Tag Archives: Montréal Urban Planning

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

Even More Fantasy Métro Maps!

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Trams at Place d'Armes ca. 1940s (Montréal)
Trams at Place d’Armes ca. 1940s (Montréal)

I love finding these – so much to think about.

It goes without saying I think we need to prioritize public transit expansion in our city. We need to transition off of our over-reliance on automobiles, cut down considerably on local pollution, gridlock and the endless cycles of roadway destruction. Train, subways, buses, trams etc. are all part of a veritable transit cocktail we’ll need to build over the course of the coming generations to make public transit the principle fashion by which we get around the city.

And there’s really only one fundamental underlying reason why we need to expand – it will make money for the city and allow you to keep more of yours. Cars cost a fortune in terms of fuel, insurance, repairs and maintenance. Roads require constant renovations because of the massive quantities of corrosive salt we need to pour on them every year just to keep the roadway passable in the winter months, and this in turn means every year your tax-dollars are being wasted repeating the same work. The combination of these factors have made driving a bit of a hassle in a city which is lovely to drive in – a shame. If we had a public transit system so well developed personal automobiles were used far more sparingly, not only would the value of the car increase while its associated costs decrease, we’d also be able to potentially cut back on costs associated with road maintenance as well.

And as our recent massive snow-storm has revealed, public transit is absolutely vital when the roads are otherwise impassable, especially the systems we have (such as the Métro and Réso) which allow the city to continue operating regardless of conditions outside. It’s a strong argument for why we need to expand the Métro system and Réso concurrently, and seek to include as much direct access to residential and office buildings as possible.

But there’s no single transit system which will solve all of our transit needs, and I’m very much in favour of utilizing different systems to connect different parts of the city in different ways. That said, even if we use diverse modes, there should be a single agency running the show for the whole of the metropolitan region. I point again to Vancouver’s TransitLink as an excellent example we should follow. A single agency with a single transit police, single fare, single union, single collective bargaining agreement and most importantly, a single (massive) pension fund and planning department. More organized, lower overhead cost, more accessible – we can’t go wrong.

This would be something I’d like to see in the coming years, as it would make public transit not only more effective but efficient as well. Greater public transit integration and efficiency passes the savings back to tax-payer in better service while allowing more revenue to be generated on the whole.

Put another way, the status quo is very expensive and the cost is going to rise. If the city gets out ahead of this issue and plans for a massive transition we can start reaping the benefits sooner, and we’ll be better off the earlier we start.

That said, let’s consider three new fantasy mass transit systems I’ve recently come across.

Métro extension and LRT proposal by Dashspeed
Métro extension and LRT proposal by Dashspeed

I’ve posted plans by ‘Dashspeed’ before as I found them all pretty interesting. This one’s novel because it presents a modest Métro expansion plan along with the development of an integrated LRT system.

Métro expansions would include a five and three-station extension on either side of the Orange Line (west and east respectively) without closing the loop and six stations to the Blue Line towards Anjou. These are very likely developments given population growth in Saint-Laurent, Petite-Patrie, Rosemont, Saint-Leonard and Anjou. What’s fascinating here is the idea that the airport ought to be served by a new Métro line which in this case would follow part of the once-proposed western extension of the Blue Line and link it up with Bonaventure and Peel stations (and Gare Centrale by extension) with an apparent stop somewhere very close to the Mountain. Based on the map I wonder if the idea isn’t to dig out a Métro tunnel alongside the existing Mount Royal Tunnel. What an impressive job that would be!

I like this proposed Red Line development, but I like the proposed LRT network even more. It’s an effective way of providing a higher capacity alternative to a bus while spending less on infrastructure. Examples: the Magenta Line connects Bonaventure and Windsor station with Griffintown, Goose Village, Pointe-St-Charles and Nun’s Island, the Grey Line crosses the Champlain Bridge and serves all the South Shore communities from Brossard to Longueuil, there attaching to the Yellow Line. A Violet Line connects Papineau station, crosses the bridge and on to Saint-Hubert Airport, a Blue Line LRT runs from a proposed intermodal station at the Université de Montréal through Cote-des-Neiges, Saint-Laurent and Laval onto Mirabel Airport. Dashspeed also includes some ‘redundancy’ lines, such as the tram running along The Main from Jean-Talon to Place-d’Armes on the Métro Orange Line and along Boul. Decarie and Marcel-Laurin.

I also like how the tram lines anticipate future on-island densification, and that the West Island requires a comprehensive tram network if we have any hope of cutting back on their car dependency. I think buses have outlived their utility, and reserved-lane LRTs could serve the area much better. Also, interesting idea to have both LRTs and a Métro Line connecting directly to Trudeau.

Métro expansion by JohnQPublic (?)
Métro expansion by JohnQMetro

This plan is pretty bold and would, if implemented, greatly increase the area we consider to be ‘urban Montréal’. A lot of this based on other plans touted about for years, such as extending both ends of the Blue and Green Lines, having part of the Yellow Line twinned with the Green Line in the downtown, using the Métro to connect to Trudeau Airport and closing the Orange Line to form a loop.

What’s novel here is the orientation of the map, more aligned with true north than we’re used to. Doing so makes the case for eastern and northern development a bit easier – I think we too easily forget there’s 500,000 people on the other side of the river and another half-million living in the ring of northern suburbs. These areas need to be better connected to the CBD, in a more direct fashion. The Red Line in this example would connect Griffintown, PSC, Goose Village and Nun’s Island to the CBD in addition to the Plateau and McGill Ghetto. A true North-South Line is a very novel proposal indeed, and would seek to link to separate but nonetheless iconic neighbourhoods. We could call it the Hipster Line.

Other neat ideas here Рa Parc Avenue focused M̩tro Line linking the city with Brossard and Saint Laurent. Also, many more two-line access stations and a M̩tro linked directly to the Montreal General Hospital and Rockcliffe Apartments over Cote-des-Neiges road.

It also occurred to me looking at this design that spacing out stops farther away from the city is a neat solution to the problem of population density in transitional residential zones. One of the many arguments against Métro expansion is that many think it would require stops as frequent as we currently have, which in turn would make the commute very long indeed. By stretching the average distance between stations Métro trains could conceivably reach higher speeds. As population density increases new stops can be placed in between.

Métro expansion and surface tram proposal by Richard Sunichura
Métro expansion and surface tram proposal by Richard Sunichura

Our final entry is like the former heavily influenced by contemporary planning and proposals, including a Pie-IX Line going up into Montréal North and RdP, closing the Orange Line loop, and adding a few stations to the ends of the existing lines. I find this plan a bit underwhelming and think too many stations have been added to the Orange Line in Laval. I’m also not crazy about having a y-shaped Métro Line even if part of it is attached to the airport. This plan also utilizes trams, but does so as if to build bridges between Métro lines almost as if to bypass them. Final point on this one, utilizing the Mount Royal Tunnel for a Métro Line is one thing, but this makes it seem as if a Métro Line would be built under the CN track and AMT’s Deux-Montagnes Line all the way to Pierrefonds. I’m not sure what the logic is here unless.

In any event, glad people are still making these. If we truly want our city to grow we’re going to have to start thinking big about public transit in Montréal. The bigger and more useful the system, the more we all save in car-related expenses we no longer have. Not having to plunk down anywhere from $15,000-45,000 every ten-to-twelve years would mean a lot more money in your pocket.

Think about it – this isn’t hippy-dippy bullshit, it’s basic economics and the cost of a personal car is high and getting higher. Providing an efficient and comprehensive alternative throughout the metropolitan region by extension transfers a considerable amount of disposable income back into the pockets of the citizenry.

A thought for the New Year perhaps. Change is coming in November.

Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment

New Real Estate – L’Avenue Condominiums

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L’Avenue Condos perspective rendering, from the southwest at the bottom of Drummond.

I’m keen on the design of this building even though I’m not 100% sold on how this area is being developed. There’s no doubt in my mind L’Avenue is going to be an important landmark on our future city-scape, but I’d nonetheless prefer to see the city take a leading role in conceptualizing an overall design plan for the area. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun though, the four principle projects in the immediate vicinity of the Bell Centre are all still in their sales phase, it will be a while still before we get to see this.

But once it’s up, I think it will be a stunning addition to our skyline.

It will be the tallest residential building in the city, stacking up at fifty storeys with 325 suites offering one, two and three-room models, each fitted with high ceilings, and a private balcony, not to mention what would doubtless be some rather spectacular views up amongst the giants of the city centre.

The tower is composed of three distinct volumes blended into one another in a staggered fashion, growing out and up from the southwest towards the northeast much like a fountain. It’s stationed on an eight-storey base the developer hopes will be primarily utilized as commercial retail and office space, following a trend I noticed recently in Vancouver combining commercial and residential properties into an iconic building where the attractive tower is principally mixed-use residential. The L-shape will have the tower focused on Rue Drummond, with a spacious courtyard providing an exclusive address on an otherwise uninhabited part of the street. The alternating use of dark tinted glass and dark exterior finishings with the slight blue tint of the less opaque glass does a good job hiding the balconies, which the developer pointed out as one of the fundamental elements of urban living – access to a full size exterior space on an individual level is key, though like many other recent condo towers and urban living concepts, residents will also have access to large shared facilities as well.

Suffice it to say if I had the money I’d consider living here, as at the very least I’m already convinced the building will age well and likely be a coveted address for some time to come. If the market stabilizes and we somehow evade a major housing market correction, this could become a valuable piece of downtown property.

What concerns me is that the city is completely uninvolved in any form of urban planning in this new high-density, urban residential neighbourhood. It’s both fascinating and somewhat confounding. The projects listed (such as L’Avenue and it’s soon to be neighbours, Roccabella, Icone and Tour de Canadiens de Montréal) are listed as part of the Montréal 2025 ‘master-plan’ but the city is so far leaving this plan’s ‘design’ up to market demand. So far the market has proven at least interested, but without the city’s involvement some no-brainer elements of neighbourhood design are being forgotten entirely.

My primary concern is that the city has so far made no plans to utilize the massive amount of development in this sector to expand the Underground City.

Here we have L’Avenue, in addition to the other buildings to go up in the parking lot adjacent to the Bell Centre, but they won’t be connected to the Réso system quite literally across the street. If the city were to mandate the construction of a Réso tunnel running north from the Bell Centre towards Boul. de Maisonneuve, several buildings (such as those to be built, in addition to the Cité du Commerce Electronique, the Sheraton Centre, Tour CIBC, La Crystal de la Montagne and the future Maison Ogilvie redevelopment) would be directly connected to the underground infrastructure, two Métro lines and four Métro stations. In addition, we would finally have a legitimate residential component to the Underground City and we’d further have the means to link up numerous additional medium sized residential buildings located between Peel Métro and the Réso component at Concordia’s Sir George Williams campus. It would help ease traffic circulation, increase the value of attached properties, and allow greater access to the public mass-transit system. Of all the natural extensions of the Réso, the concentration of large-scale redevelopment projects in the sector roughly bounded by de Maisonneuve, St-Antoine, de la Montagne and Peel makes this area the best choice for expansion.

Then of course there’s the lack of social services. The city hasn’t mandated any new schools, daycares, medical clinics, community or cultural spaces of any kind in this area (or any other part of the downtown for that matter). Granted the developments are principally being oriented towards singles and young couples without families, but in order to better establish a sense of community in this sector, such facilities are necessary so as to attract and retain families. Families are typically far better wealth generators and wealth maintainers than individuals and couples who are invariably more mobile; in other words families might be less inclined to simply flip their property relatively shortly after initial purpose. Why will people continue living in a place so many quickly move out of? What’s the attraction for someone to stay here?

Providing an access tunnel would give the new developments a degree of marketable cachet, but going a step further, so as to include the building blocks of an identifiable neighbourhood, would help these buildings acquire something more valuable – a sense of permanency.

Without such a sense, buildings like these will be more greatly affected by changes in the market and personal tastes. In my eyes, the development’s investment potential and financial security is more secure if the city matches private investment with public, sustainable social development.

With this in mind I would hope the city takes the very broad 2025 plan and divide it up into smaller constituent parts, conceptualizing our shared space in terms of small-scale viable neighbourhoods in a large, multi-faceted urban centre.

A modest proposal, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Political commentary, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Urban Agriculture & Sustainable Self-Sufficiency

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Will Allen is an agriculturalist and retired NBA player who runs Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, largely for his work in developing an incredibly efficient, high-output urban farm and community agricultural project. On a two acre piece of land, the last remaining operational farm in the city limits, he’s managed to create a facility that can turn out a surprising amount of food (roughly 300 market sized baskets to 20 agencies in the City of Milwaukee, every week). His work is rooted in a philosophy of food security, i.e. that a city or country be able to sustain access to and the production of safe, nutritious and sufficient food for its population. Evidently, this is far from a given for most people in this country, let alone the world, despite the egregious sums of food we consume and produce.

rooftop garden Montreal Gazette

Food Security activists point out the overt commercialization of agriculture on a global scale as a fundamental reason why there’s still mass malnutrition despite over-abundant production. In response to this trend they promote the development of urban agriculture to secure access to organic and locally-cultivated produce as an alternative to mass-produced, industrialized food, for the urban masses.

On a broad scale, an urban agriculture initiative, such as Growing Power has demonstrated, includes both functioning farms as well as community farming centres where individuals are empowered to develop their own vegetable plots, community gardens, green roofs and alleyways. In this way Mr. Allen has been able to create a self-sustaining and self-sufficient agricultural project that provides wholesome food for several hundred people in Milwaukee.

Now what if a city were to take his idea and expand it to serve a population in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions?

What if it was a civic responsibility to ensure access to wholesome farm produce in the same way it’s responsible for providing clean drinking water?

I think Montréal may already be well positioned to do just that.

coalition
George Vanier community garden, credit to John Kenney of The Gazette

Over the past few years there’s been growing interest in rooftop gardening, green alleys and a variety of small-scale urban agriculture projects in our city, all in the interest of food security. Notable examples would include the likes of Santropol Roulant, the Concordia Greenhouse and People’s Potato, and the world famous Lufa Farms, among others.

But a recent report by an organization dedicated to researching urban agriculture for the city gave a big thumbs down to having poultry in the city, but were otherwise ‘favourable’ to encouraging community gardening and bee-keeping. While I’m glad this commission is seeking to expand the city’s community gardening initiatives, I’m disappointed there aren’t any daring, imaginative proposals.

Growing Power, as an example, has over 200 chickens, 50 ducks, a half-dozen turkeys, twenty-odd goats and produces thousands of pounds of perch and tilapia every year, in addition to some 20,000 cultivated plants and ten million tons of compost. And all this from a two-acre plot of land. Energy and water projects are increasing the farm’s relative independence from utilities, and methods employed by the staff at Growing Power assure all produce is cultivated in a sustainable, ecologically-sound manner.

Don’t tell me we couldn’t do something like this here. Heck, we could probably do it better, on a larger scale to feed more people. We happen to have a city built on very rich soil, with expansive low-density suburbs and decently-sized plots of land. If we were inclined to do so, we could develop urban agricultural facilities large enough to ensure food banks and soup kitchens were always well-stocked, and that quality local organic produce was always immediately available to the urban public.

roofluffa
Lufa Farms, Montréal

I don’t think it’s that crazy either – less than a hundred years ago there was a far higher degree of local food security and a greater degree of access to farm fresh produce, something that has been lost in the era of mass consumerism. A move in the opposite direction, to restore local food security and (potentially) to utilize urban agriculture to eliminate local malnutrition (and perhaps even as a source of revenue), could be implemented with a comparatively modest budget. Moreover, we have an agricultural college, in addition to remaining tracts of undeveloped, arable land, on-island.

After seeing this video I thought to myself – shit, imagine the money we’d save, both collectively and individually, if we were empowered to sustain our own nourishment. The drain malnourishment, obesity, poor nutrition and all the related health problems place on our society is likely far greater than we think, and the cost of food these days unnaturally high. Urban agriculture initiatives with an aim towards sustainability, self-sufficiency and food security could reverse this trend and provide a boon to our local economy.

Put another way, if food is the petrol of the human machine, we live on an oil field.

And every house with a yard, every rooftop, terrace, balcony and alleyway throughout the city is a potential derrick.

***

A closing thought.

A recent article on Coolopolis concerning the future of Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance proposed that the site be razed and sold for redevelopment to increase the municipal tax base. The primo location, right in the heart of the city, has been an eyesore and a waste of space ever since the subsidized housing project was built in the late 1950s, and would doubtless be very quickly developed into expensive condominiums, possible expansions of UQAM, commercial buildings, hotels and new cultural facilities.

I would agree – subsidized housing projects of this kind are obsolete and ineffective. It’s far better to decentralize subsidized housing, evenly distributing it throughout a large metropolitan area.

I can imagine this space may be redeveloped within the next ten years. But at just over 17 acres I wonder if there might not be some room that could be used to implement a project similar to that of Mr. Allen’s.

Or for that matter how much food could be produced using Mr. Allen’s technique on a 17 acre plot?

Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal on Film, Perspectives on the City, Photographs, Urban Redevelopment

A Snowstorm in the new Place d’Armes

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Place d’Armes, Montréal – December 23rd 2011 (renovations recently completed)

Looking North-Northwest from the plaza, with the Place d’Armes Hotel at centre and New York Life Insurance Building (1887) at right.

Montréal’s Notre Dame Basilica (1824-1843)

A focus on the 1948 addition to the Bank of Montreal Head Office, replacing the old Central Post Office. A fascinating minimalist late-Art Deco construction opposite the more elaborate Aldred Building (1927-1931)

As you can see, the recently completed renovations now feature a tile motif on the ground demonstrating the area occupied by the original Notre Dame Church

Kinda like a snow-globe eh?

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

A Resolution: to be Even Better than the Real Thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Getting Smarter About Public Education in Montréal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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