The Battle for Park Continues
Last Saturday, on a chilly, overcast afternoon, I found myself at the foot of the Sir George Étienne Cartier monument on Mount Royal with about two hundred other people. We were there to protest Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s plan to rename Montreal’s Park Avenue after former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, a plan that was hatched in secret and announced without any warning. (For background on the issue, see my two previous posts.) After twenty minutes of hanging around the park, enjoying the supportive honks of passing motorists, we marched to Tremblay’s house in Outremont, where we lambasted the mayor for his refusal to consult the public or even his own party’s councillors before deciding to erase a historically important 123-year-old name.
Naturally, the mayor wasn’t home, but our point got through: since then, several major columnists, public figures, organizations and city councillors have declared their opposition to the renaming.
A misguided attempt by Tremblay to silence dissent in his own ranks — a tersely-worded memo that ordered councillors not to speak publicly on the matter — backfired when it was leaked to the media. “The elected officials are adults,” huffed one of Tremblay’s councillors, Marvin Rotrand, in yesterday’s Gazette. “I’m sure all the members of the caucus feel the liberty to comment on issues when they want to. That’s what they were elected to do.” Rotrand went on to demand public consultation before changing the street name. Meanwhile, Michael Applebaum, the borough mayor of NDG and Côte-des-Neiges, told La Presse that he has received dozens of emails from angry citizens and is constantly stopped in the street by people who complain about the renaming.
Many others have weighed in. In an open letter to the mayor that appeared in Tuesday’s Le Devoir, Phyllis Lambert, the founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and a member of the Bronfman dynasty (it was her who recommended Mies van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson for her family’s Seagram Building, on that other Park Avenue in New York) insisted upon the historical and cultural relevance of Park Avenue’s name. “L’avenue du Parc, vous le savez, porte un nom qui recèle une histoire et s’inscrit dans le tissu profond de notre ville,” she wrote, reminding Tremblay with more than a little irony that it was the “collective will of the citizens and city council” that led to the creation of Mount Royal Park by Frederick Law Olmstead in the 1970s.
Wednesday’s Le Devoir contained an interesting editorial on yet another casualty of the would-be Robert Bourassa Avenue: the older section of Park known as Bleury Street, which runs between Sherbrooke and St. Antoine. (Between St. Antoine and the harbour, it changes names yet again, to St. Pierre, but Old Montreal’s protected status prevents its street names from being modified.). Bleury, the author points out, is one of Montreal’s last remaining remnants of streets that change names frequently, a reminder of Montreal’s expanding city limits. In the late nineteenth century, Bleury Street was the equivalent to today’s Mile End or the 1940s Stanley Street: a creative hub where poets and other artists gathered, including the legendary Émile Nelligan. Not only that, but Bleury was long associated with the publishing industry, the most visible landmark of which is the dark, shifty-eyed Southam Building. In fact, Bleury gets its name from an important newspaper publisher: Clément-Charles Sabrevois de Bleury, a lawyer and politician who founded the rabble-rousing Le Populaire in the midst of the 1837 Rebellions.
But it’s Park Avenue, not Bleury Street, that most Montrealers love. In just a few short days, more than 20,000 of them have signed one of three online petition against the renaming (you can see them here, here and here). As of last night, it seems like they might just get their wish: due to a procedural oversight, city council will not vote on the Park Avenue renaming until the end of November. A lot can happen in a month.
For more updates on the Park Avenue debacle and other Montreal news, visit Urbanphoto contributor Kate McDonnell’s Montreal City Weblog.
Montreal Apartments
mike 2 says:
Your bias is showing.
There has also been many articles supporting the change.
La Presse, for example, is generally for the change.
A demonstation of 200 people is not a lot.
Frankly, I don’t see the fuss. Most of the arguments against the change has been based on emotionalism such as “my father, my community, grew up on Park Avenue, so I would like it to remain Park Avenue’. Blah.
Even the logical argument that it should be called Park Qvenue is because it runs besides the mountain. There are also other streets that runs besides the mountain or lead up to it. Should they all be called Park Avenue. And which park are they supposed to be honored for.
I would rather Robert-Bourasse get this meaningless name rather than having a personnage lose his name for another.
October 28th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
Of course my bias is showing. I have never had any pretense of being an objective voice in this. The very title of my first post should have given you that hint.
I’m curious to know of the “many” articles that have appeared in support of the Park Avenue name change. The only one I can think of was a column by Yves Boisvert in La Presse.
October 29th, 2006 at 12:42 am
mike 2 says:
Well,
André Pratte for one, even though I usually don’t like his views and opinions. And just on Saturday, an article by a Mario Girard criticizing the demonstration.
Even the Le Devoir article you mentioned, of which the author is actually in favour of the name change. Except that he just wants Bleury Street intact for reasons that I actually agree with above all because de Bleury was a person that is connected and has contributed to either Québec as a whole or Montréal
October 29th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Christopher DeWolf says:
I wouldn’t say he is in favour of the name change — his exact words are “Va encore pour l’avenue du Parc, traduction libérale de Park Avenue, mais de grâce, laissez-nous la rue de Bleury !” To put it another way, he just doesn’t care about Park. I’m not sure I would count Girard’s article, either, since it wasn’t an opinion piece (although I don’t doubt that Girard is supportive of the renaming). It starts off by saying that the reasons why people oppose the renaming with such ferocity are “obscure” — but then he undermines his own point by going on to list them.
They don’t seem very obscure to me. There is the heritage and patrimonial argument against the renaming, expressed quite well by Phyllis Lambert, Lysiane Gagnon and others; there is the argument against the secrecy and lack of intransparency inherent in the mayor’s decision; and there is, perhaps above all, the emotional argument. Because this really is an emotional issue. Why should that be a bad thing? There was controversy over the renaming of Dorchester but it wasn’t as personal as this because, by 1988, nobody lived on Dorchester. If anyone had any personal connection to the street — they had been born and raised there, owned a shop there, etc. — it would have been destroyed when the original Dorchester Street was destroyed in the late 1960s. But Park is a place where generations of people have lived and its name is highly symbolic to a lot of people.
Perhaps Mario Girard should have gotten in touch with the historian Pierre Anctil, who explained very well to the Gazette why so many people are so upset over this renaming.
I think it’s important to be sympathetic to the ways in which people relate to their city. Montreal is more than just the sum of its parts; emotion, personal history and heritage play a big role in how we experience it.
In any case, Tremblay has backed down and is now saying that the council vote on this issue will be a free one, and that councillors should “vote according to their conscience.” While this opens the door to councillors from RDP or Lachine voting on an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with their constituencies, it at least gives the public a way for their voice to be heard.
October 29th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
mike 2 says:
I don’t usually like what Lysiane Gagnon writes as much as André Pratte.
I guess we should agree to disagree.
To me, it is silly to associate a street name as reflective of the history of the area. Many of the people protesting this name change were former residents who just want time to freeze. They are being provincial. The Greek community that has made Park Avenue wonderful is long gone, they moved on. The area has evolved and history has already changed or evolved.
What the former residents and current residents have to understand is that this important artery belongs to all Montrealers, not just to them and their community. So, this street should have a logical name. As I mentioned before, Park Avenue is not logical. Which park does it honor? Mont Royal? Then the other streets that is beside it or lead up to it should also be called Park Avenues.
The one thing I agree with you is that it should go to a council vote. I think that is fair. And whatever the verdict it, we should honour it civily.
October 29th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Matt Muma says:
Mike, thou sharest a name hollowed in my family. That said, whatever you’re agreement to disagree with Chris, your last idea is honestly absolutely horrifying. What you are proposing is, if I read you correctly, the constant renaming of streets williy-nilly based on–what again?–logic. Ca ce n’est pas du logic, dude. The mere proposal to take one street name, turn it into something else, then transfter the overridden name to some other street reeks of illogic, lazy thinking, and a misunderstanding of anything but the most heavy handed social planning. And, ultimatly, that’s what all this is about–it’s the way we structure our societies and who gets to control language and place that’s at stake, not just some unimportant street name.
Chris made a good argument but he didn’t quite come out and say this–a city is not just a set of roads, buildings, and people, it’s an IMAGINED community that is created through it’s own representation, and that representation does in part depend on things like street names and the like. These names, like it or not, are historical records (yes, even a supposedly bland name like park), emotional signposts, and the focal points of every city representation that takes the area as it’s setting–be it a play, photograph, poltical tract, news report, or novel–and these names in turn, do play a part in the creation of the surrouding community, which feeds upon them in creating it’s own identity. They should never, ever, ever, be washed away as thoughtlessly as you and the mayor are proposing. I suspect even Stalingrad, named for a tyrant far out of Tremblay’s league, had a longer day in court.
But then, you would admire the mid century communists, I suspect–history is unstopable, we must wash away all memory of the bourgeous tyranny! And all in the name of a “people” who we can order around at will! Yes, I exagerate, but only because you an the mayor don’t have the guns or will (or sense of historical purpose either) to play it at that scale. So instead you invoke the name of “all montrealers” without either defining the terms or talking to all that many montrealers and call for logic even as your proposal completely lacks it (if you want the reasons why just go back and read Chris’s earlier posts). Here I think Marx is apt—The Soviets were all tragedy, but you and the mayor, my friend, are their silly sequal , a bored little ahistorical farce.
Civility, as you define it, is truly over rated.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Zvi says:
Mike 2, I don’t quite follow your logic. How can you say “this street should have a logical name”? Of course Ave du Parc honours the park on the mountain! Just as Ave Mont Royal also honors the mountain and crosses (get the symbolism?) Ave du Parc at the North-East corner of the park. Each one of these streets delineates a major axis towards the mountain. And if there is one symbol in this city which belongs to all Montrealers, it certainly is the mountain which is the city’s namesake!
I think that the public outrage over this decision is driven to a large extent by the sentiment that this is an attack on “our mountain”.
November 1st, 2006 at 1:11 am
Christopher DeWolf says:
This just in: Helen Fotopulos now admits that the executive council’s decision was a mistake — “My heart tells me” to vote against the renaming, she said tonight.
November 1st, 2006 at 4:56 am
Christopher DeWolf says:
In the interest of fairness, I should note that La Presse ran two columns today, by Yves Boisvert and Alain Dubuc, that are supportive of the name change. Boisvert reiterated his “tempest in a teapot” position while Dubuc asserted that the opposition is yet another example of Montreal’s “immobilisme,” the topic du jour of the francophone elite. Frankly I think the whole concept of immobilisme is a convenient trope but that’s another issue. I, for one, oppose changing Park Avenue’s name but this hardly represents my views as a whole; I gladly support new condo developments downtown, for instance. (Ironically, it’s La Presse that is most critical of many new developments. In recent weeks they have tried, unsuccessfully, to create controversy by running critical stories of large new developments slated for the areas around Place des Arts and Viger Station.)
Anyway, I think that Matt is right to evoke imagined space, because this is really what this is all about. Heritage, emotion, nostalgia: all ephemeral concepts.
November 1st, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Zvi says:
Normally I would not expect extensive public debate and/or transparancy about a street name change. It really should be a primarily bureaucratic issue and there is no point in investing additional public funds in evaluating the pros and cons about it (which will always exist) - surely cash-strapped cities have better things to do with our money (like renovate their offices FOUR times in two years).
I think that the Mayor did not appreciate how emotive an issue Ave du Parc is for many people. Hopefully this emotion can now be funneled into some more constructive changes to this sadly dysfunctional traffic artery.
November 1st, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
Zvi, that’s true. Many, myself included, have been upset by the lack of public consultation, but I’m not sure how practical or feasible this would have been. At the same time, Park Avenue is a major thoroughfare, not some residential sidestreet. I think the public deserves a voice in this.
I think all of this could have been averted if the mayor had announced his intentions prior to the executive council vote and waited for the reaction.
November 1st, 2006 at 11:50 pm
D P Hanley says:
This has an interesting parallel in Ireland. There, the relevant government minister has decreed, without consultation, that the town of Dingle should henceforth be known as An Daingean.
Under the Irish Constitution, the government has the power to decree that either or both official languages shall be used in any particular region.
Using, presumably, this power, the minsitewr requires all placenames in the Gaeltacht (Gaelic-speaking region) to be in Gaelic only, and their English forms discarded.
This follows a decolonialization trend started in Ireland upon independence from the UK and continued today in other former British colonies (e.g. in India where Bombay has been renamed Mumbai).
While I largely support this drive, and even wonder why it is not extended to the whole country, there remains a point which I think is the same as for Park Ave/Av du Parc:
I do not live in Dingle/An Daingean. I should respect the wishes of its residents.
How would you like it if the name of the street or town where you lived was changed without your even having been consulted?
Legal, perhaps, but arrogant, definitely.
November 21st, 2006 at 6:52 pm