Balconville
THURSDAY,
MAY 27, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF
MONTREAL, 02.05.04 : RIALTO THEATRE,
PARC AVENUE
MONTREAL, 02.05.04 : SUNSHINE ON
BERNARD STREET
MONTREAL, 30.04.04 : HOUSE ON WAVERLY
STREET, MILE END
MONTREAL, 09.05.04 : SUNDAY AT THE
TAM-TAMS
MONTREAL, 01.05.04 : SOCCER IN AN
OUTREMONT PARK
MONTREAL, 01.05.04 : HANGING CLOTHES
OUT TO DRY, MILE END
MONTREAL, 01.05.04 : ICE CREAM ON
MONT-ROYAL AVENUE
MONTREAL, 02.05.04 : STE-CATHERINE
STREET AT PEEL
MONTREAL, 07.05.04 : INSTALLING A
BILLBOARD, PARC AVENUE
MONTREAL, 08.05.04 : VIEW FROM
WESTMOUNT
MONTREAL, 01.05.04 : SIGN ON PARC
AVENUE AT ST-VIATEUR
MONTREAL, 08.05.04 : PRO-DEMERGER SIGN
IN WESTMOUNT
MONTREAL, 09.05.04 : SUNDAY AT THE
TAM-TAMS
MONTREAL, 30.04.04 : AFTERNOON ON
WAVERLY STREET, MILE END
MONTREAL, 11.05.04 : TOURISTS AT PLACE
D'ARMES
It's made the rounds in the
local news, but, given my quasi-obsession with Montreal
balconies, I thought I'd tell you about it here. A new study
by Leger Marketing confirms what just about everybody has
always known: Montrealers really like their balconies. It
turns out that 80 percent of all Montrealers have access to a
balcony, compared to 63 percent in Quebec City. Using this
data, Leger estimated that there are 1.65 million balconies in
the city, which means an average of 1.16 balconies per
dwelling. 46 percent of all balconies are at the back of the
apartment while 36 are at the front.
Even more interesting, from
a cultural standpoint, is how often people use their
balconies. The most frequent balcony dwellers are middle-class
francophones with kids, who use their balconies an average of
around eight hours per week. Non-francophones, by contrast,
use their balconies 6.4 hours a week while the unemployed
spend only 6.2 hours on their balcony. On the whole, the
average Montrealer spends a whopping two weeks of the year
sitting outside on their balcon.
The findings don't exactly
support the notion that working-class people use their
balconies the most, something suggested by Quebec popular
culture. Even the term Balconville itself (which comes
from a phrase, "passer ses vacances à Balconville," which
means spending the summer in the city) suggests a life
constrained by poverty, as people spend the hot season on
balconies rather than heading out to the country. Then again,
maybe the working-class francophone balcony culture of old has
simply been carried on to today's francophone middle class,
which might explain the difference in time spent on balconies
between francophones and non-francophones.
―――
Poets and
urban photographers take note: Glass Steel and Stone, a
website devoted to architecture, is accepting submissions for
their annual
urban photography contest. This year's theme is "lunch"
and all photos must be submitted by September 1. The website
is also holding an
urban poetry contest. What do winners get? Exposure on
Glass Steel and Stone and a couple of solid bronze skyscraper
statuettes.
Montrealers
take note: Memories of Mile End is gearing up for another
summer of Mile End tours. If you want to see first-hand the
neighbourhood in which I take a lot of my photos, you'll
definitely want to join their walking tour of Mile End's
residential heritage. It takes place Saturday, June 5 in
English and June 6 in French, from 2pm to 4:30pm. The tour
starts on the steps of the Saint-Enfant-Jésus church on
St-Dominique in between Laurier and St-Joseph. It costs $8 per
person and no reservation is required, but if you want more
information you can phone 514 849 9543.
While I'm
on an announcement roll, I might as well tell you about
my new column on Maisonneuve magazine's spiffy new
website. Join me every second Friday as I talk about ― what
else? ― cities and the multitude of issues that relate to
them.
Discuss this post on our discussion forum
Head over to the archives for
last month's posts
City under
the hill
MONDAY,
MAY 17, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : HANGING THE
LAUNDRY OFF NOTRE-DAME
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : HOUSE ON BEAUDOIN
STREET
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : THE LACHINE CANAL
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : RAILROAD
UNDERPASS, NOTRE-DAME STREET
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : LOOKING NORTH UP
BEAUDOIN STREET
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 :
SIR-GEORGE-ÉTIENNE-CARTIER SQUARE
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : ST-ZOTIQUE CHURCH
ON NOTRE-DAME
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : CORNER OF
ST-PHILIPPE AND ST-JACQUES
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : CAT ON
ST-PHILIPPE STREET
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : MOMENT OF
REFLECTION IN PARC ST-HENRI
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : UNDER THE
VILLE-MARIE EXPRESSWAY
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : GRAFFITI NEAR THE
VILLE-MARIE
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : PARC SAINT-HENRI
MONTREAL, 12.05.04 : HOUSE FACING
ST-HENRI PARK
All of this week's photos
were taken in St-Henri, a neighbourhood in Montreal's
southwest. Strung out along the industrial Lachine Canal,
St-Henri has always been part of the "city under the hill":
the working-class districts spreading out from the
mountainside mansions of Westmount and the old Golden Square
Mile. Here's an excerpt from Gabrielle Roy's 1945 novel The
Tin Flute, set in St-Henri:
He came to with a
start and went on toward Notre Dame Street. Nothing, it
seemed, nothing tonight could take his mind off that skinny
girl, with her burning eyes which he could see like an enigma
behind the steaming counter at the Five and Ten.
The clock of St.
Henri's Church stood at a quarter to eight when he reached the
heart of the neighbourhood.
He stopped in the
middle of St. Henri Square, a vast area furrowed by the
railway and two streetcar tracks, a crossroads planted with
black and white posts and level-crossing gates, a clearing of
asphalt and dirty snow, open between bell towers and
domes to the assault of howling locomotives, the peal of the
great bells, the raucous streetcar gong and the unending
traffic of Notre Dame and St. James streets. Almost every
night now, adding to the anguish and darkness of St. Henri,
came the distant tramp of heavy boots and the roll of drums,
sometimes coming from Notre Dame, sometimes from as far away
as the armouries up on the heights of Westmount, when the wind
blew down from the mountain.
Then all these
noises were drowned.
A drawn-out
trembling shook the suburb.
At Atwater Street,
at Rose-de-Lima, at the rue du Couvent and now at St. Henri
Square, the level-crossing gates were being lowered. Here,
where two main streets entered the square, their eight wooden
arms, black and white with gleaming red signal lamps, met and
brought the traffic to a stop.
At these four
neighbouring crossings, morning and evening, the crowd of
pedestrians paused to let the train go by, and impatient lines
of cars idled in their stifling exhaust, many sounding their
horns in fury, as if St. Henri were suddenly giving vent to
its exasperation at these howling trains which sliced it
violently in two with such intolerable frequency.
The train rolled
by. The acrid smell of coal filled the street. A swirl of soot
rose just above the rooftops, then, as it began to swoop down,
the belfry of St. Henri's Church appeared, floating, without a
base, like a phantom arrow amid the clouds. Then the clock
appeared,. Its lighted face pierced an opening in the trail of
smoke, and little by little the whole church was to be seen,
high architecture in the Jesuit style. In the middle of the
front yard a Sacred Heart statue received the last
particles of soot with open arms. The parish appeared again
out of the smog, falling into place with its own tranquil
durability. School, church, convent: a close-knit,
centuries0old alliance, as strong in the heart of the urban
jungle as in the Laurentian valleys. Beyond them, streets with
low houses descended in two directions toward the areas of
greater poverty, on this side to Workman Street and St.
Antoine, and, on the other down to the Lachine Canal where St.
Henri stuffs its mattresses, spins its thread of silk or
cotton, runs its looms, reels off its spools, while the earth
trembles at the rushing trains, and the foghorns blast, and
the ships, engines, screws, rails and whistles spell out the
adventure of the world.
Today's St-Henri is a far
quieter place. The last mattresses were stuffed long ago and
the factories are now closed, either abandoned or ― more
likely ― converted into sedate loft apartments. Foghorns no
longer echo through narrow, rickety streets, as the canal was
closed in the 1970s (but reopened two years ago to
recreational boating).
Trains, though, trains still
rumble through St-Henri. The surface crossings are mostly gone
― one of the railways was turned into a bike path ― but the
crash and boom of the long iron giants still floats over the
neighbourhood through the humid nighttime air.
Humid seems a particularly apt
word for today's St-Henri, since my memories of it seem mostly
rooted in the heavy days of summer, when jungly greenery
sprouts in every corner of the neighbourhood and bicyclists
sail briskly along the banks of the canal. Even on sunny days,
the sky in St-Henri somehow seems hazier, more leaden than
elsewhere in Montreal. I think my friend Michael McKenna's
description of St-Henri suits its present-day atmosphere:
In the summer
it is very easy to live in the southwest. Plants grow
everywhere and around June 20 you get mists of flies following
some aphid lupercalia on the canal banks. I got pizza by the
slice every night since it was across the street, a crush on
the cashier, rode my bike home from the plateau and from
Montreal and from the rest of the world in humid 2 a.m's. My
friend on Saint Ferdinand had roof access and up there the
broad strokes ― the highway, the canal, the
uncomfortable vastness of Lionel-Groulx and lower Atwater
―
delineating our little Newark from the second city of the
francophone world were in so many ways absolute.
Discuss this post on our discussion forum
Head over to the archives for
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Too many immigrants?
SATURDAY,
MAY 8, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF
MONTREAL, 20.04.04 : ST-LAURENT
BOULEVARD AT DUSK
MONTREAL, 15.04.04 : SOCCER AT RACHEL
AND THE MAIN
MONTREAL, 27.04.04 : MOM AND KIDS,
MONKLAND AVENUE
MONTREAL, 08.04.04 : JEAN-TALON MARKET
IN EARLY APRIL
MONTREAL, 29.03.04 : CLEANING THE
WINDOW, ESPLANADE STREET
MONTREAL, 15.04.04 : PHONE CALL, PINE
AT ST-LAURENT
MONTREAL, 15.04.04 : KEEPING AN EYE ON
THINGS, PRINCE ARTHUR
MONTREAL, 22.04.04 : CONVERSATION AT
PARC AND BERNARD
MONTREAL, 16.04.04 : SHARING A SMOKE,
RUE ST-DENIS
MONTREAL, 16.04.04 : ST-DENIS NEAR
RACHEL
MONTREAL, 23.04.04 : HANGING OUT THE
LAUNDRY, MILE END
MONTREAL, 23.04.04 : BLOOMFIELD
STREET, OUTREMONT
MONTREAL, 27.04.04 : STE-CATHERINE
FROM THE SECOND FLOOR
MONTREAL, 28.04.04 : OGILVY AVENUE,
PARK EXTENSION
MONTREAL, 27.04.04 : REFLECTION IN A
WINDOW, PARC AVENUE
A couple weeks ago, in the
Globe and Mail, the columnist Margaret Wente decided to take on
the issue of Toronto's so-called "necklace of poverty," referring to the
increasingly destitute belt of postwar suburbia that surrounds
Toronto's inner city. Beneath the apparent multiculti
wonderland of Chinese supermarkets and old Pakistani men
gathered in malls, she writes, are communities plagued with
gang crime, single mothers, low education levels and the
burden of educating thousands of new kids who don't speak
English. According to groups like the United Way, the key to
solving these issues is "more affordable housing, more income
supports, more training, parks, community centres and
crisis-intervention programs." According to Wente, however,
it's not just an issue of social justice. The problem is that
there are too many immigrants. Of course, "to say that
immigration levels might be too high sounds racist, so
polite people don't say it," but Wente is a rebel. She's not
afraid to say it.
Wente isn't alone in
suggesting that the very abundance of immigrants is the root
of problems in immigrant communities. A
number of Canadians now argue that too many immigrants are
being allowed into Canada, a situation that is creating stiff competition
for jobs, housing and the like. It's true that Canada welcomes
more immigrants per capita than any other developed nation in
the world and that immigrants today are having more problems
finding work than immigrants a couple of decades ago.
High-profile problems with gangs and crime have hurt some
immigrant communities in Toronto and Vancouver. Presumably, all of these
problems would go away if the government would just pick up
its axe and hack away at yearly immigrant quotas. That ignores, however, the
long neglect of social programs and the impact it has had on
the most downtrodden elements of society, immigrants and
refugees included. Furthermore, Canada's immigrants are not a monolithic bunch,
so just because one ethnic community is having a hard time
doesn't mean they all are. Even Wente points out that, while some immigrant communities,
such as Jamaicans, suffer disproportionately from crime and
poverty, others, such as Koreans, seem to flourish.
Well, gee, that sort of
undermines the entire previous bit about immigrant problems
not being an issue of social justice, doesn't it? If one
vulnerable group of immigrants comes to Canada and is mired in
poverty while another more well-off group of immigrants comes
and succeeds, it doesn't take much to conclude that the more
vulnerable group is going to need more help and attention.
Hence, an issue of social justice.
A few days after Wente's
column appeared, the Globe published a letter that went even
further, blaming immigrants for the sprawl and
"overpopulation" of Toronto. It reminded me of the growing
faction of anti-immigration environmentalists in the United
States. Since Americans consume (and waste) more than any
other people on earth, they insist, allowing a steady stream of
immigrants to enter the United States only exacerbates the
problem. Keep them away and there will be fewer people to make
cities sprawl and fewer SUVs to pollute the American air. Of course, such
logic ignores the fact that the worst environmental horrors
are found in the developing world, in the unchecked pollution
of China's factories and the horrendous overcrowding of
cities like Lagos. It also neglects the basic humanitarian
aspect of immigration: why force someone to suffer inhumane
conditions in poor countries if they want to try their luck in
the safer, healthier, developed world? Sure, he or she might
eventually make a lot of money, buy a suburban tract home,
consume untold numbers of Big Macs and roar down seven-lane
freeways in a Hummer, but that doesn't have to be the case. It
would be far more productive for environmentalists and other
activists to chip away at the attitudes and government
policies that encourage such wastefulness on the part of
Americans than it would be to simply quarantine the country.
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