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Cabot Square Redux: not quite paradise, kind of a parking lot…

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This used to be much greener; the interior of Cabot Square is now paved over in a special kind of asphalt
This used to be much greener; the interior of Cabot Square is now paved over in a special kind of asphalt

After about a year’s worth of work, Cabot Square re-opened to the public on Wednesday July 8th.

The major improvement involves two outreach workers who will now use the square’s renovated stone kiosk (vespasienne) as home base to provide services to the primarily Aboriginal homeless community that (up until the renovations began) called Cabot Square home. Whether this homeless population returns to spend their time in Cabot Square remains to be seen, but the mere fact that these outreach workers have their own workspace within the square is in and of itself a progressive step in the right direction. From what I’ve read, the kiosk will also serve as a café where the proceeds will support the homeless (or the outreach program that helps the homeless). This is also good – Montreal is well known for its dearth of coffee-purchasing opportunities…

Other improvements: apparently there’s daily programming (music, dance, theatre) organized throughout the summer, and free wifi. I have a greater interest in the latter rather than the former, but again, glad to see it and I hope these activities are well-attended.

However, as you can see in the above photo, much of the square has been covered over in a slick ‘water-permeable ground covering’ that looks an awful lot like asphalt and for that reason looks awful.

Green space in Cabot Square is now defined by oversized curbs
Green space in Cabot Square is now defined by oversized curbs

This is not to say that the square was completely paved over – just that too much of it was. The paved portion flows around ‘green islands’ – there are now several such ‘islands’ in the newly renovated square, sharply divided from the walking paths with large curbs that integrate a few benches and subtle anti-skateboarding dimples. Within the green islands, plants surrounding the bases of several trees. Elsewhere in the square, younger trees planted to replace those removed during the renovation are surrounded by small circles of wood chips.

The division between green and grey isn’t subtle – it’s very clear where you’re supposed to walk and where you’re not.

There’s almost no grass per se, no flowerbeds either. In its previous incarnation, there were patches of grass and no physical barrier between the somewhat symmetrical paving-stone walking paths and the green space.

The new arrangement reminds me of a trip to the Biodome; nature in the new Cabot Square is ‘grade-separated’ – look, but don’t touch seems to be the overriding design philosophy, which is ironic given how Aboriginal politics often involves efforts to sustain our interactions with the natural environment (i.e. preservation with an aim towards common appreciation etc.)

While there’s no doubt the new Cabot Square is slick, clean and modern, it’s also much less of a park. It feels more like a transit point than an urban refuge, and this is odd given that there’s so much less going on around Cabot Square these days (i.e. the Forum closed in 1996, the Children’s Hospital just relocated and the square isn’t the major bus terminus it once was). Considering there are plans to increase residential density in the area by building more condo towers and apartment buildings, I figured city planners would have gone in a different direction, aiming to provide an urban refuge instead of a kind of shaded crossroads.

It occurred to me that the paved surface will certainly make the space easier to clean, and further allows city vehicles to drive around inside the square without ripping up the ground and grass. Except that these posts have been installed at every entrance and seem pretty solid. I’m not entirely sure what their purpose is… I think it’s to slow down cyclists.

Questionable Purpose

There’s a greater irony here: before the renovation Montreal police would regularly drive directly into the square and either park their cruiser near the statue or do a quick lap before heading back out. Tactics such as these are intended to intimidate and drive people away. It also destroyed the paths and and the grass. Municipal workers would do the same when they were ostensibly working at maintaining the square.

Now the square has a paved interior with wide paths and large curbs to ensure the division between green space and walking space, but these posts make it impossible for any car or truck to enter the square (and Montreal police pledged somewhat to treat homeless Aboriginals more like human beings).

One thing I noticed when visiting recently was the removal of shrubs, decorative fences and bus shelters that once ran around the square’s periphery. I completely approve of this, and wrote about the necessity of opening up sight lines in the past. The former arrangement of bus shelters and shrubs made it impossible to see across the space and for this reason made it an ideal location for homeless people to congregate (Place Emilie-Gamelin and Viger Square suffer from the same problem).

So that being the case, it makes me wonder if the homeless Aboriginal community (or any members of the broader homeless community for that matter) will return to the square.

The picnic tables have been removed, as have a number of park benches. Garbage and recycling has been moved to the periphery, largely at the entrances (in a move I could only assume was based on a recent STM decision to do the same with Métro stations, wherein garbage and recycling has been removed from platform level and relocated to receptacles located up near the ticket kiosks). This is one of those ideas that’s good in theory but rarely in practice (i.e. people have about a 30-second tolerance limit to carrying garbage; if a garbage bin isn’t immediately available, they tend to just drop it on the ground).

And as to those anti-skateboarding dimples on the curbs? Again, useful in theory, but given that the entire square has been paved over, the whole square is now far more inviting to skateboarders than it was previously. Moreover, on all sections of the curbs that ramp up from ground level, there doesn’t seem to be any dimples at all.

Put it another way, when I visited the square last week, it was a group of skateboarders who were making best use of the space. I don’t think this is what the city had in mind.

Underwhelming

Here we see an example of one of the myriad ‘activities’ slated to take place in the square. I think this was for a caricaturist. Elsewhere there was a small group of somewhat depressed looking ‘street performers’ dressed like pirate-clowns; I’m assuming this was entertainment intended for children…

Again, more good stuff in theory, but only time will tell whether this actually leads to a major vocational change for the square. There seemed to be a lot of people working (ostensibly) for the city that day, and supporting this over the long term may prove problematic what with austerity budgets.

Renovated Vespasienne

And here’s the renovated vespasienne. It looks great, but it didn’t look like the café component was fully operational. It’s unfortunate there’s no landscaping around the base of the edifice (no flowers or plants), as this gives the impression the vespasienne grew out of the pavement.

Perhaps the single biggest lost opportunity was the Métro entrance kiosk located at the northwest corner of the square, in that what is arguably the most problematic structure in the square was left as-is. The Métro entrance in the square was once very useful indeed – keep in mind Atwater was the western terminus of the Green Line for about a decade, and up until 20 years ago the Forum was the city’s primary sporting and concert venue. Thus, it was useful to have a large Métro entrance located directly across from the Forum to help manage the crowds. Ever since the Forum stopped being a important venue this Métro entrance hasn’t been particularly useful. It, and the long tunnel that connects it with the Alexis Nihon complex diagonally across the street, hasn’t been very well maintained and all too often stinks of piss.

And as such it will remain – I suppose getting the city’s parks department and the STM to cooperate on a city beautification project may have been a little too difficult to coordinate. Thus, the STM kiosk remains an oversized, underused and aesthetically disconnected element of the square. Had they removed it the square could have had an entrance from arguably its highest traffic corner. Instead, the structure remains as a lasting visual obstruction to what’s going on inside the square and will likely continue to serve as something of a homeless shelter in its own right.

At the end of the day it begs the question – is this really the best our city can do?

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The Case for Cabot Square

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Wikipedia-Cabot-Square

Poor John Cabot, we hardly new ye.

Most people don’t know who he is or why there’s a sizeable chunk of prime downtown property in a state of seemingly perpetual disrepair named after him.

In fact, it’s not even actually named after him, strictly speaking, as his actual name (in his native Venetian) was Zuan Chabotto.

In English and French, his name was John or Jean Cabot. In Italian it was Giovanni Caboto. In Portuguese he was known as Juan Caboto.

A man by any other name…

Perhaps it is because he is so unknown and comparatively unimportant to the lives of Montrealers that we have allowed the rather large urban park that bears his name to end up the mess that it is. Recent news is that the city is pledging $6.5 million to renovate and revitalize the park, more on which I’ll talk about later.

Hmmm, come to think of it, strictly speaking it’s not a park but a square. In fact, because it’s technically a square there’s no curfew. As far as I know it’s only parks and playgrounds that have curfews in this city.

Thus, this once proud square has become a repository for the city’s homeless, the kiosk has been boarded up for years and the Métro entrance is repository for the homeless in winter months. Lately, efforts to improve the overall aesthetic of the park has resulted in the installation of a multitude of sculptures. So now it’s a repository for post modern art as well.

Montrealers know there’s not much good going on in Cabot Square – at best it’s a poorly designed bus terminus. At it’s worst it’s a shocking example of endemic social inequity.

This is what I find particularly ironic – Cabot Square is generally associated with the city’s transient Aboriginal homeless population. The lasting negative effects of European colonization of North America can be seen just about every day gathered, inebriated, somewhere in the square dedicated incorrectly to a man who was once viewed as our equivalent to Columbus.

I suppose in some ways he is our Columbus. The American veneration of Columbus is as ridiculous as our former veneration of Cabot. Neither Columbus nor Cabot were the first Europeans to reach the Americas, this was done by the Viking Leif Ericson in the 11th century. And neither of them ‘discovered’ the Americas either – this was accomplished by the ancestors of our Aboriginal peoples some ten thousand years ago.

It’s the official position of the government of Canada and the United Kingdom that John Cabot landed in Newfoundland in 1497, so you’re right to wonder why on Earth one and a half acres in the Shaughnessy Village is dedicated in his name. He never had anything to do with Montreal.

And if that all isn’t bad enough, from atop his perch Cabot’s copper gaze is fixed forevermore on the architectural abomination that is the Pepsi AMC Cineplex (awaiting new management) Forum. Our city’s great failure to preserve our shrine to the greatest game is all he has to look at now.

So how did we get here?

The land that became Cabot Square was acquired from the Sulpicians in 1870 for the purposes of a public park in what was then the westernmost extent of the city. Initially it was called, simply, Western Park (the Montreal Children’s Hospital was formerly the ‘Western General Hospital’ if I recall correctly) and it served the large Anglo-Irish middle and upper-class that inhabited the area as a much needed common green. Originally, it featured a large fountain in the middle. The statue of John Cabot was a ‘gift’ from the Italian population of Canada to Montreal and was erected in 1935, though the square wouldn’t be officially recognized as Cabot Square until some time later.

For a good long while Cabot Square was as desirable a place to go as any other large urban space and served as a kind of ‘front yard’ for the Forum throughout that building’s storied time as home to the Montreal Canadiens. It was also immediately adjacent to what became the Montreal Children’s Hospital in 1956, and down the road from the former Reddy Memorial Hospital. The area was, by some estimates, at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s when Westmount Square and Place Alexis-Nihon were built atop and integrated into the Métro system, an early component of the Underground City. At the time, Atwater station was the western terminus of the Green Line and the integration of mass transit, large, contiguous shopping malls, the city’s main arena and residential and commercial towers was at the cutting edge of modern urban design. The Forum was expanded and modified into its ‘classic look’ in 1968 and throughout the next two decades was not only home to the most exciting franchise in the NHL, but was also served as the city’s main large-capacity performance venue. Even into the mid-late 1980s the general area around the square was developing and improving: commercial office towers were added to Place Alexis-Nihon in 1986, Dawson moved into its current home in 1988 and the CCA was completed the following year just down the road.

By the mid-1990s the situation had changed considerably. The Canadiens would leave in the Forum in 1996 and the subsequent ‘entertainment complex’ developed in the renovated building never quite took off as intended. The Reddy closed down about the same time as Ste-Catherine Street West began its steep decline into a bit of a ghost town, as storefronts remained vacant for well over a decade. Today there are still too many unoccupied buildings on that stretch of our city’s main commercial artery, another hospital is slated to close, and the Forum seems to be an even greater disappointment as former ‘anchor’ tenants pack up their bags.

Credit to R.N. Wilkins - photo of the Atwater Terminus before mid-1960s renovation
Credit to R.N. Wilkins – photo of the Atwater Terminus before mid-1960s renovation

The city’s plan to invest $6.5 million to renovate the square is definitely a step in the right direction – it needs a lot of work. But there are critics, notably City Councillor for the Peter-McGill district, Steve Shanahan. He argues that an aesthetic makeover won’t solve the square’s homeless problem.

He’s right, but then again, it’s not exactly the square’s homeless problem; it’s Montreal that has a general homeless problem. Mr. Shanahan is arguing that half the allocated sum be used to address the homeless issue as it specifically relates to Cabot Square – though he was particularly outraged the city’s plan doesn’t include the destruction of the aforementioned Métro entrance at the northwest corner of the square, immediately adjacent to the unused Vespasienne (which was, to my knowledge, never actually in use as a public pissoir, but used variously as a flower vendor and bistro or snack bar).

For people unfamiliar with the area, the Métro entrance is a rather cumbersome structure that features an oddly large vestibule and other space used variously by the STM. It’s an unnecessary structure (from a public transit perspective) that blocks access to the square and serves as a kind of homeless hangout.

This wasn’t always the case. When the Métro entrance was built it was, in my opinion, ingeniously well-designed. The entrance is oriented towards the centre of the square and this is important given the square’s former use as the Forum’s ‘front yard’ – large crowds could come out of the Forum and into the square instead of spilling out onto Atwater. Having people move into the square in turn facilitated dispersal amongst STM services – Métro on one side, the old bus terminus on Lambert-Closse on the other.

The placement of the bus terminus across from the Métro entrance also guaranteed a constant stream of foot traffic through the square, and generally speaking we tend to take decent enough care of that which we use most often.

But some years ago the decision was made to eliminate the bus terminus on Lambert-Closse, replacing them with several smaller glass shelters at multiple bus stops arranged around the square. Why this decision was made I’d really like to know. Buses still congregate on the eastern side of the square and, again somewhat ironically, the bus shelters have become makeshift pissoirs, used by the local drunks.

Credit to R.N. Wilkins - photo of the Atwater Terminus before mid-1960s renovation
Credit to R.N. Wilkins – photo of the Atwater Terminus before mid-1960s renovation

In the history of Cabot Square’s long demise, I think this was the first bad move. It removed people from the centre of the square and re-distributed them along its edge. Worse, the new shelters, along with hedges and decorative gates, made it difficult for see across the square, allowing people a degree of privacy inside the square. It was only a matter of time before it gained a regular homeless population – Berri Square (Place Emilie-Gamelin) suffers from exactly the same problem. When people can’t see clearly across a square, when there are aesthetic elements that block views, people generally stay out and keep to the edge. Policing these areas becomes difficult. In both cases police have resorted to simply parking their cruisers right in the middle of the squares in a show of force to drug dealers. Is it any wonder people stay out of these public spaces?

All this considered, I don’t think Cabot Square is a lost cause, the city just needs to realize it can’t throw money at the problem and hope it disappears. If we want a better functioning, more welcoming Cabot Square we have to consider what’s around the square too, and how the neighbourhood has changed in the last twenty years.

I’d argue the square could do without the current Métro entrance, but I wouldn’t recommend eliminating the entrance and the tunnel as well. Access to the Métro is a plus for any public space, but we could afford a less obtrusive entrance. Something closer to the Art Nouveau entrance at Square Victoria seems more appropriate.

It would be wise to return to one large bus terminus on Lambert-Closse, and remove all the obstructions along the edge of the square so that it can be accessed from all sides. It is a city square after all, it’s supposed to be ‘open concept’. The city’s current plan seeks to enlarge the square by expanding onto Lambert-Closse, eliminating two lanes. I’d prefer to see expansion to the south instead – that stretch of Tupper has always seemed a bit useless to me. Either way, the benefits of a single bus terminus are wide-ranging. Increased safety and security, concentration of activity, the option to build a large heated bus shelter, and that it would encourage transit users to cross through the square.

More broadly, the city needs to have a plan in place for the future of the Montreal Children’s Hospital. What will come of this massive building, arguably a heritage site worth preserving? I would hate to see it converted into condos, though I think this is unlikely. It’s institutional space and we need as much of that as we can get our hands on. Perhaps it will become a public retirement/assisted-living home, or maybe it will be bought up by Dawson College, given they’ve been over-capacity and renting space in the Forum for a while now.

At least part of the former hospital could potentially be used as a homeless shelter.

But all this will take some serious leadership from City Hall. A $6.5 million renovation plan is a good start, but the square needs rehabilitation as well. The western edge of the downtown has a lot going for it, but the city will have to develop a master plan that tackles a lot more than just the landscaping problems.

A place as ‘Westmount adjacent’ as Cabot Square should be a far more desirable place to be.

A modest proposal, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Unrealized development projects, Urban Redevelopment, What were they thinking?

A List of Places Oddly Not Connected to Montreal’s Underground City

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Credit to Michel Boisvert and Martin Gagnon from UdeM's Observatoire de la ville intérieur
Credit to Michel Boisvert and Martin Gagnon from UdeM’s Observatoire de la ville intérieur

You’ve probably heard this factoid once before – Montreal has the world’s largest underground city. It’s true, though an unfortunate number of American tourists routinely come here hoping to see some kind of super-sized subterranean lair replete with cave-dwelling French Canadians only to find an elaborate mass-transit system and shopping mall complex instead.

That’s the complaint I hear from most Montrealers – much of the Underground City seems to be nothing but a massive and irritatingly homogenous mall stretching between Métro stations. It seems boastful, maybe even delusional to call it a city.

That was certainly my first, and somewhat extended, impression of the RÉSO, as the Underground City is officially known.

But as we barrel down head-first into winter I recall my sincere appreciation for the RÉSO – the warm-cut. There are some 32 kilometres of pedestrian tunnels and 120 exterior access points concentrated in a 12 square kilometre area that roughly defines Montreal’s Central Business District. Some 500,000 Montrealers use the RÉSO every day on average, and it represents a unique component of the city’s public transit infrastructure.

If Montréal were to be compared to the human body, I see the Métro as the city’s circulatory system, the RÉSO as the lungs and the Place Ville-Marie/Gare Centrale complex as the heart.

And I’m but a red blood cell travelling through the system.

Or at least that’s the way I see it. Once I’m in the RÉSO, I feel a tangible connection to a vastly larger system. I feel like I move faster when walking through the tunnels, as though the tunnels were encouraging me to trot at a swift pace. I feel like everything’s only a five minute walk away, regardless of the actual time it takes. I like that there’s always an entrance nearby, that warm-cuts are a thing, that because so much of the city’s commercial office space and corporate infrastructure (convention centres, hotels, sports venues, etc.) is interconnected tens of thousands of white collar workers have abandoned their cars and cabs and now use a combination of foot power and public transit for their daily transportation needs.

I like that you can walk around underground for over an hour and still not see all of it.

I like that I can plan my routes architecturally, functionally – enter at university, walk through a massive performance venue, find yourself passing a fountain in a cave-like shopping mall, go down the escalator and down the hall to the government offices, follow the signs and meet me in the convention centre by the lipstick forest and we’ll stop by the café next to the reflecting pool in the atrium of the horizontal skyscraper.

Yeah, my directions are crystal clear…

In any event, the RÉSO is a testament to some fascinating modernist-era urban planning ideas about how space is rationalized, how urban functions are aligned, connected and integrated and what interactions people and cities should have with their immediate environment. The Underground City was in part a response to our city’s meteorological and climactic realities but it also drew inspiration from architects and planners who were envisioning self-contained future cities. Montreal benefitted in having a very large area of the urban environment ready for a major transformation (in our case, the massive open rail-yard trench where Place Ville-Marie stands today) as early as the mid-1950s, and within a decade planners were already looking beyond cars as the ecological damage caused by carbon emissions began to become evident. The expansion and development of the RÉSO has given us a veritable city within a city, one in which, increasingly, it is possible to live a completely insulated, integrated urban lifestyle.

Montreal’s Underground City may come off as a bit banal today, but I’m confident, as usage increases, so too will our imaginations with regards to what we can do with it, and how we interact with it. I’d certainly love to see all those new condo projects linked up, so that we can boast of an actual urban population who calls this underground city home. I’d further like to see more open, public spaces – the idea of a small underground park has always appealed to me. And if only we could get the annual weeklong Art Souterrain project to evolve into a permanent display of art throughout all facets of the underground city. Some ‘street’ vendors wouldn’t be half bad either.

While this kind of lifestyle might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I can easily imagine this appealing to a new generation of young urban families. To put it another way, I don’t think it will be too long before we see condo towers with two or three bedroom units, medical clinics, 24hr pharmacies and daycare services. Condos are about branded living experiences, it’s just a matter of time before all the yuppies graduate from their ‘urban chalets’ to something more age and family appropriate. As the dream of affordable suburban home ownership is pushed farther and farther away from the city by rising on-island real estate prices, an entire generation of young families won’t have much of a choice but to stay in the city, close to work and without the added expense of a car.

But I’ll expand on that another day, until then I’ll leave you with the list you came for.

The Montreal Forum, as it appeared in 1996 prior to its conversion into architectural diarrhoea
The Montreal Forum, as it appeared in 1996 prior to its conversion into architectural diarrhoea

1. The Forum.

Despite the fact that there’s a tunnel stretching across Saint Catherine’s Street to Cabot Square, Place Alexis-Nihon and the Atwater Métro segment of the RÉSO is not connected to the most hallowed venue in professional sports history (even if all it is today is nothing but another shitty mall). I wonder if it would be a better mall were it connected. I wonder if it would be anything else if it were connected for that matter.

CLSC Métro, not connected to the Métro - not mine
CLSC M̩tro, not connected to the M̩tro Рnot mine

2. The CLSC that’s actually sitting directly on top of the St-Mathieu exit of Guy-Concordia Métro.

Yes, I get that it’s but a mild inconvenience to have to step outside to get back into the building you just stepped out of. That’s exactly why they should’ve been connected in the first place – it’s inconvenient otherwise. I don’t understand why all the apartment towers around this Métro entrance aren’t also connected by their own tunnels – this would be one very appealing reason to live here (and there aren’t many others).

McLennan Library, credit to McGill University
McLennan Library, credit to McGill University

3. McGill University.

It’s just weird that McGill University isn’t directly accessible from McGill Métro station, this despite the fact that both the Bronfman Pavilion and the McClennan Library are both just across Sherbrooke Street from the Mount Royal Centre and Scotiabank Building, which are themselves connected to both Peel and McGill stations. Worse still, McGill apparently has a large, rather intricate network of tunnels criss-crossing campus, but most are closed and/or off-limits. This is quite unlike the Université de Montréal, which boasts both a network of inter-connected buildings, but direct access to the Métro as well.

Tour Telus, formerly CIL House - not mine
Great shot but not my own sadly; a stately and elegant modernist office tower, under appreciated in my opinion

4. The Telus Building, formerly CIL House.

Diagonally across from PVM and just a touch north of the Square-Victoria’s northernmost entrance, it’s a prime real estate office tower with, I’m guessing a couple thousand people moving in and out every day, yet it’s disconnected despite its proximity to the absolute mega centre of the RÉSO network.

This was probably some kind of promotional postcard from the 1920s, showing the original building and the expanded tower
This was probably some kind of promotional postcard from the 1920s, showing the original building and the expanded tower

5. The Sun Life Building and Dorchester Square

A similar situation, the Sun Life Building has three full underground floors and sits just across the street from PVM and yet remains after all these years disconnected. In fact, several prominent buildings on Dorchester Square remain outside the underground realm, and the square itself has no chic Art Nouveau entrance, such as you might find in Square Victoria. I find this particularly odd given that Dorchester Square is quite literally in the middle of four Métro stations and is surrounded by branches of the Underground City. Perhaps this is because planners wanted people to step out for fresh air once in a while… not a bad place to force this to happen.

L to R: 1100 René-Lévesque, Tour CIBC, Le Windsor, Sheraton Centre
L to R: 1100 René-Lévesque, Tour CIBC, Le Windsor, Sheraton Centre

6. Tour CIBC, the Sheraton Centre and 1100 Boul. René-Lévesque Ouest

These three buildings are all quite literally located across the street from a direct connection to the RÉSO through 1250 Boul. René-Lévesque, also known as the IBM-Marathon Building. I would have figured the hotel, at the very least, would have been connected some time ago.

Come to think of it, I don't care for either of these buildings. I find them uninspired.
Come to think of it, I don’t care for either of these buildings. I find them uninspired.

7. Cité du Commerce Electronique.

Just a short walk up from Lucien-L’Allier Métro station, but same old same old, not connected and no one seems to have even considered it. I’m hoping the multiple new condo developments going on all along the boulevard changes this, but from what I’ve heard the city’s got no one in charge to push such a project through. At the very least you’d figure somebody in the planning department would have this as some kind of a priority.

The new Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, highlighted in white
The new Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, highlighted in white

8. The Montreal Museum of Fine Art

The four, soon to be five pavilions of the MMFA are interconnected with subterranean passageways stretching across both Sherbrooke and du Musée. With the construction of the new pavilion the museum will stretch farther south along Bishop Street, putting it within range of being connected to Concordia’s recently expanded segment of the Underground City. This means that, if the museum were to be connected, one could theoretically walk from above Sherbrooke all the way down to Saint Catherine’s and Guy without freezing or getting your feet wet.

And that’s not half bad.

I wonder if any of those old Métro wagons could be used to extend the underground tunnel network…

Wouldn’t it be fitting?

A modest proposal, Commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment

This is why we can’t have nice things – Cabot Square Edition

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SPVM squad cars in Cabot Square - 2013
SPVM squad cars in Cabot Square – 2013

A couple of nights back I was having a smoke in Cabot Square, arguably our city’s most dysfunctional public place, before a flick at the Forum. I think Cabot Square could be a great place, but a number of changes would have to be made, both inside and out.

As I was strolling around in the rain I noticed there was scarcely any grass, just lots of mud, gravel and poorly defined walkways. Immense and surprisingly deep puddles gave way to muddy tracks – who the hell had been driving through the park? It’s no wonder the park’s in such poor shape – someone’s been driving through it.

A couple of hours later I emerged from the Forum and got my answer – squad cars. I took the photo above, apologies for the poor quality.

I’ve seen the SPVM pull this manoever before. In lieu of parking the car and patrolling on foot, they drive through. More efficient I suppose, but it tears the shit out of the lawn/grass/paths/everything. When I was taking the pic two squad cars had lined up their driver’s side windows in the way cops do to maximize their field of view. I’ve seen the same at Place du Canada and in the middle of Place Emilie-Gamelin.

Cabot Square is one of those places that just doesn’t seem to work. Most people avoid it if they can, as it’s often overrun with drunks, addicts, pushers and a hodgepodge of local loonies. It’s poorly maintained and in the centre of an urban neighbourhood in a prolonged transformational phase. It hasn’t been renovated in a while and there’s no plan in place to fix it up (to the best of my knowledge), yet the city continues to dump seemingly unwanted sculptures there.

On the rare occasion the space is empty you can appreciate it for what it might be. It’s not hard to imagine what it would look like if the pathways were well defined, the square well-lit, with fresh, thick grassy areas, benches and picnic tables. It’s still located in the middle of a very active urban pole – there’s no reason it should look this bad and function so poorly.

But then again, we don’t treat it very well.

The cops shouldn’t drive their cars through it – it’s disrespectful, it’s actively ruining an already marred public space.

What I find ironic is that the cops who are doing this are ostensibly doing so to get the bums, drunks and roving bands of teenagers out, as it’s perceived that those groups are responsible for the damage to the square. And in the process render the space somewhat inaccesible. Who’s going to go relax on a bench next to some squad cars?

What I find odd is that Montreal police don’t apply the methods they use to patrol Carré St-Louis as they do Cabot Square. The two public spaces are somewhat similar in terms of size and design and have reputations for being a touch seamy.

But for the most part the worst you’ll have to deal with in Carré St-Louis is some young punk wannabe pushers and a couple of loud, moany drunks. Cops come by on those ridiculous tricycle Segways and bikes. There’s something disarming about police wearing bicycle helmets… I can imagine it sets a better tone of mutual respect. Such is not the same in Cabot Square, where police have been known to apply a lot more muscle, if not batons and aggressive overtones.

Sometimes I wonder whether if the difference lies in the predominance of homeless Aboriginals in Cabot Square – police in this city have always dealt with homeless Aboriginals poorly. You don’t see too many hipsters getting kicked to the ground in Carré St-Louis for drinking in public.

Cabot Square has a few other problems which, if corrected, could allow Montreal police to survey the area just as well, but without having to drive through park to keep an eye on things. If the space is ever renovated I’d hope they consider giving it the Dorchester Square treatment, which is to say better lighting and well-defined pathways to say the least. The city also elected to reduce the total number of trees in that square during it’s 2009-2010 renovation, an unpopular move that ultimately allowed for better lines-of-sight across the square.

Cabot Square could benefit from a similar makeover, as it has a rather thick hedge and decorative metal fence obscuring the view across it from nearly all points. Same story with the clutter of ill-lit and poorly placed sculptures and the bus shelters scattered around the square’s periphery. Further isolating the square from its environment are the two pavilions on its western edge; I’ve never seen the vespasienne open and the Métro access kiosk acts more often than not as a daytime make-shift homeless shelter. Together they form a kind of a wall.

Removing the hedge and decorative fence would certainly help things out a bit, as would removing some of the trees – there are so many in the square the grass doesn’t stand much of a chance to grow. The STM kiosk is massive and doesn’t nearly hold the same amount of daily traffic as it did thirty some odd years ago. It could be replaced with a Hector Guimard styled Métro entrance, as we have in Square Victoria, allowing a significant obstruction to be removed and effectively replaced. Running some kind of service from the vespasienne would also help things along, namely by bringing space-conscious small-business owners into the public sphere, not to mention the potential customers. The vespasienne in Dorchester Square is home to a bistro that seems to be doing alright – hard to imagine the same couldn’t be the case in Cabot Square.

Another issue – the bus shelters. This one’s a bit of a head scratcher as I can’t quite figure the rationale behind building many small shelters when the STM used to have one large shelter that served all the many buses stopping at the terminus. Whereas many smaller shelters invariably become public toilets, one large shelter could feature a public restroom, security and a control booth. Moreover it could be heated. Why the larger terminus building was demolished is a total mystery to me.

Final thought, and I know I’ve said it before, but I really hope Dawson ends up occupying the Children’s Hospital when it eventually moves to its new home at the Glen Yards campus. If this were to happen, Cabot Square would transform rather quickly as it became a satellite of the college’s campus, a backyard of sorts. Even though this in and of itself might not get the city to renovate the space, at the very least the presence of a lot of students will make it a little more inviting and result in the space being used a little more than it currently is.

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Recycling Institutional Space in the Mountain Domain

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This scene is quite literally the stuff my somewhat Kafkan dreams are made of

Lots of talk recently on the future of the Royal Victoria Hospital and Hotel-Dieu given that both facilities are supposed to shut down once the super-hospitals come on line, and the extremely valuable institutional space may become locations for new development.

Considering that the ‘English’ super-hospital is already expected to be too small to fully replace all the hospitals it was intended to, I can imagine there’s still going to be need for the space, really regardless of the shape it’s in. If you’ve been by either of these hospitals lately, you know they would require extensive renovations in order to continue being useful. Whatever happens, there’s likely going to be a bit of a gestation period as the sites are re-purposed, so nothing’s going to happen immediately.

Of course, we can’t afford to let it sit and rot either – we’ve got a bad record when it comes to demolition via neglect in this city.

And as if that wasn’t complicating matters enough, there’s the added issue that the Vic isn’t supposed to be used for any other purpose than to heal or teach, (ideally both) and McGill doesn’t seem interested in converting the hospital for teaching purposes, or making any use of it whatsoever, despite being thoroughly integrated into the site. Elspeth Angus, a descendent of Lord Mount Stephen (who bequeathed the land for the purposes of a hospital) wants the spirit of the gift to be honoured and as such wants the area to maintain its institutional orientation.

And of course, it’s not just these hospitals – other facilities will soon be vacated and happen to find themselves relatively close by. The Shriner’s is moving to the Glen Yards site, while the Chest Hospital will leave it’s St-Urbain street location and the Children’s will depart from Cabot Square to join it. Institutional space frequented by Montreal’s Anglophone community have been consolidated in the West End even though this isn’t particularly convenient to Montreal’s Anglophone community (which is increasingly young, bilingual and living further East than ever before – another example of why the superhospital is an antiquated notion to begin with, but I digress). But a bigger problem, Montreal – in general – is lacking in institutional space.

As institutional space of this variety has been immensely beneficial in preserving the natural splendour of the Mountain Domain, and can continue to exist as such should we choose to recycle it, we must endeavour to use this space proactively.

Ergo, no condo.

What I feel is crucial here is the maintenance of institutional stimulus in this sector, and not simply cast this space off to the crap-shoot of free-market real-estate development. All of these sites could easily support diverse urban living experiments, but the loss of available institutional space would be insupportable for a city already lacking it. Future institutional space requirements will be constrained by the need to expropriate expensive urban real-estate. Furthermore, institutional space is already well-positioned in our city to act as a preservation instrument – there’s a reason so much institutional space was gathered about around the bottom of the mountain, it helps preserve the green aesthetic of the city, pulling civic infrastructure together into a broad realm. The mountain park is free and grand – we want our citizens to continue interacting with these spaces so positively impacted by the urban environment.

Let’s not lose sight of our past accomplishments.

A few thoughts on what we can do with these five hospitals:

1. Turn the Vic into a Maternity/Women’s Hospital; demolish anything not worth preserving, insert parkland.

2. Convert the Thoracic Institute into a homeless-shelter with a focus on rehabilitation; if I’m not mistaken there’s a detox hospital located just a smidge further down St-Urbain.

3. Redevelop the Children’s into two new facilities. Part educational, part healthcare. Close Tupper Street, extend Cabot Square to reach the Children’s, build a new front door.

4. Hand the Shriner’s Hospital over to Batshaw – they do good work and need good space, but NIMBY types out in the West Island don’t want them around anymore.

5. Like with the Vic, remove the architecturally insignificant buildings and excess parking lots at the Hotel-Dieu site, expand their beautiful and famous gardens, and recycle the hospital into a massive public assisted-living residence for seniors.

The Why:

1. The Vic was built into what we would now call the Mountain Domain largely because proximity to nature was considered immensely beneficial in the recovery process, something I don’t think is too far off the mark in all sincerity. The Vic is also very well respected as a maternity hospital and has developed particularly strong bonds with Montréal’s urban middle-class community as the choice location to have your child.

But the Vic is also an immense and vastly complicated rabbit’s warren of buildings and tunnels, only about half of which are architecturally significant and prominently located. It’s old and is in need of repairs, maintaining it as a fully functioning hospital is likely an overly expensive proposition the provincial health authorities would be disinclined to pursue, especially if they felt they could possibly profit from a real-estate deal.

So cut back – there’s no reason to keep half the space at the site, many of the newer (yet architecturally unappealing and unimportant) buildings could be removed, the space returned to a natural state, extending the reach of the park further south, interacting with the city. Renovate the buildings we want to keep, and turn the facility into a specialized maternity and women’s health hospital, a serene sanctuary atop the mountain, really one of the safest places you could possibly be in the city core.

Oh, and we should get around to opening up the immense tunnel system under the Vic to the public. Make it a tourist attraction, I say. Charge people ten bucks a head to walk around in the steamy underbelly of the city – a modern catacomb.

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2. We have a homeless problem and we need a more comprehensive, effective, solution. As health budgets are cut and persistant unemployment and underemployment keep the working classes locked in a state of near poverty, even our otherwise robust social safety net quickly loses most of its ability. If you’ve walked our city’s streets over the past few years you’ve doubtless noticed there are simply many more poor, homeless and often psychologically impaired individuals in our public spaces.

If we want to change things we’re going to have to develop our own solution – how can we expect governments that favour austerity to preserve their material wealth to help us help those who cannot help themselves? It runs counter-intuitive to the poorly-understood ramblings of Ayn Rand that make up nearly the entirety of contemporary conservative political discourse.

And the PQ, of course, is far more concerned with running PR damage control after the world caught wind of the idiotic and punitive language legislation currently being discussed by an apparently serious independence movement.

All of these plans necessarily require that a future city administration take a leading role in managing these projects, but it’s my hope that our next administration has the common good at the forefront of their minds, and acts accordingly. Creating a facility designed to get the homeless off the streets and back into functioning society should be a top priority, because homelessness is a surprisingly massive strain on our social safety net resources. Not addressing it simply makes it worth, and devalues what our tax dollars are spent on.

A facility like the Chest Hospital is ideal for a homeless shelter because it’s within close proximity of the city core, but wouldn’t have an overly negative impact on local land value – the area is principally student housing as is – but also has a degree of seclusion I believe might facilitate rehabilitation efforts. Even if it was just a 24hr soup kitchen/multi-floor shelter it would still be better than what we currently have, which is to say far too little.

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3. Both Dawson College and Concordia University need new institutional space within proximity of their main campuses, and we’d be wise to retain an additional emergency room in the urban core. The Children’s hospital location is large enough to accomodate a new college pavilion as well as an emergency room/ 24hr clinic. It seems as though every year there are periods in which the ERs are ridiculously over capacity, so why not have one you use specifically on those occasions? The eastern portion of the Children’s is sufficiently large enough it could easily accommodate a spare ER/ round-the-clock city clinic, something else we’re lacking. I can imagine the remaining potion could easily be transformed into classroom space for Dawson, Concordia or any other post-secondary institution short on space.

As an aside, the bit about removing Tupper Street and extending Cabot Square so as to unite a larger block with the eventually converted hospital is as much motivated by my desire to see more students than homeless in Cabot Square as is our need for more green space in general. Why not make a park a touch larger if all that stands in the way is a seldom used side street?

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4. Last I heard Batshaw’s plans for expansion in the West Island is facing stiff opposition from the local ‘concerned citizens brigade’, though their general habit of dancing around the issue makes it very difficult to ascertain precisely what problems they’re anticipating. I’m assuming they think troubled teens getting supervised rehabilitative support is going to devalue adjoining property, or perhaps introduce an unwanted criminal element to their suburban utopia, but let’s face it – I think most people just don’t want to be reminded of the various social ills that exist in any society.

I think we can expect this trend to continue. Suburban land is the least developed, and as a city grows so to does its requirement for a wide variety of things suburbanites desperately need but don’t want to live next to. The inexcusable opposition to Batshaw’s expansion is, though morally wrong, shrill enough to occasionally get its way.

The Shriner’s Hospital location on Cedar solves this problem, somewhat, in that there’s not much else that can be done with the building and it’s surrounded on three side by forest. Cedar is sparsely populated on that stretch, and but a stone’s throw from the General Hospital. It’s conversion into a halfway house and rehabilitative centre for troubled and at-risk youth seems logical enough given the proximity to other Batshaw facilities further south off Atwater and could, much like Hotel-Dieu or the Vic, make excellent use of the rehabilitative qualities of a tranquil and bucolic surrounding.

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Hotel-Dieu in a simpler time… a time of steamships, Kaisers, widespread apocalyptic Marian Visions, and a curious new brain tonic called Coca Cola…

5. Finally, the building I fear is most likely to be converted into a sprawling and hopeless mess of condominiums, the Hotel-Dieu, a historic and culturally significant public space at the foot of the Mountain, perhaps the most easterly extent of the domain. The Hotel-Dieu is more than just an ancient hospital as the religious order that ran it also kept its residence there, and have over the years developed expansive grounds and apparently magnificent (though seldom seen) gardens inside its massive walls. The Hotel-Dieu will soon move on down and merge with the new CHUM/St. Luc super-duper-hospital, leaving many to wonder what comes next. Unlike the Vic, there doesn’t seem to be the same community and institutional convergence to possibly find a new role for it (though that said, I’d be delighted to find out I’m wrong on this one).

I’d argue in favour of converting this space into a massive public seniors’ assisted living complex.

Let’s face it – our future is going to be filled with lots of old people, and the public will require an elevated state of publicly-funded elder care, as our current system is inadequate. The Hotel-Dieu’s grounds are expansive and the buildings large enough to accomodate a significant number of people, even if we were to tear down what wasn’t worth preserving and deemed excess. The grounds offer an urban sanctuary for the residents and use in this respect would guarantee the manicured parkland is used appropriately and not paved over. Large parking lots on the St-Urbain side could be repurposed, and the influx of people may help clean up that stretch of the street. It would certainly stimulate the development of new services to cater to the geriatric mass.

Not to mention, just down the road at La Cité is a comparatively large shopping mall they can walk around in. They’ll have great fun.

That’s all for now, let me know what you think.

Oh – last point because it still, unfortunately, needs to be said. Though most of these facilities are used principally by the local Anglophone community, they are in fact open to all and serve all. Any future developments of these sites should follow in that tradition. It is the hallmark of our cultural identity, we may as well link it, conceptually, with the identity and heritage of the space we occupy.

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Thoughts on Montréal Museums and Major Cultural Institutions

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Avenue du Musée - Montréal (su

I took in the recent Impressionism exhibit at the MMFA on closing day – always an exciting time to visit a museum, even if it is chocked-full of the dilettantes and bridge & tunnel types of our local cultural community. I count myself proudly among them, and either way it’s a nice feeling to see the place at maximum capacity, because I know more often than not I’ve seen the place too empty.

As an aside, after seeing the lines two weeks prior, I decided to get a VIP membership. Would highly recommend, many excellent little bonuses (i.e. no waiting, 10% off in bookstore etc.) and have a gander at the MMFA’s beautiful website while you’re at it.

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Though perhaps times are changing. The museum has been expanding considerably over the last few years – they just opened a dedicated children’s education centre where there was once an ill-suited eye-glass store, and the renovation of the old Erskine & American Presbyterian Church into the new Canadian arts pavilion was completed last year and is an excellent demonstration of the re-purposing of heritage architecture. It looks like the museum is gearing up once more to expand, this time into a fifth pavilion south of the main halls of the Desmarais Pavilion on Sherbrooke. The new building will be completed in five years to house a sizeable collection of Old Master paintings donated by Michal and Renata Hornstein. Cost is $25 million and to be paid by the province. Here’s the presser announcing the finalists.

Based on some of the renderings I’ve seen, this new pavilion will extend far enough south to make it nearly at the Hall Building’s doorstep, and thus it’s likely the city, Concordia and the museum may conspire to connect the museum to the university. Doing so would link up to disconnected pieces of the Underground City, the museum’s tunnel under Sherbrooke Street and Concordia’s tunnel system, recently extended from the Métro to the library and hall buildings.

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Though the initial cost estimate may seem very low and likely to change, perhaps what we build over the next five years (in the lead-up to the city’s 375th anniversary and the nation’s sesquicentennial) won’t get taxed by “Monsieur 3%”. From what I’ve heard from some ‘well-placed sources’ in the local construction industry, the Charbonneau Commission has at the very least succeeded in making people far more discreet in their dealings, and cost throttling and the various other acts of brazen corruption we’ve been discussing are not occurring to the same degree as they once did. All that to say, build now while we’re being cautious.

The provincial government, whether federally-inclined or not, should nonetheless take advantage of up-coming anniversaries and invest heavily in the development, renovation, rehabilitation and beautification of the city of Montréal in particular. Call it Keynesian economics, call it keeping up appearances or straightforward opportunism, regardless, investments in these areas helped us mitigate economic troubles in the past, we’d be wise to consider them again. In fact, it would be nice to have a civic administration that took a leading role in cultural development, but I digress.

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In other museum-related news, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal is also planning an expansion of sorts, though the scuttlebutt is that rather than acquire a new building or renovating the existing structure, the MACM needs to build an entirely new facility.

I tend to agree. Though I wouldn’t call it an eyesore I also wouldn’t call it a museum – it looks like they repurposed a parking garage. I’m generally disinclined to knock down anything built as recently as 1992, but considering how much of an imposition an uninspired and far too small building can be on a site such as the Place des Arts, Place des Festivals, I honestly think it needs to be re-conceived nearly from scratch. Apparently less than 2% of the total collection is on display at any one time and this is aside from the current difficulties regarding public access to their archives and documentation centres. Moreover, the museum is not directly connected to the Métro.

Perhaps this is why Alexandre Taillefer is so keen to move Calder’s Man – maybe he wants it as an integral part of a wholly redesigned MACM (of which he is chairman of the board.)

I would rather see our contemporary art museum prominently display an original piece created with a specific purpose in mind. Moreover, I’d want that piece to not only be emblematic of the museum, but made by a local as well.

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Of course, should a complete re-development be required (and I’d argue that it should be seriously considered given that a new facility could better unite Place des Arts with Place des Festivals) we’d have to deal with the collection and where to store it. I’d argue strongly in favour of putting it up at the airport, something done by Atlanta’s fascinating mayor quite recently, and otherwise put as much of the collection on display in choice public areas – institutional buildings, public space, Métro stations and perhaps even strewn about the city in small temporary rented galleries. Why not make art far, far more accessible and public?

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A few after-thoughts. Some museums we could use:

1. Either a new pavilion for the McCord or an independent gallery altogether, dedicated to the photography of William Notman & Sons. There’s simply no better record of late Victorian and turn of the century Montréal than Notman and I’m absolutely certain it would be a smash hit – the displays along McGill College always seem to catch passers-by. I’d love to know if there’s ever been any serious thought concerning this.

2. A museum and ‘interpretive centre’ dedicated to hockey, and Montréal’s role in the development of modern professional hockey as we know it. I say interpretive centre because I think it would be neat to give people the opportunity to experience hockey as it was back in the beginning, such as by offering a venue for ‘historical hockey’ (in a manner similar to old-rules 19th century baseball re-enactors). Not exactly hip but definite fun for tourists, school outings and families. Plus we have an added advantage in that the Victoria Rink still stands on its original location downtown. Though it would be a considerable renovation effort to convert it back into a functioning hockey rink (especially if the original details were to be restored), I can imagine some corporate sponsors could turn this into a reality. Plus it would provide a venue of sorts, something the deep downtown is sorely lacking.

3. A larger and more comprehensive natural history museum, ideally located far from existing ‘cultural focal points’ while remaining within the periphery of the central business district. I can’t think of a location off the top of my head, but having been to the Redpath within the last few years I can say it’s clearly too small even for their small collection, and a more modern facility could help it secure far higher attendance and better serve the local school boards, among others. Putting a collection together these days is a little more difficult considering no one wants to be responsible for the slaughter of elephants, tigers and other endangered animals, and the concept of a natural history museum may seem a bit antiquated, but I’m certain we could put a sufficiently modern twist on the notion to make it more suitable for Montréal’s needs.

And yeah, we need to make sure kids understand that the oil in Alberta comes from extinct dinosaurs and not the magical hand of god. A natural history museum with some fearsome looking dinosaur recreations can help us inoculate our children against creationism, and if there was ever an unaddressed public health concern that’s it in my books.

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