A Hasidic Exodus from Park Avenue?

The Montreal Gazette reported this weekend that the Hasidic community in Outremont and Mile End is suffering from a housing shortage. In 2002, there were about 4,200 Hasidim in the neighbourhood; today there are more than 6,000. Rising property values mean that many new Hasidic families are finding themselves priced out of their own Montreal heartland. Apparently, the hunt is on to find a new neighbourhood with suitable and affordable housing.

If the Hasidic community does move on, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a Jewish community has come and gone. The entire swath of city from Chinatown right up to Little Italy is littered with former synagogues that were abandoned when the original Jewish community moved west. But it wouldn’t be a good thing if the Hasidim leave.

First of all, a Hasidic exodus would be a disaster for Park Avenue’s economy. Hasidic Jews make up more than 25 percent of Outremont’s population, and even they have their own Yiddish bookstores and kosher eateries, they still rely on non-Hasidic businesses for everything else, like drugs, hardware, stationery and fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of those shops are on Park Avenue; imagine the impact if they lost a quarter of their business.

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Manhattanhenge and Montrealhenge

Photo by Arianys León

Twice a year, a few weeks before and after the summer solstice, the setting sun aligns perfectly with the east-west axis of Manhattan’s streets in a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Manhattanhenge,” a reference to the way the sun aligns with Stonehenge during the solstices. It got quite a bit of attention this year, especially around its first instance, on June 1st. Sunday marked its second occurrence and there are Flickr photos to prove it.

Even though Manhattanhenge has been rather grandiosely described as a “unique phenomenon in the world, if not the universe,” it is replicated to some extent in other cities. Last month, Spacing Montreal’s Émile Thomas speculated that Montrealhenge might happened each year on June 12th. But the same effect is achieved almost every day: one of the things I miss most about Montreal is the way the sun sets in alignment with the city’s north-south streets, such as Park Avenue or St. Laurent, which pierces them with long bands of evening light. I would often walk up Park just as the sun was setting, admiring the long shadows and pillowy softness of the light.

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My Old Apartment

Four years ago, on a freakishly cold April day, my girlfriend and I walked up Park Avenue in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, heads pressed against the wind, to check out a third-floor apartment in a typical six-plex, the kind with the steep, curving outdoor staircase leading up from the street to a second-floor balcony.

After meeting with the landlord, a talkative Hasidic Jewish woman whose husband owned a travel agency down the street, we decided to take the place. Over the years, we got to know our neighbours—an increasingly famous DJ, a shy couple from Alberta, an eccentric recluse who once came barging into our apartment at 3am, complaining that our bathroom was leaking—and enjoyed the comfortable intimacy of our surroundings.

It was only last winter, however, that I started to wonder who lived in our apartment before us. I knew that our six-plex had been built in 1918, almost a decade after the other buildings on our block, and I knew that the tenant before us had been an artist with a penchant for green-tinted lightbulbs; he left in a hurry to settle his father’s estate in Brazil, leaving behind boxes of old art books, some rubber gloves and a bag of trash.

But who lived here in the years, decades, generations before that? Just how many coats of paint were on these walls? Lovell’s Montreal Directory, which lists Montreal’s residents and businesses from 1842 to 1999, offers me some clues. Scanning the Park Avenue pages, I see that somebody named Chas Larivee lived in my apartment in 1929. Two decades later, there was another Chas, this one from the Axman family. In contrast with the apartment downstairs, where a Mrs. Laurin lived for at least 30 years, ours had high turnover, with a new tenant arriving almost every year. Somehow, knowing the names of the people who once lived in my apartment makes its history more immediate: I’m not the first to have paced its slightly crooked floors.

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Grey Fall Days

Quiet, grey autumn days in Mile End

Reflections on Park Avenue

I’ve already left Montreal, but I still walk down Park Avenue in my mind. I start at Van Horne, the symbolic last street before the Canadian Pacific Railway overpass and the industrial area to the north. On the long block southward to Bernard, I pass a new Hasidic synagogue, a laundromat with Spanish signs owned by an Indian family, Greek social clubs, a mysterious bar called Club Sahara, a cluttered radio-parts shop, and several more hard-to-define stores that survive from year to year despite having no apparent customers.

I was only on the street for five years, but my life on Park Avenue is inseparable from my life in Montreal. I spent the bulk of my time in its shops, its apartments, its restaurants, venturing onto its sidestreets the way a fi sh swims up a river’s tributary. Park Avenue was born in 1883, when a broad road was built along the eastern side of the newly-opened Mount Royal Park, leading north into what was then Montreal’s suburban fringe. Twenty years later, in 1903, the Number 80 streetcar began rumbling up the avenue, past a burgeoning collection of triplexes and apartment buildings, many of them capped by fanciful cornices and decorative elements that often included maple leaves and beavers. Banks, those imposing anchors of middle-class prosperity, stood at nearly every corner.

Initially, middle-class English, Irish and French Canadians called Park home, along with a growing number of Jews. After World War II, however, many of those original inhabitants left for newer, more suburban neighbourhoods, and were replaced by a mix of Greeks, Portuguese, Italians, Chinese and Hasidic Jews. Residential portions of the street became progressively more commercial as carpet shops and souvlaki joints opened on the ground floors of apartment blocks.

After thriving in the 1970s and 80s—one of its nicknames was apparently “Double Park Avenue”—Park fell on hard times in the early 1990s. The Rialto, a gorgeous cinema whose façade was modeled on Garnier’s opera house in Paris, closed down. In the depths of the mid-90s recession, nearly a quarter of all retail spaces on the street were vacant, and drugs and petty crime became a problem. It wasn’t until the end of the decade that the street revived.

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The Corner Phone Booth

Kristian Gravenor is building himself a reputation as Montreal’s foremost expert on phone booths. He explored their history in Montreal in a recent Gazette article, from the first wooden booths installed in hotel lobbies (“Each wooden telephone booth looked like a confessional, your very own downtown cabin — as they say in French — where you could blab all day for just a few cents”) and on city streets.

News of the phone booth’s decline has made it into just about every North American publication at some point or another, but Montreal, which has one of the lowest rates of mobile phone use in Canada, has been slow to shed many of its booths. You can still find a few near most major corners, despite mayor Jean Drapeau’s attempt in the 1970s to rid the city streets of payphones, along with newspaper boxes and mailboxes.

My own corner phone booth stands near Park and Bernard. Back before I had a cell phone, it was a convenient place from which to call when the power was out, or when I failed to pay the phone bill and Bell cut off my service. Ever since Bell raised payphone rates to 50 cents per call, though, there hasn’t been much point in using it. In fact, when I pass by, the only people who seem to use it come from the adjacent “massage” parlour, which is open until 4am daily and employs masseuses who seem to work only in bra and panties.

“It’s Not Just Fabric on a Stick”

It wasn’t hard for Tristan Verboven to decide which country to support in the 2008 Euro Cup soccer championship.

“Both my parents are Dutch and I’m a Dutch citizen, too,” the Montrealer said last week while sipping juice in a Park Ave. café. “I guess the idea of nationalism is kind of stupid because you can’t decide which country (you are from), but people in this neighbourhood are really proud, and they put out a lot of flags, so I decided to be a part of it.”

That’s why Verboven, who lives in Mile End, decided to fly a Dutch flag from his fourth-floor balcony.

“When I was tying it to the balcony some guy walking past looked up and shouted: ‘You’re gonna lose!’ I guess there’s a little part of it where you just want to be the one that stands out from the crowd.”

In Montreal, every important athletic, political and cultural event seems to inspire a fit of flag-waving. When the Canadiens make the playoffs – as Montrealers experienced this spring – flags bearing the Habs logo flutter from apartment windows and cars. In June, a sudden explosion of the fleur-de-lys welcomes St. Jean Baptiste Day.

Also this month, Montrealers have embraced soccer fever. In neighbourhoods across the city, this year’s Euro Cup has inspired the enthusiastic flag-waving from fans of every competing nation. Some are more visible than others, by virtue of Montreal’s ethnic mix – French, Italian, Greek and Portuguese flags are particularly well-represented – but the tournament also gives fans of other countries a chance to show their colours.

Verboven said his show of support is sort of like joining a conversation. “My flag is almost like a protest: ‘There’s actually Dutch people here!’ I’m putting my voice out in the crowd.”

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The Case for Greektown

Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s attempt to rename Park Avenue two years ago was a turning point in the street’s history. When that controversy emerged, a number of the street’s Greek merchants were already asking the city to create a Hellenic Quarter similar to Little Italy or Chinatown. The city spent $15,000 on a feasibility study that suggests emphasizing Park Ave.’s Greek-yet-multicultural character could be a boon to business. This spring, the city invested $50,000 in new banners, benches, garbage cans and bike racks there. The city says it will announce the next phase of the quarter’s development in two weeks. Chris Karidogiannis, executive secretary of the Park Ave. Merchants’ Association, is one of the project’s main proponents.

What is the Hellenic Quarter concept?

The idea started in the early ’90s, but it didn’t really develop until the past couple of years. We were trying to find a way to re-imagine Park Ave. commercially. We were looking for a way to bypass certain negative things the city has done that have really damaged the viability of our businesses – like the bus lanes, high property taxes and, most recently, exorbitant parking meter rates. Like it or not, this past generation of Park Ave. has been very Greek. It hasn’t always been Greek, but for the past 30 years it’s been known as the Greek area, and we thought that we should officialize it and create something a little more touristy, like Petite Italie or Chinatown.

What would this entail?

We’ve been working closely on developing a concept that’s similar to Little Italy. Fortunately for the merchants there, they had a mayor that was really into the concept, Pierre Bourque, and who invested $9 million into it. Now you cannot even rent a spot there and business has gone up 50 per cent over the last eight years.

What do you think of the city’s efforts for Park Ave.?

The city spent $20,000 on 32 new banners. They’re visible but discreet at the same time. I know the city wants the project to happen but they don’t want to ruffle any feathers at all. As you can see, on the banners there’s an Asian child with a Greek flag right under her. They’re trying to show the multiculturalism of the area, the roots of which are Greek. That’s what I think they’re trying to accomplish, anyway.

Park Ave. is Greek, but it’s also very multicultural. Why should one of its communities be privileged over others?

Little Italy is as Italian as Park Ave. is Greek – not a lot of Italians still live in that area but a majority of businesses and properties are still owned by them. We’ve been working on this for four years and we haven’t had anyone who has come up with another idea or who has said that they don’t want it because it’s Greek. We want this to be a gift to the Hellenic community in general, but hopefully it will benefit the businesses, as well. We were worried about the scale of the project at first, since it goes from Van Horne down to Mount Royal, but then we visited the Danforth in Toronto (that city’s Greektown centres around Danforth Ave.) and it’s just as wide and just as long and it’s 10 times as busy. There’s unlimited potential.

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Rebranding Park Avenue

The first banner was incongruous enough: “Avenue du Parc,” it read in a vaguely Hellenic font, set to a pale blue background. Underneath was the logo of the City of Montreal. Then, a couple of days later, I noticed other banners, these ones much more inscrutable: each featured a portrait of someone that was pulled up in the lower left corner, like a page being turned, to reveal part of a Greek flag. The city still seemed to be in the process of installing of them, and as far as I could see, there were only two kinds of portraits, one of a thirtyish man of Southern European appearance and another of a little Asian girl — not usually the kind of person you imagine when you think of someone Greek.

Earlier this year, the city announced that it would spend $50,000 to polish Park Avenue and emphasize its Greek heritage. Flowers would be planted, more benches installed and banners erected. I guess this is the fruit of those efforts (and dollars). Unfortunately, they reek of compromise — the worst kind of compromise that is unsatisfying and underwhelming to everyone involved. For years, Park Avenue’s Greek merchants have pushed to have the street declared a Greektown or “Quartier hellenique” that would have the same symbolic value for Montreal’s many Greeks as Little Italy does for its Italians and Chinatown for its Chinese. More importantly, the merchants reason, it would be an opportunity to consolidate their resources, promote the street and draw more outside shoppers.

After a brief spate of investment in what might be called “ethnic infrastructure” — former mayor Pierre Bourque’s administration invested heavily in sprucing up Chinatown and Little Italy, and it built new community-themed parks like Portugal Park on the Plateau and Athena Square in Park Ex — the city has shied away from recognizing the city’s ethnic and cultural communities in any significant manner. The idea for a Quartier hellenique on Park Avenue is just one of several ethnic theme districts that have been proposed by shopowners in recent years. In the area around Jean Talon and St. Denis, where dozens of Vietnamese-owned businesses are located, one merchant has advocated the creation of a “Vietnamville.” North African businesspeople on Jean Talon east of St. Michel are now pressing for the creation of a “Petit Maghreb.” Each of these movements has been met with the same indifference from city officials.

In 2006 and 2007, though, mayor Gérald Tremblay’s attempt to rename Park Avenue angered so many people that his administration is still cleaning the muck off its face. City Hall must have felt that it had political capital to regain among those who had protested loudly against the name change, so it committed itself to investing more heavily in Park Avenue. Many took that to mean than it would finally support the creation of the Quartier hellenique but, as the $50,000 it has decided to invest in flowers and benches indicates, it is simply not willing to go that far.

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A Day in the Life of a Dépanneur

Owning a dépanneur has a big impact on your social life, says Yodh Ubhi, standing behind the counter of Dépanneur PMS at the corner of Park Ave. and Villeneuve St.

“You have none,” Ubhi said.

He’s not kidding. Ubhi’s hours—14 hours a day, seven days a week—would make most office workers weep. Every morning, he opens the store at 7 a.m., and works without a break until early afternoon, when his wife arrives with lunch. Ubhi eats in the store’s basement, a former bank vault, before taking a three-hour siesta. At 6 p.m., he trudges back upstairs and takes over from his wife, who returns home to make dinner. The day finally ends at midnight, when Ubhi closes shop and returns home to Park Extension.

“It’s not a one-person job,” he said, adding his 18-year-old daughter and 21-year-old son, both students, often come to help.

Ubhi, who came to Montreal from India’s Punjab state in the early 1970s, bought his dépanneur in 2002, after nearly two decades in the textile business. At $65,000—a little over $100,000 with inventory—the store was a bargain. Spacious and well-stocked, it had already undergone a $150,000 renovation in the 1990s when it was part of a small dépanneur chain that ultimately folded.

“I had no experience whatsoever in the dep business,” Ubhi said. “I saw guys working and thought, ‘Hey, that’s nothing, it’s a piece of cake.’ But it’s not that easy. It’s very demanding. There are long hours. You have to know about your supply, cash flow, customers, your neighbourhood, and on top of that you have to provide good service. If you don’t have even one of these, you’re screwed up. You’re not going to last a year.” At the beginning, Ubhi made mistakes, like offering credit.

“When you’re new, you believe everyone,” he said, but he soon realized he had lost nearly $7,000 to customers who had scammed him out of cigarettes and alcohol. Now, a cartoon drawing of a gangster with the caption, “No Credit: It’s Time to Pay Up, Sucka!” is displayed prominently at the cash.

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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.

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 Bank Shows Its Good Side

Not too long ago, I noticed that construction workers were doing some renovation work at the Laurentian Bank on the corner of Park and Laurier in Montreal’s Mile End. It wasn’t until I took a closer look that I realized that they were in fact removing the building’s marble cladding, revealing a much older Beaux-Arts façade underneath. It was a complete surprise because, even though I knew the building was old, I never thought to consider what might be lurking underneath its plain exterior.

Montreal is rife with turn-of-the-century buildings whose cornices have been removed, balconies scrapped, brick replaced, all in some misguided postwar effort to make them look more “modern.” Some of the transformations were more permanent than others, ranging from a complete removal of the original façade to the addition of a crude corrugated steel mask.

Still, it’s hard to judge the aesthetic decisions of past generations too harshly. After all, we’re doing pretty much the same thing with many Modernist and Brutalist buildings from the 1950s, 60s and 70s: “updating” them to look a bit more “current.” In some cases, I think there are definite improvements, like when the ITHQ on St. Denis St. was transformed from one of Montreal’s most monstrous buildings into one of its most alluring.

But there are some mistakes, too. 5 Place Ville-Marie, a 1968 highrise with a prefab concrete façade, was covered last year in a blue glass envelope. It looks okay now, but what will Montrealers be saying in 50 years?

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.