YMCA vs. YMHA

YMCA, Park Avenue at St. Viateur Street

YMHA, Mount Royal Avenue at Jeanne-Mance Street

In 1936, when these photos were taken, Montreal was just beginning to climb out of the Great Depression, which had hit this industrial city with particularly brute force. Unemployment remained high and thousands of the city’s inhabitants lived in squalour — but not in Mile End. Though far from wealthy, the north end neighbourhood was reasonably prosperous, home to upwardly-mobile Jews, French-Canadians, Irish and immigrants from across Europe.

That diversity was reflected in Mile End’s built fabric. The neighbourhood boasts a particularly impressive collection of churches, synagogues and other institutional structures: there’s the Byzantine mystery of St. Michael’s Church, the florid wedding-cake façade of the Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus and the faux-château styling of the former St. Louis City Hall at Laurier and the Main. In the midst of all this were two buildings that served the neighbourhood’s two major religious and cultural communities: the Young Men’s Christian Association, on Park Avenue, and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, on Mount Royal Avenue.

Both institutions were products of the moralistic zeal of the late nineteenth century. Although they differed in faith, their goals were similar, and each offered a network of social services designed to improve the physical, moral and social well-being of young Jews and Christians. The YMHA was particularly successful: in 1948, its members made up half of Canada’s Olympic basketball team.

Eventually, though, the institutions took a divergent path. The Park Avenue YMCA eventually became a secular institution that served the entire community. By the late 1980s, though, its was so decrepit that it was torn down and rebuilt from scratch. The City of Montreal took the opportunity to jointly finance the construction of a new pool in the YMCA, replacing the public St. Michel Bath further east in the neighbourhood. Today, the Y is a focal point for community life in Mile End.

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Street Vendor Songs

Montreal did away with a big chunk of its cultural heritage when it started cracking down on street vendors in the 1960s. Food vendors were the first to go and, although City Hall has been easing its restrictions on street vending for a number of years, allowing people to sell art and crafts on Ste. Catherine Street and at the tam tams, it still refuses to allow anyone except mobile ice cream vendors to sell food on the street. This makes us one of the only major cities in the world with a near-total ban on street food.

Not only does this deprive us of delicious snacks, it eliminates a great source of streetlife. Today, on Coolopolis, Kristian Gravenor posted a bit about the calls of early twentieth century street vendors. He points to an article in the May 19th, 1929 edition of Le Petit Journal:

La corporation des marchands des quatres saisons, ou “colporteurs” comme on les nomme ici, est composée de braves gens qui gagnent honorablement leur vie en vendant de porte en porte, les primeurs, fruits ou légumes. On pouvait autrement classer dans cette catégorie les vendeurs de crême à la glace et les petits marchands de galettes et de blé-d’inde bouilli.

Le marchand de crême à la glace se tenait au coin des rues avec une petite voiture où était installé son bidon d’ice cream qui’il débitait à un sou le cocotier. Celui-là, il va sans dire, était particulièrement l’ami des enfants.

Un autre petit vendeur très populaire était le marchand de petites galettes et de petits pains chauds: “Galettes! Galettes! Madame!” criait-il, “pas trop de beurre dedans! … Cinq pour cinq sous! … Galettes! … Galettes! …”

Puis le marchand de blé-d’inde bouilli qui parcourait les rues avec son haridelle, en criant sans cesse, et en vers, s’il vous plait:

“Bon blé-d’inde bouilli!
Trois sous pour un épi! …”

Et qui ne se rappelle le vendeur de bluets, annoçant sa marchandise avec un trémolo dans la voix, tout comme notre marchand de bananes d’aujourd’hui: “Bluets!… Ah! les beaux bluets du Saguenay!…”

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Another Park Avenue Rooftop

In October, I took you up to the roof of my friend’s triplex on Park Avenue. Here’s another roof further up the street. I’m always amazed to see Mount Royal from up there; on the street, it’s invisible, blocked by buildings.

“Une bonne vieille tempête”

Until the rain washed much of it away today, it seemed like the snow wouldn’t stop accumulating in the streets of Montreal. A big storm in early December left more than 30 centimetres of the stuff on the ground; no sooner had that been cleared away did another 40 or 50 centimetres fall over the course of a few days last week. The city’s blue collar workers couldn’t keep up and streets were gridlocked for a good three or four days.

One random guy on the news (I think he was on the Magdalen Islands) described the storm as “une bonne vieille tempête.” I like that expression. It reminds me of fourteenth-century French poet François Villon’s famous line, “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” It gives the impression that, even as we run towards something new and unknown, the icy hands of the past continue to grasp at our ankles.

Ideas for An Awkward Space

On a crisp evening early last week, I joined about two dozen other people in a crowded studio on the fourth floor of McGill’s Macdonald-Harrington Building. We were there to see what ideas for reshaping the Pine/Park interchange four teams of McGill urban planning students, led by former Vancouve planning director Larry Beasley.

I won’t go into details, since I arrived halfway through the presentations, but, among the plans was a “recreational archipelago” that scattered various points of interest around the Pine/Park site. Another proposal focused quite intensely on the actual intersection of Pine and Park itself, surrounding it with various uses — a bus station on the northwest corner and a public market across the street, for instance — meant to encourage activity and create a bustling urban corner. Other students planned a linear promenade that extended up Park Avenue to Duluth St.

The most interesting plan involved a fine balance between built and open space. The small street running parallel to Pine between Hutchison and Park would be pedestrianized, creating a larger public square at Pine/Park’s southwest corner. Midrise housing would be built along Park from Pine to Duluth, with a laneway running alongside the Hôtel-Dieu’s stone wall. The green space where the volleyball courts currently stand would be preserved. The end result would be a well-defined, functional urban setting that would balance greenery with residential, community and commercial development.

Problem is, that kind of plan has virtually no chance of being realized. In fact, none of the student plans pay attention to the political realities of the Pine/Park intersection. The entire chunk of land north of Pine is already accounted for — it is in the process of being landscaped as I write this — which leaves only the two small, awkwardly-shaped parcels of land south of the avenue to work with. Community groups in Milton Park and the McGill Ghetto, the neighbourhood just south of the intersection, have already made it clear that they will only accept a public use for the land, with a preference for green space.

Raphaël Fischler, the urban planning professor who organized the charrette, noted at one point in the evening that there was a tension between the local and the city-wide vision of Pine and Park. That’s true, and it risks jeopardizing the success of the new intersection. The clear challenge here is to build a site of activity and engagement in what is now an extremely passive space. By ignoring the politics of the situation, the McGill students were able to offer fresh ideas, and hopefully they’ll be able to push the interchange discussion in a more creative direction.

A Streetcorner From the Second Floor

Climbing up one of Montreal’s many outdoor staircases to a second-floor balcony is a great way to get a new perspective on the street. It’s high enough to feel removed from the action but still low enough to observe it. This is especially true at intersections, like that of Park Avenue and Bernard Street in Mile End, where a constant flow of pedestrians, cyclists, cars and buses keeps things interesting.

Shish Taouk and the Happy Tooth

Not too long ago I wrote about the standard bat-shaped neon sign used by Hong Kong pawnshops. Well, Montreal has its own ubiquitous neon symbols, what I like to call Shish Taouk and the Happy Tooth.

The first sign is found on just about every Lebanese fast-food joint in town. Their menus are always identical — the usual array of shawarma, falafel, garlic potatoes and what Montrealers call shish taouk, but isn’t really shish taouk — so I guess their owners feel that having a standardized neon animation of a man slicing shawarma is appropriate for the same reason that every pharmacy in France is marked by the same green neon cross.

Montreal’s dentists must think the same thing: a neon tooth hangs outside nearly every dental clinic in the city. Unlike the shish taouk or pharmacy signs, though, these teeth aren’t always the same. Some are a simple green outline while others are more elaborate. Often enough, they anthropomorphize the tooth, fixing it with a creepy grin. In the example below, the tooth is posing quite happily with its friend the toothbrush, but a bit further down Park Avenue is another sign that features a tooth apparently walking away with a toothbrush in hand. “See you, sucker,” it seems to be saying.

You know, I sometimes have dreams about my teeth falling out. Signs like that are not something I need to see.

Views From a Park Avenue Rooftop

By now you must know about my love for viewing cities from on high. That’s true even from three storeys up. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Boris took me up to the roof of his building on Park Avenue. This was what we saw.

How Would You Like Your Pine and Park?

By Montreal standards, it was a remarkably quick construction project. Perhaps that is because it mostly involved deconstruction: an entire interchange dismantled and replaced with a straightforward, easy-to-negotiate and pedestrian-friendly surface intersection. It has already been several months since the revamped Pine/Park interchange was opened. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate its wide sidewalks and broad vista of Mount Royal, uncluttered by highway signage and crumbling concrete bretelles. I don’t think I’m alone, either, considering how much pedestrian traffic there seems to be at the new intersection.

Of course, the roads, sidewalks and light fixtures might be installed, but the intersection is far from complete. Four parcels of land on each corner of the intersection remain vacant. Now, the Plateau Mont-Royal borough wants to know what you think should be done with this space. Three stages of public consultation will take place this fall, culminating in what will hopefully become Montreal’s greatest new public space. The first stage, which will last until October 9th, is an open call for ideas. The borough has set up a form for you to share your vision of the interchange, so make yourself heard! The best ideas will be compiled and presented on November 9th, followed by a “grand échange” on the 24th.

Personally, I hope that the space at Pine and Park will be used for something dynamic and unconventional. I would love to see some sort of water feature — this city doesn’t have enough fountains — and a mix of uses that will ensure a constant level of activity year-round, perhaps including a bit of outdoor retail space for cafés and street vendors. Over the summer, community activists in the McGill Ghetto made it clear that residential development would not be tolerated, and I agree that condos would be a rather poor use for what is, after all, a bridge between downtown and the mountain. But simple park space, like some have proposed, would be just as bland and unimaginative.

But enough about me: what do you think? This is your space, Montreal. Tell us what you want!

Crossposted from Spacing Montreal.

Battleaxe Mount Royal

Most Montrealers know about the tam tams. Hell, the weekly drum circle, market and gathering around the Sir George Étienne Cartier Monument on Mount Royal is even used by Tourism Montreal to promote the city. But what about the fighting that goes on in the woods behind the tam tams?

Every Sunday, just a few minutes’ walk from the traffic of Park Avenue, past the trinket vendors, dancers, drum players, drug dealers and picnickers that sprawl across the park lawn, is a weekly mock battle between dozens of people dressed as medieval warriors. They fight with elaborately weapons — swords, daggers, lances, shields, battleaxes and more — crafted entirely from foam and duct tape. Most of the warriors are young men, but every week, as the battle draws more attention, it seems to attract a more diverse crowd that includes some women.

I have no idea how this battle got started. When I wrote an article on the tam tams for the Gazette, in 2003, I can’t recall that it existed. It must be fairly recent, then. In any case, it’s hugely entertaining and it takes place with the same spontaneous organized chaos as the tam tams. In fact, it feeds on the bizarre energy that the tam tams bring to Mount Royal and Jeanne Mance Park every Sunday, a kind of energy that turns normally exclusive activities into large, welcoming and communal ones.

Yesterday, I went down to Mount Royal to check out the fight with some friends. It turns out that anyone can join the fight; there’s even a guy who will loan you weapons. Armed with a couple of makeshift swords from the dollar store, one of my friends charged in only to stand in the dust, bewildered. He was, of course, killed. As he walked back, a man with a shaved head, clad in leather armour, turned to him and said, “I will avenge your death.”

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My Dep

My depanneur is shy, hiding under a staircase on the long block of Park Avenue between Bernard and Van Horne, about five seconds from my front door. A large Coke sign (joined more recently by a few sandwich boards) advertises its existence. Inside, all of the dep staples — lotto machine, cigarettes, chocolate bars, soda, packaged food and beer — are crammed into a tiny space not even half the size of my four-room apartment.

When my girlfriend and I moved into our apartment three years ago, the dep was owned by an odd, talkative man from Guangdong province in China. Small, bald and skinny, he spent his days watching Radio-Canada on a small TV — not, I suspect, out of enthusiasm for Canada’s public broadcaster, but simply because that was the only channel his television’s rabbit-ear antennae received.

One evening, while buying a can of coke, my girlfriend chatted with him for a bit in Cantonese. Rather abruptly, he lectured her: what was nice Chinese girl doing in such a crummy neighbourhood? Why not move downtown?

She didn’t go back to the dep very often after that. It was with a tinge of relief, then, that we noticed one winter day two and a half years ago that the bald man had sold the depanneur. In his place was a fresh-faced couple from northern China. Where, exactly? I asked one evening. “Near Beijing,” said the new owner, shyly. His wife beamed and rubbed her pregnant belly. Their baby was born that summer. They named her Zoey.

The depanneur’s new owner is as sincere and shy as the old one was smarmy and condescending. Over the past couple of years, he has earnestly rearranged the store and installed new fridges. A selection of Hollywood movies is available to rent.

It wasn’t long before he discarded the old television set, too, replacing it with a new one that featured a built-in DVD player. Now, when I step in every so often to buy a case of beer, I find him sitting behind the counter, watching historical epics or episodes of 24 subtitled in Chinese.

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A Bit of Brazil on the Edge of Mount Royal

Jean-Michel Labrosse looks like the kind of guy you’d expect to meet at the tam-tams. As he crosses Park Ave. with a big drum in one hand and a saxophone case in the other, you can’t miss his long, grey beard, with two braids dangling from its tip. Maybe that’s why virtually every journalist who writes about the weekly tam-tams is drawn to him. “I’ve had reporters from the United States, from China,” he said, smiling.

The tam-tam draws him because of the freedom it represents; it’s the one place in the city you can just show up with an instrument and play along.

Labrosse has come for twelve years. He plays the sax and totes around a big plastic drum he made six years ago out of a chemical bin his neighbour sold him for five bucks. All in all, he’s been playing sax for thirty years.

“It’s a Sunday community, like a big family,” he said. “When I was young, we’d go to mass — I was raised a Catholic — and now, this is my mass. It’s a way to meet people and celebrate.”

It has been twenty-five years since the first modern drum beats echoed out over the city from the Sir George-Etienne Cartier monument at the foot of the east side of Mount Royal. In 1978, a group of percussionists chose the site for their Sunday drumming workshops. Inadvertently, they founded a Montreal institution.

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Sunday Afternoon in Jeanne Mance Park

Man arguing with Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2007

What To Do With Pine and Park?

Last fall, work finished on one of the better planning decisions Montreal has made over the past couple of decades: the replacement of the labyrinthine interchange at the corner of Pine and Park Aves. with a surface-level intersection.

The new junction is elegant, attractively furnished and easy to navigate. It’s also empty. Destroying the interchange freed up a lot of space that is currently occupied by loose bits of rock and gravel. It seems clear that the space above Pine Avenue will be turned into park space, which only makes sense since it abuts Mount Royal and Jeanne Mance Park. But there’s a more controversial parcel of land south of Pine Avenue. A small part of it is a triangle that stretches west along Pine to Durocher Street; the rest is a square at the southeast corner of Pine and Park. All in all, the land in question covers about 5,000 square metres.

Currently, the Plateau Mont-Royal borough is figuring out what to do with it, but residents of the surrounding neighbourhood, Milton Park—better known as the McGill Ghetto—have made it known that they will only tolerate open space. “There are constant rumours that people want to build there,” Lucia Kowaluk, president of the Milton Park Citizens Committee, told the Montreal Gazette. “I know two people who work for the city who have told me in the last four months, ‘There are going to be buildings there.’”

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