January 19th, 2007
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.
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November 29th, 2006
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?
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November 4th, 2006
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
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October 27th, 2006
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.
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October 18th, 2006
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.
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