Montreal by Bus: The Names of Bus Routes

You could conceivably have a bus network where bus lines were identified only by their number. We don’t technically need bus routes to have names for them to be usable, as long as each bus has a key: something, probably a number, that makes each route individually identifiable to riders.

Still, it would be pretty silly not to assign bus routes to names. Firstly, and most superficially, we have the capability to show some clarifying text next to the route number on our buses and bus schedules, and it would be silly not to use it. But more importantly, giving riders a name to go with the randomly decided bus route number can pay dividends in usability. Almost all bus systems that I can think of have bus route names displayed prominently right next to bus route numbers, not only on the buses themselves but also on bus signage and schedules.

The way we choose the names we give to buses, however, is open to some debate. Should we name it after the bus’s end point? Points along its path? The areas through which it passes? Different cities come to different conclusions.

More

Dancing in the Street

One of my favourite things about summer in Montreal is the sheer abundance of street closures. Of course, they aren’t closures at all, they’re openings — streets given over to pedestrians. This past weekend, cars were banned from at least seven areas, including most of the streets in the Latin Quarter, all of Ste. Catherine St. in the Village, Plaza St. Hubert, Crescent St. and, most impressively, the entire two-kilometre stretch of Ste. Catherine from St. Urbain to St. Marc. Although it was pouring rain for most of Sunday, Saturday was a perfect day to get out and explore the city, which is exactly what I did.

I wasn’t alone: streets everywhere were thronged with people. I spent most of the afternoon wandering down a sweltering Ste. Catherine St., stopping every so often to take in the passing crowd. Unlike some other street fairs, like Nuit Blanche sur Mont-Royal or Main Madness, the annual Ste. Catherine street sale is primarily a commercial event, closing up shop in the early evening and populated mostly by people hunting for bargains. But there are still buskers and DJs on hand to keep people entertained. Outside the Eaton Centre, where a DJ was blasting music into the crowd, one woman set down her shopping bags to dance in the street.

Ominous Sky

8pm near the corner of St. Laurent and René Lévesque.

Side Street

Probably Bélanger St. – somewhere just east of Saint-Hubert anyway. I was looking at those back stairs and these folks strolled into the frame.

Half-Truths and Reflections on Home

If it hasn’t yet been made clear to my regular readers, I’m on the verge of moving to Hong Kong, maybe for only a year, but likely for much longer than that. What this means, of course, is that I’m going to leave Montreal. (I would take my beloved city with me, but the South China Sea is a poor substitute for the Saint Lawrence.) Lately, as I contemplate my impending move, I have been coming to terms with the memories I will leave behind in the city I have, over the past six years, deliberately fashioned as my home.

At night, when I lie awake, unable to sleep, my mind floats through the laneways I have strolled at night, past the mountain, its cross, the silos on the Lachine Canal, the sign blinking Farine Five Roses and down to the St. Henri bedroom in which I first lived as a new Montrealer. I think of those first nights I spent here, listening, as I lay in bed, to the sound of trains coupling in the distance. I think of the six years of memories and experiences, all of them linked inextricably to the life and landscape of the city around me.

Guy Maddin, the maker of eccentric films best known for his 2003 movie, The Saddest Music in the World, has a somewhat different relationship with his hometown. While I left the city of my birth at the age of 17, in search of a place that better suited my outlook and personality, Maddin has spent all 52 years of his life in Winnipeg, one of the coldest and most isolated cities on the continent. Now he has made a movie—ostensibly a documentary—about the city in which he has spent his life.

“Always winter, always sleepy… Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg,” he intones in the opening sequence of My Winnipeg, which is currently playing in Montreal at the Cinéma du Parc as well as at various arthouses and small cinemas around North America. In his inimitable style, drawing heavily from the aesthetic of silent films and the kitschy melodrama of b-movies, Maddin creates an image of a city propelled by drowsy inertia, its inhabitants’ attempts at escape foiled by the heavy pull of memory and nostalgia.

More

Brisez la vitre open door

Earlier this year, when I marvelled at Boston’s still-functioning system of public fire alarm boxes, Kate McDonnell pointed out that Montreal once had such a system, too. Unlike Boston, though, Montreal removed all of its boxes, but one still stands outside the firefighters’ museum at Laurier and St. Laurent. Naturally enough, it’s bilingual.

Metro Partying

Earlier this evening I attended the latest Montreal edition of Pecha Kucha Night, a creative show-and-tell that is based around a number of brief six-minute presentations on an eclectic array of topics. One of tonight’s presenters spoke about Urban Play, an umbrella term meant to unite much of the public space-related art and intervention that is currently taking place in the world’s cities. It’s an interesting concept, one that (at least in my interpretation) encompasses a lot of interesting stuff: street art like that created by London’s CutUp or Montreal’s Roadsworth, interventions like those staged by Dare-Dare, and even things like the Silophone.

Tonight, though, I’ll leave you with videos of two rather light-hearted subjects that could perhaps fall somewhere on the margins of Urban Play: Korean subway tecktonik and a Montreal metro party thrown in honour of three of my friends.

Roadsworth Goes Downtown

Who doesn’t remember Roadsworth, the artist whose quirky street-and-sidewalk stencils vaulted him into street art stardom in 2004 after he ran into trouble with the law? Since then, Peter Gibson—the artist’s real name—has made a living working in a perfectly legal capacity with City Hall and various other public organizations. Last spring, the Commission scolaire de Montréal commissioned him to redesign a concrete schoolyard at Bernard and St. Urbain; in the fall, the Ville-Marie borough invited him to paint a giant chess board at Berri Square.

The fruits of Roadsworth’s most recent effort can still be seen downtown, on Ste. Catherine St., where he was invited to use the street and sidewalk as his canvas. The result is a collection of irreverent stencils that bring to mind the best and most creative of the original work he performed in 2004 around Mile End and the Plateau. For the first time that I’ve seen, Roadsworth has added text to his arsenal, accompanying his simple imagery with pithy and often amusing phrases. “Défense d’afficher” has been written in the crosswalk at Metcalfe and Ste. Catherine; “Low Brow” is written above a zipper that is being pulled down, revealing something that seems vaguely naughty.

As always, Roadsworth’s strength is in his playful reimagining of city space. He builds on the officially-imposed lines, textures and symbols meant to regulate the way we behave in the streets and turns them into something cheeky and subversive. At St. Alexandre, for instance, he has made the outline of the intersection’s crosswalks look like the border of a swimming pool; at Jeanne-Mance, he has transformed the lines etched into the corner curb cut into the shaft of a Corinthian column.

More

Tel Père, Tel Fils

La Rochelle, France

Montreal, Quebec

More

Produkt Paints the City

Every year, city officials decry the rising tide of graffiti that is washing over Montreal, vowing to drain it away with ever more haste. In April, $1 million was invested in a crackdown on graffiti, including $340,000 in the downtown area alone.

For the most part, they’re responding to the concerns of the general public, many of whom consider graffiti to be unsightly vandalism and a sign of civic disorder. The reality, however, is that street art—a catch-all term that refers to graffiti, stencils, stickers, posters and any other type of unregulated, unsolicited art found in city streets—is as varied and diverse as the people who create it.

Alex McLean, 27, who goes by the tag name Produkt, is one of those people. For nearly a decade he has wandered the streets, alleys and railyards of Montreal, covering walls and other surfaces with portraits and drawings that blend finely-detailed realism with cartoon fantasy. Whether they realize it or not, many Montrealers have seen his work, and some might recognize his recurring characters, such as an austere eagle or a man on all fours, dressed as a dog.

“I like to create stuff where the cartoon world and the real world interact. Because I’m painting on a lot of walls and surfaces and found objects, I also like working with stains and textures,” he explained, sitting in his airy St. Henri studio on a sunny afternoon.

“There’s something really liberating about it. It’s interacting with the real world. If you do a painting and hang it in the gallery, how many people are going to see it and how many lives is it going to affect? [Street art] is about communication. You want as many people to see it as possible.”

Several years ago, McLean studied art at Dawson College, but he dropped out when he realized that he was learning more from working in the streets than in the classroom. (“I never got into that whole art school mentality of doing a crappy painting and writing a 60-page paper about it,” he said.) His initial medium was spray paint, but after a run-in with the law—he was charged and fined for several thousand dollars—he switched to more discreet paintbrushes and markers, which had the added bonus of allowing him to craft more detailed paintings.

More

Touring the Abandoned Croydon Factory

My roommate ML and I decided to accompany our other roommate to her hometown of St. Jean for the weekend. Fully decked out in summer apparel, flip flops notwithstanding, we were on our way to pick strawberries but found ourselves delayed by two hours. Having only been away from Montreal for less than 24 hours, we felt the need to infuse our day with some urban grit, and how better to do that than to take a walk around Usine Croydon, otherwise known as the former home of the Singer sewing machine factory. The gates surrounding the abandoned compound were wide open and welcoming. What followed was a tour through an art gallery of sorts — countless graffiti and paintings, mangled metal objects hanging from the ceiling, and perfect lighting.

More

Chinatown Saint-Jean

One of my favourite Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebrations is in Chinatown. The programming, on the stage in Sun Yat Sen Square, is eclectic and unexpected, a combination of Ukrainian folk dancing, Mandarin poetry recitals and, towards the end of the afternoon, awkward Chinese pop songs sung by a teenage rock band (with a cover of Audioslave thrown in for good measure). Nonplussed seniors sit in the square watching the entertainment.

New Life for a Garment District

Earlier this year, Helen Fotopulos, mayor of the Plateau Mont-Royal borough, stood beaming over a podium as she announced plans to revitalize the old garment district on the eastern edge of Mile End, bounded on the west by St. Laurent, on the east by Henri-Julien, on the south by Maguire and on the north by the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks.

“This no man’s land will be transformed,” she declared, outlining $9-million in infrastructural investments that the city hopes will invite new investment and development in the district. Work will start this summer on widening the sidewalks along St. Viateur between St. Laurent and de Gaspé, burying electrical lines and installing new lampposts. New sidewalks will be built on de Gaspé too, which currently has one only on the east side of the street.

Next year, the city will extend St-Viateur east to Henri-Julien, which could involve the expropriation of one building and two vacant lots. In 2010, a new bridge for pedestrians and cyclists will be built over the CPR tracks, linking the area to nearby Rosemont metro.

The city estimates that its investments will generate $250-million worth of private real estate development as buildings are renovated and vacant lots developed. The only potential snag is that, as post-apocalyptic as it may sometimes seen, the garment district is far from being a no man’s land: thousands of people live and work there, in textile factories, small businesses, design studios and artists’ workshops. In an atmosphere of citywide dissatisfaction over the city’s handling of such major projects as the renovation of the Main and the redevelopment of Griffintown, some are keeping a close eye on how it proceeds in Mile End.

Mile-End’s industrial area owes its existence to the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s. Large warehouses and factories were built around the turn of the century, like the Van Horne Warehouse on St. Laurent, whose water tower has become a landmark in the city’s north end skyline. In the 1950s and ’60s, the area took on its present form when giant garment factories were built along de Gaspé, towering over the surrounding neighbourhood.

More

Child’s Play

In the alley between Clark and St. Urbain and St. Viateur and Fairmount, Mile End