photographs from yesterday’s Occupy Montréal demonstration, click here, or click on the photographs tab above and go down to collection VI.

I’ll write up my thoughts on the day later on. Still decompressing from an adventure filled Saturday. Gotta say the SPVM was really acting cool and professional yesterday. Frankly it was impressive and unexpected. I saw a police commander and a little kid making goonie faces at each other. It was hilarious and heart warming. It was a really good demonstration of solidarity, and one of the best protests I’ve ever been fortunate enough to participate in.

More later.

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Let’s make this an election issue {no.4} – Montréal’s Victoria Rink, birthplace of hockey.

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A fancy dress ball at the Victoria Rink, Montreal (circa 1865, or, when Jefferson Davis lived here).

So a recent article on Coolopolis piqued my curiosity. It features an interview Kristian Gravenor did with a man by the name of Billy Georgette, who has been doggedly pursuing local officials, politicians and people of influence to do something about the former Victoria Rink.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rink, it is the long, squat brownstone building between Stanley and Drummond, just north of Boul. René-Lévesque. It is currently a parking garage, a role it assumed in 1925 when the arena closed to the public as it had become obsolete. It was first built in 1862 at what would have then been the very heart of the Square Mile neighbourhood. It was an instant success, with the Victoria Skating Club reaching some 2,000 Montrealers by the 1870s. It was a natural ice rink, meaning that it could only be used when the surface could be frozen over. Though this is impractical for a modern professional arena, back then hockey was in its infancy, and this arrangement would have made it exceptionally easy to use the space for other purposes, such as concerts, receptions, congresses and the like. It was first in a long tradition of multiple-use venues in Downtown Montréal.

So what? It’s an old rink, what’s so special? you might be asking. Well, it is at the Victoria Rink that the first organized game of modern ice hickey was played, in 1875.
That, and it set the dimensions for the modern ice-hockey surface – roughly the distance between Stanley and Drummond.
Oh, and it was also the location of the first Stanley Cup game (which we won).
And it was the first building in Canada to be electrified.
Then Edison and Tesla showed up.
Not to mention Lord Stanley, who took in his first hockey game (which we won) at the rink, and was reported to have been thoroughly delighted with the spirited game.

Suffice it to say, this building is a major historical landmark, for Montréal, Québec and Canada.

And it sucks that it has survived for no other reason than the fact that people need a place to park. Oh well, at least its still with us. And it deserves better. This building ought to be a shrine, and there’s a movement afoot to do just that. The word is that certain people may be interested in seeing this building converted into a new facility, though the question remains as to what exactly it ought to be.

So, on a lark, here’s what I’d propose.

We need look no further than the building’s history to see what should be done with this building. What if we were to convert it back into a functional ice-rink? Take it a step further – what if we were to endeavour to bring the building back to its original grandeur? An authentic Victorian skating rink, renovated to look as it did in 1875, when the first hockey game was played. Perhaps we’d choose to forgo the gas-light chandeliers, but you get the idea. In the spirit of urban architectural heritage preservation, this project has all the potential to be a great achievement for the citizens of Montréal.

In addition to recreating the ice surface, a portion of the building, or perhaps an adjoining structure (there’s a big empty lot immediately to the North), could feature a ‘Montreal Hockey Museum’, though I can imagine the main draw would be simply to skate around a beautifully restored antique skating rink. A similar idea has been applied to the design of modern baseball stadiums in the States, and there are specially designed ballparks for the modern deadball leagues becoming popular down South (in essence, its baseball played the way it was when originally created, in the Antebellum Period). I have a feeling it wouldn’t be long before ‘old-time-hockey’ leagues were formed here – what a draw that would be!

And finally, much like the original, it would be a multi-purpose facility, and could easily be used as a medium sized general-purpose venue, which our city happens to be lacking. The location is exceptional, and there’s a well-developed local industry capable of not only thoroughly renovating this building, but further able to restore it to its former grandeur. From everything I’ve read, the building, due to its prominence in the lives of the late-19th century Montréal bourgeois is well described, was quite beautiful. There’s no question it is a heritage building, but like too many other heritage buildings, it survives without sufficient recognition of its historic importance. The best way to this history justice is to ensure the building’s use, in perpetuity. Moreover, Montréal needs a hockey museum, because hockey is a social phenomenon here, and a quintessential part of our lives.

What can I say further? What do you think we should do with the Victoria Rink?