Mosque Street’s Other Name

In contrast to the bland apartment buildings on its south side, the northern side of Mosque Street is lined by a crumbling stone wall and vegetation spilling over from the lush grounds of the Jamia Mosque. If you peek over the wall, there’s a nice view of the mosque, which is the oldest in Hong Kong. It’s a surprisingly rustic scene in the Central Mid-Levels, a neighbourhood that has obliterated most traces of its 170-year history.

Another throwback is Mosque Street’s name. Though perfectly straightforward in English, it’s a lot more complicated in Chinese. While the proper standard Chinese name for mosque is 清真寺 (ching tsam tsi), or回教廟 (wui gaau miu) in Cantonese, Mosque Street’s Chinese name uses the expression 摩羅廟 (mo lo miu), which derives from mo lo cha, an old and derogatory term for South Asians.

More

Dear Hong Kong: A Letter from Montreal

The following essay appears in the April 2010 issue of Muse, a Hong Kong arts and culture magazine. The same issue also contains my feature-length profile on Hong Kong’s “tree professor,” Jim Chi-yung. The magazine can be found at major bookstores throughout the city.

In my neighbourhood, I know exactly what language to speak. At Jean-Coutu (the drugstore), Nouveau Palais (the corner diner) and Première Moisson (the upscale bakery), it’s French. At Zoubris (the copy shop), Cheskie (the Jewish bakery) and Club Social (the Italian café), it’s English.

But in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, on the other side of town, I’m lost. I know the neighbourhood is mostly English-speaking, but I don’t want to offend anyone. So before walking into the clothing store, I decide to take the safe route and speak French. Turns out it was the right decision. The owner was francophone.

Nothing is simple when it comes to language in Montreal. The city’s history has made it one of the most linguistically contested places in the world, but far from being a hindrance, it gives it the kind of powerful creative charge that can only come from cultural friction.

More

The Many Chinese Words for “Lane”

Suoyi Hutong, Beijing

There’s several different names in English for small, secondary streets that run between blocks or behind major roads. Alley and lane are the words most often used in North America, but there’s significant variation in the UK, where regional words like vennel, chare, wynd, twitten and jigger are common.

It’s a similar story in China. Just about every city has a lu (路), which is the word mostly commonly used to describe important roads. And even though there is a basic word for lane — xiang (巷) — there are also many regional variations. In Beijing, it’s hutong (衚衕); in Shanghai, it’s longtang (弄堂) and in Chengdu, it’s xiangzi (巷子).

I don’t know anything about the exact origins of these different words for alley, but I imagine they have roots in local languages and geography. In Guangzhou, for example, a common name for alley is tung jeun in Cantonese (衕津), which literally means “alley dock” and refers to a lane near the Pearl River. Nobody uses this word in Hong Kong, where two other words are used to refer to alleys: fong (坊) and lei (里), which is a Cantonese transliteration of the English word “lane.”

More

The Mystery of Swiss Lane

Even after seven years of walking its streets, I’m still finding new things in Mile End, the neighbourhood I called home before I left Montreal. Back for a visit last month, I got around mostly by bike, which took me down streets on which I wouldn’t normally walk, like the quiet stretch of Casgrain in the old garment district. That’s where I spotted a laneway with an unusual name: Swiss Lane, according to the street sign, though “lane” has been patched over with white tape and the alley’s official name is now “ruelle Swiss.”

I can’t find any clues as to the origins of Swiss Lane’s name. The city’s otherwise comprehensive Répertoire historique des toponymes montréalais contains no reference to anything Swiss or Suisse. The only mention I can find in the Lovell’s Directory indicates that Swiss Lane was “not built upon.” (Its entry in the 1935 directory is found right under Swastika Avenue, which was apparently a lane off Ste. Famille Street.) So what’s the story behind Swiss Lane?

The Politics of Toponymy

Few things are as contentious and politically charged as the names of where we live, so it’s not surprising to see toponymy back in Montreal’s political spotlight, three years after the Park Avenue/Parc Avenue/avenue du Parc debacle. Earlier this week, a variety of nationalist groups began to advocate the renaming of Amherst Street, ostensibly because its namesake, Jeffrey Amherst, an officer of the British Army who helped conquer Quebec in 1760, advocated the genocide of North America’s native peoples.

Fair enough, I guess. There has long been a movement to give Lionel Groulx the boot from the St. Henri metro station that bears his name because of what he thought and said about Jews. Thing is, in the case of both Amherst and Groulx, as much as their beliefs and actions would be unacceptable today, they were in keeping with the general attitudes of their time. Groulx was far from the only anti-Semite in pre-WWII Canada; Amherst was not the only military leader who engaged in despicable tactics to win a war.

Besides, plenty of other unsettling people whose names have been enshrined in the landscape. If we want to get rid of all of the skeletons in our toponymical closet, we have a lot of cleaning to do, starting with Christopher Columbus (genocidal imperialist), René Lévesque (lethal drunk-driver), Maurice Duplessis (corrupt autocrat) and Saint Zotique (he wasn’t even a saint!).

More

Old China in Yau Ma Tei

While harbour reclamation has made Yau Ma Tei a landlocked neighbourhood, it began life as a waterfront village, with a large Tin Hau temple serving as a hub for trade and activity. When the British gained control of Kowloon in 1860, it laid a grid of mostly numbered streets through Yau Ma Tei. Most of these streets had counterparts on Hong Kong Island, but it wasn’t an issue until the early twentieth century, when Kowloon began to develop in earnest. In 1909, the colonial government formed a committee to rename the streets, which resulted in the interesting assortment of names that still exist today.

Most newer Chinese cities have streets named after other parts of China: massage touts and neon signs compete for attention on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, some of Taipei’s best coffee can be found on Chengdu Road and Chongqing Road is where all the action is in rustbelt Changchun. With the renaming of Yau Ma Tei’s streets, Hong Kong proved no exception — but what makes it unique is that those streets were named by the British after important treaty ports and British-influenced parts of China. What’s more, their romanized versions are based on Cantonese rather than Mandarin. Canton Road was named for Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong; Woosung Street for Wusong, a trading hub near Shanghai; and Pak Hoi Street for Beihai, a Cantonese-speaking port in Guangxi.

Canada’s Only Good Boulevard

Canadian cities fail miserably grandiose urban planning. Every single effort at creating a monumental boulevard has resulted in something mediocre. University Street in Toronto, which runs straight into the Ontario provincial parliament building, has a nice median and a good visual terminus, but it’s ruined by drab furnishings and even more banal buildings. Montreal’s René-Lévesque Boulevard starts nowhere in particular and ends nowhere in particular; although it passes by a number of great Modernist landmarks, like Place Ville-Marie, the CIBC Tower, Hydro-Quebec building and Maison Radio-Canada, it feels aimless and kind of pointless. Ottawa, the one city that could really use a boulevard or two, suffers from an ordinary provincial street grid that ignores the existence of the capital’s many important buildings.

The only example of a Canadian boulevard that really works, at least in my experience, is in Quebec City: Honoré-Mercier Avenue, formerly known as Dufferin Avenue (it was renamed in 1996, with Dufferin’s name given to an expressway, an exchange that brings to mind the renaming, in Montreal, of Dorchester Boulevard after René Lévesque and Dominion Square after Lord Dorchester). First planned in the late nineteenth century, after the construction of Quebec’s provincial legislature, it runs between the Mercier Monument and the edge of the hill separating Quebec’s upper and lower towns. What makes it so remarkable is that it opens up a spectacular vista of the suburbs and hills to the north of Quebec. Restrained street furniture keeps the view uncluttered. Walking down from the parliament, or from the narrow streets of either Old Quebec or Saint-Jean-Baptiste, it is breathtaking.

Calgary’s Missing Street Names

I’ve always resented the fact that Calgary’s streets are numbered. Not just numbered, but numbered according to quadrant, so that streets are known as 4th Street SW or 36th Avenue NE, and 4th Street and 4th Avenue intersect not just once, but four times, in each corner of the city. What makes this even worse is that nearly all streets in Calgary are numbered. Except in recent subdivisons, or in rare cases, there are no names to break up the monotony. It lends the city a certain soulless, anonymous air.

That wasn’t always the case. When Calgary was just a young city, a town really, all of its streets were named. Look at an old map and the history of Calgary is revealed in its street names. In the downtown area, straddling the Canadian Pacific Railroad tracks, many streets were named after CPR executives: Stephen Avenue, for the company’s first president; Van Horne Avenue, after the man who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railway; McIntyre Avenue and Angus Avenue, after two of the CPR’s investors. In Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Avenue, which ran along the north and south side of the railroad tracks, there was a certain sweet harmony.

Even more interesting was Rouleauville, an old French-Canadian village located just south of Calgary, around St. Mary’s Cathedral, in what is now known as the Mission. Here, the street names honoured prominent Franco-Albertan religious leaders like Lacombe, Doucet and Grandin. Rouleau Street enshrined the name of the two brothers who promoted the idea of a French village near Calgary and secured a land grant from the federal government. Other streets testified to Rouleauville’s Catholic faith, like Notre Dame Road, St. Jean Baptiste Street and St. Joseph Street.

Calgary lost its street names in 1904, when it adopted a numbering system that saw the city divided into quadrants, with Centre Street — formerly McTavish Street — dividing east from west. Rouleauville, a separate municipal entity, retained its street names until 1907, when it was annexed to Calgary. Not only did its French-speaking character eventually erode, it lost the only overt reminder of that French-Canadian heritage: its street names.

I can’t help but wonder Calgary’s the loss of its street names at such a formative time in its history planted the seed of an ahistorical city. For years, Calgary’s relationship with its own history has been one of complete ignorance. Its politicians and developers have long been eager to do away with what few old buildings it has and it could be said, at least until recently, that Calgary has lacked a sense of self. Much of its identity revolves around traditions invented for the purpose of tourism and economic investment, like the white cowboy hats that have come to symbolize the city.

More

Calgary’s Montreal Suburb

Stroll up the hill just south of downtown and take a look at the street signs: Frontenac Avenue. Montreal Avenue. Wolfe Street. Cabot Street. Montcalm Crescent. Talon Avenue. Laval Avenue. Dorchester Avenue. Where are we? In Mount Royal, of course, Calgary’s most prestigious neighbourhood.

I’ve always found it odd that the street names found in this hilltop district — hell, even the name of the neighbourhood itself — are meant to so deliberately to evoke Montreal and Quebec. In terms of architecture or design, Mount Royal is typical of pretty much any Garden City-inspired suburb developed in the early twentieth century. So why the references to a city and province so far removed from what was once bald prairie?

At the dawn of the twentieth century, American entrepreneurs, many from property speculators from the Dakotas, flocked to Calgary and settled on the hill just south of town. Very quickly, it came to be known as American Hill, and towards the end of the 1900s many of its residents expressed their desire to name the district’s streets after American presidents such as Washington, Cleveland and Grant.

“This did not go down well with the predominantly British-Canadian culture of Calgary at that time,” write Elise Corbet and Lorne Simpson in their detailed history of Mount Royal. “The majority of the population came from eastern Canada or the British Isles, and they were proud of their connection with the British Empire,” write Corbert and Simpson. “This did not go down well with the predominantly British-Canadian culture of Calgary at that time. The majority of the population came from eastern Canada or the British Isles, and they were proud of their connection with the British Empire. The initial reaction came with the 1907 plan, showing such names as Sydenham, Durham, Colborne, Carleton, Dorchester and Amherst, names resonant of British rule in Canada, which should have been enough to counter the concept of American Hill.”

But it wasn’t enough. In 1910, two Tory members of Calgary’s elite, R.B. Bennett and William Toole — Bennett would later become Prime Minister — convinced the Canadian Pacific Railway, which owned most land around Calgary, to officially rename American Hill after Mount Royal, in honour of the CPR’s president, William Van Horne, who lived in Montreal.

Then, write Corbet and Simpson, “the full force of Canadian patriotism was brought to bear when the street names zeroed in on prominent French Canadians in our history: Frontenac, Montcalm, Talon, Laval, Joliet, Verchères (the only woman in the group), and early explorers such as Cabot and Champlain. Montreal, Quebec and Levis were thrown in for good measure. After this, there was no more talk of American Hill.”

Of course, most of these names, from Amherst to Talon, would be familiar to Montrealers. After all, they grace a number of our own streets. But, removed from local history as they are, the street names of Calgary’s Mount Royal never seem to have become grafted to the landscape. Nearly a century after their imposition, they seem somehow contrived.

(I should add that this isn’t true for the name of Mount Royal itself: it quickly entered Calgary’s collective imagination as a symbol of the city’s elite. In 1910, it was even reflected in the name of Calgary’s first college.)

Today, nearly a third of Mount Royal’s residents are American immigrants or expatriates. In a way, the legacy of American Hill lives on.

Wolfe vs. Wolfe-Montcalm

The Plains of Abraham are famous for the confrontation between the armies of Wolfe and Montcalm, a decisive battle leading to Britain’s conquest of New France.

Several centuries later, a confrontation over a street name is taking place on this lamp-post bordering the park. Federal and Municipal authorities can’t agree on whether to call the street “Wolfe” or “Wolfe-Montcalm”. It seems likely that the disagreement reached a stalemate several decades back. Nowadays, the two names coexist and most people are either indifferent or unaware.

There are legitimate grounds to adopt either name. The city named the avenue “Wolfe-Montcalm” first, in 1901, a politically correct decision to commemorate both victor and vanquished equally. The National Battlefields Park was created in 1908 when Federal authorities saved the area from residential development and turned it into a commemorative park. The disagreement probably arose because the short avenue has always led to a monument on the spot where Wolfe fell in battle; the street has no link whatsoever with Montcalm. To complicate things, recent municipal mergers have resulted in the fact that a Wolfe Avenue now exists elsewhere in the city (home to an English-language, formerly Irish Catholic, elementary school).

More

Mozart, Dante and Molière

Madonna della Difesa, a Dante Street landmark

Whenever I head up to Little Italy, on my way for a coffee at Caffè Italia or some gelato at the Jean Talon Market, I wonder about Dante Street, a fairly short sidestreet off St. Laurent Boulevard just below the market. Although it is quiet, Dante Street is home to a few Little Italy landmarks, including the Pizzeria Napoletana and the sumptuous redbrick Chiesa della Madonna della Difesa, in which you can find a fresco of Benito Mussolini painted in 1919.

What really gets me about Dante Street is its name, however. A quick look at Quebec’s toponymy index reveals that it was christened on May 23, 1922 in honour of Dante Aligheri. But no other information is provided: I can only guess at the politics involved. Obviously, Dante Street was meant as an homage to Montreal’s Italian community, and it was named just as Little Italy had matured into a full-fledged neighbourhood. But whose idea was it? What kind of deals were made at City Hall? In 1980s Chinatown, a new square at the corner of Clark and La Gauchetière was named after Sun Yat Sen because that was the only name on which everyone in the Chinese community could agree. Was it the same deal with the Italian in 1920s Montreal?

I don’t have the answers. But Dante isn’t the only man of the arts honoured in the vicinity of Little Italy. In fact, a number of short, unassuming streets in the area bear interesting and unusual monikers. One block north of Dante, Mozart Street was renamed in 1912 after previous stints as Marcil and Stanley. North of that, the rue de la Poudrière was named after Molière in 1927 and 30th Avenue was named after Jules Verne in 1912. It’s cute and even a bit whimsical. Maybe the city councillors of Côte St. Luc, when they named a bunch of city streets and parks after themselves in 2001, should have looked east for inspiration.

Forget the Avenue, How About a Square?

The new Pine/Park intersection nearing completion
Photo from Midnight Poutine

Those hoping for a resolution to the Park Avenue affair will have to wait a bit longer. On Tuesday, Quebec’s provincial toponomy commission met to decide whether or not to approve the Montreal city council’s plan to rename Park Avenue and Bleury Street after former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa. (For background on the issue, check out our Park Avenue section.) As expected, the commission, faced with hundreds of letters in support of Park Avenue and a legal team headed by civil rights lawyer Julius Grey and Chinese community activist and Mile End resident May Chiu, decided to delay their decision until they had a chance to consider all of the input they received. A number of commentators have pointed out that, if it follows its own highly-publicized criteria, the commission will have no choice but to reject the renaming, reasons being that it has caused enormous controversy, the public was not adequately consulted and the name Park Avenue has not lost its cultural and historical relevance.

Today, however, news outlets are reporting that the commission might in fact avoid approving or rejecting the renaming by instead proposing a compromise. No word on what that compromise might be, but an editorial in Tuesday’s Le Devoir offers an elegantly simple solution: name the newly-rebuilt Park/Pine intersection after Robert Bourassa.

More

Goodbye, Park Avenue

Yesterday morning, Montreal city councillors voted to rename Park Avenue after former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa in a motion that passed 40 to 22. Opponents of the name change were not surprised. We are Montrealers, after all, which means we know enough about this city’s political process that we have been engrained with a deep cynicism. We know that citizens and ordinary city councillors are excluded from the most important decisions, which are made behind closed doors by the all-powerful executive council. We know that, as if by fate, Montreal mayors become so smitten with their unchecked power that they eventually transform into the autocrats they once derided.

That doesn’t stop us from being disappointed. It wasn’t long ago that the Gazette announced that name change opponents were just five votes shy of winning a council vote; then, last week, Mayor Tremblay held a caucus meeting. Afterwards, many of the councillors who had indicated they would vote against the name change mysteriously changed their minds. Anyone who has listened to Tremblay deliver a speech knows how unlikely it is that they were swayed by his impassioned rhetoric. So what convinced them to toe the party line in what was obstensibly a free vote?

More

What About JoJo Savard?

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.

Waiting for the 80 bus at Park and St. Viateur

Sitting outside at Navarino on Park Avenue

More