Okay, this is the last Park Avenue post for at least a month. I promise. Really! But I have something to announce: Helen Fotopulos has baked some humble pie — and JoJo Savard is invited to dinner.
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.
I’ll be honest: I hate the sound of Robert Bourassa Avenue. Especially when I face the prospect of living on said avenue. You see, this month is the tenth anniversary of the death of Robert Bourassa, a famously paranoid and tempermental Quebec politician who served as premier from 1970 to 1976 and 1985 to 1994. A new statue has been unveiled in Quebec City, but since Bourassa was one of the few provincial premiers who was a born-and-raised Montrealer — and who represented a Montreal riding for his entire political life — all eyes are on Montreal to commemorate him with something big and noteworthy. Like a major street. A major street around the Plateau Mont-Royal, the densely-populated district from which he hailed. A major street like Park Avenue, my home.
