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The first to guess the correct answer will win a fabulous prize! Get ON it!

EDIT: For bonus points, what is the current name of Cemetery Street?

DOUBLE EDIT: There is a winner! Details after the break!

Skrud, please accept my sincere congratulations! Here is your prize, an image I made on Blingee.com:

A winner is you!

Square Dorchester and Place du Canada were indeed built in 1872 over an ancient Indian burial ground the old Catholic cemetery. Cholera ridden as it was, it was in operation between 1799 and 1855, before a shift to the current Notre-Dame-Des-Neiges location.

The city has decided to “pimp out” the parks–in a manner similar to the above image, one hopes–in a $3.5 million project, stretching from 2008 until 2011.

Check it out yourself, I’m not going to summarize it, I have to play Cooking Mama.  Here are some facts on the subject:

FACTS

Check it.

Spacing Montreal recently wrote about the difficulty in determining what constitutes a neighborhood.  The post linked to Le Coeur de Sainte-Marie, a blog that investigates the names and boundaries that have helped define the Centre-Sud’s identity.  If nothing else, the resulting discussion underscored the difficulty in assigning a name to a location. Places as complex as neighborhoods, where personal experience and subjective opinion matter as much as simple geography, are not easy to label.  In peeling back the layers of history, the fascinating legacy of wards, parishes, old municipalities, and colloquial nicknames on the area’s toponymy becomes apparent.  Can any neighborhood–let alone the subject of this post–be objectively called anything?

Yes.  I’m going to resolve the ambiguity and dub the area “Shaug Town”. Much better ring to it.

Eyyy!

Having lived for two years on Mackay, a stone’s throw from the Shaug Town‘s eastern border, I’d like to think I know a bit about the dirty streets of downtown’s western annex.  Though not the city’s prettiest neighborhood–or even close– its unexpected vibrancy and wild contrasts mitigate any lack of good looks.

I always thought the “Village” component of the “Shaughnessy Village” label to be pretty ironic.  This isn’t a quaint neighborhood of two-and-three-story rowhouses–and if it once was, that day is long gone.  There’s no village-ness of any sort, no cozy sense of community; Shaug Town is about as Big City as Montreal gets.

Concordia's downtown campus has gone from"DRAB" to "FAB"

Abe Lincoln would be proud

Here is an alley

No scenic ruelles here–asphalt alleys wind their way through mazes of tall concrete walls.  Elsewhere in the city, the local architectural heritage is painstakingly documented and renovated; here it is vinylized, gutted, or otherwise demolished.   And the area is certainly not the product of any principled, rational urban planning.  Here, streetlife exists only by virtue of a very large amount of people living in a very small amount of space.

The Plateau can toot its own horn about the population density of its triplexes versus the Le Corbusier towers-in-a-park model.  They’re no competition for Shaug Town, though. The high-rises here are hardly the epitome of rationalist modernism–living conditions are by-and-large tight, the apartments small, the rents cheap.  The towers climb above rowhouses and low-rise apartments, stacking tenant atop tenant, student atop student, professional atop professional, immigrant atop immigrant.  Diversity here is forced by proximity.  Forget the poem outside the Mont-Royal metro, this is the heart of the city.

Arahova, Sexe Cité, Bar Diana: Trifecta of Quality

Shaug Town, USA

Ooodles of Nooodles

Fondoop-a-doop!

Not that I have any desire to live here.  I wouldn’t go back, and I technically lived outside the neighborhood.  I’ll take NDG, the Plateau… Outremont.  Shaug Town is a little too much for my tastes.

The high-rises–the legacy of a Drapeau-era real-estate boom–rise often and arbitrarily.   They pop up between row houses and  empty lots, crumbling commercial buildings and parking lots.  There’s no logic to the arrangement.  Traffic rushes up and down St-Marc and Fort, hurrying on and off the Ville-Marie Expressway.  There’s a sense of urban desperation here.  It’s as if the city threw up as many structures as it could, in a sort of last-ditch effort to delay Toronto’s rise towards national pre-eminence.

The legacy of this final growth spurt, the bizarre architecture, the retro-modernity of the expressway… it’s ugly but exciting.  The Montreal that accomplished this no longer exists.

This street is called Fort, but where's the FORT at?

The moorish arches are nice, but I find the staircases lacking

Tunnel towards Little Burgundy

Looking down Tupper towards Place Ville-Marie

I don’t know much about the history of the area–one day, I’ll actually do some research.  Still, the architecture of the area lays out a concise résumé: a heyday as a respectable bourgeois residential neighborhood; a momentary real-estate boom; a decline as surplus housing stock attracted students and low-income tenants.

It’s also common knowledge that the area was once the city’s gay anglo center.  Drapeau sent in the morality squads in anticipation of either Expo or the Olympics, and the community moved east.  Judging from the current vibrancy of the Gay Village, the neighborhood’s been the worse for it since.

Though the decrepit Seville block still stands vacant, a steady stream of small businesses continue to push their way westward: noodle shops, cafés, Asian groceries, awkward salons, a laundromat. The turnover is high, but the storefronts are filled.

It’s no beauty, but it works.

Columns and pediments add a classy touch to any building

Seville block and the Forum

It's Bananatime. It's the One-Oh-Eight!

Western boundary

HOLEY MOLEY!

Almost no one, judging from the bus’s anemic ridership.

Fagstein has a pretty thorough rundown of the 515′s shortcomings, and recently wrote about its current tribulations. Spacing Montreal called the route a failure.  Even Benoît Labonté is ganging up on the bus, calling for the removal of the reserved bus lane on De la Commune.

I say enough! Leave the tourist bus alone! Like the young boy that brings his cool new Pokemon lunch-tote to school, only to have the bullies call it “totally for girls”, I get a bit misty-eyed to know that my likable loser of a bus route is the target of such derision.

Instead of being resigned to crying in the nurse’s office–like last time– it is now possible to salvage both my dignity and the route.

Oh snap! ÉCOLOBUUUUUS!

The Réseau de transport de la Capitale introduced the Écolobus in 2008. The Écolobus–a small electric minibus–runs a short route through the roads of Vieux-Quebec, hitting the requisite tourist destinations along the way. There’s no confusing schedules to consult–it runs at steady 20 minute intervals from from 5:30 AM until 1:00 AM. There’s no issue of confusing bus stop signs–you simply flag down the bus as you would a taxi. Maybe. I don’t recall seeing any bus stops anyway, and the drivers were kind enough to stop whenever I waved ran towards them, wildly flailing my arms, screaming, “ÉCOLOBUUUS!”

And I was screaming with excitement–not exasperation!  What a change from Montreal!  What a class act on the on the part of Quebec City! Attractive buses, a logical route, courteous drivers–and it was totally free!

The Écolobus is itself a wonder. The “Gulliver” model minibus–manufactured by Tecnobus of Italy–is fully electric, going for 12 hours or 100 km on a single charge. Consuming only $3.25 of electricity each day, it can carry twenty passengers in near silence and relative comfort.  While its top speed of 33 km/h isn’t exactly blisteringly fast, the minibus is no slouch, whirring up and down the steep hills of Vieux-Quebec with ease.

On top of it all, the Écolobus’s standard of design is remarkably high.  With clean lines, glossy black touches, and an ergonomic interior, this little machine is the iPod of public transit. And the fact that it’s a zero emissions vehicle?

Are you sold yet?

YES!

The 515 seems to have proven that there likely exists little demand from area residents for the Peel/Vieux-Port/Berri tram.  The 515 also seems to have proven that an aging fleet of GMC Classics doesn’t exactly scream “tourist friendly”.

Still, if nothing else, the bus fills the transit void that had existed in the Old Port.  It is absurd for the city’s principal touristic pole of attraction to be served solely by a metro station that requires crossing under an expressway through the infamous pee-tunnel.

If the city wants to consolidate its tourist offerings in the foreseeable future, it needs transit that isn’t contingent on the construction of a tramway.  The Écolobus is a sensible choice, given that it runs on a sensible route.

With Griffintown once again free to wither away into obscurity, the Peel section of the route can be done away with. The Berri part of the route seems to serve no one but a handful of Cité-Multimedia workers heading towards the metro.  And I’ve seen all of zero people using the René-Lévesque section.

A rationalized route could hit several of the city’s poles of attraction–both established and up-and-coming–in less than 5 km.  Quartier International, new swanky hotels on Rue McGill, Cité-Multimedia, Silo No. 5, Palais des congrès, Place-d’Armes, Notre-Dame, Place Jacques-Cartier, Marché Bonsecours, CHUM, the Champ-de-Mars metro–there is a critical mass of attractions in the area.  Hell, extend the route up Beaver Hall, and it could serve Saint-Catherine. It’s not enough for the 515, but the demand is there to support a minibus.

Get on the ÉCOLOBUUUUUS!

For Quebec, the Écolobus has served as an opportunity to solidify the city’s brand in the visitor’s mind: green, sophisticated, even modern.  These electric minibuses have been rolling around the historic centers of European cities for a while now, but Quebec’s use of them seems bold and innovative in a North American context.

The Écolobus has a value far beyond its role as public transit.

This one is a no-brainer.

If I was unsure of what exactly I wanted to accomplish, I knew exactly what I wanted to avoid: self-important introspection, poetic musings, and–especially– anything relating to the word “artsy”.

Unfortunately, walking around rainy Saint-Henri today didn’t really lend itself to anything lighthearted. For any self-important introspection, poetic musings, and artsy-ness of any sort, I apologize wholeheartedly.

Workman, looking east towards Greene

I walked down to Saint-Henri today largely to satisfy my morbid curiosity about the discovery of Jessica Neilson. Since her disappearance four months ago, her body had sat undisturbed in a car parked in an alley off of Workman, near the corner of Greene.

I’m not surprised it took this long to find her. Things get buried in the snow.

What I wondered about was how many times I might have walked past the car as it was parked there. Coming from Lionel-Groulx, walking on Greene, heading towards a restaurant on Notre-Dame… but I needed to withdraw money… did I cut through Workman to get to the bank on Rose-de-Lima? When I grabbed a drink from the depanneur on Delisle, did I pace the next street over? How many times had I walked that street since December?

What about others? Would the McGill students at Solin have passed the car heading to and from the Greenspot? How many drivers tried for free parking in the alley, only to find it occupied? Who looked–day in, day out, for four months–through the windows that face that dreary ruelle?  So many people briefly glimpsed an unremarkable white car, in an unremarkable alley, and promptly forgot about it.

It’s a silly game to play, counting the number of people.

Still, I can’t help but find it amazing to think how much we can process, and how little we can remember.  Living in a city, we have more tangential touches with others’ lives–and deaths–than we can imagine.  We can be surrounded by crowds of people and never achieve a more perfect anonymity.

What made today surreal was how dead the streets were. Again, not a surprise: it was a Sunday and it was raining. I walked around the neighborhood, totally alone, except for the hundreds of people within a stone’s throw of me.

For all the talk of Saint-Henri’s supposed gentrification, it can still be old-school depressing. The 720 looms up on the hill, an omnipresent concrete wall. Hulking industrial buildings–which may or may not be lofts–struggle with tiny Drapeau-era townhouses for space. A monolithic Hydro-Quebec post rises across the street from the Normand Maurice Building on Bel-Air and St-Antoine; the federal government built it to be LEED-certified–but neglected to add any windows to its blank brick facades. Windows or not, there’s not much reason to look outside on a day like today.

It might have been the weather, but the area felt oppressive in a way I never noticed before.

Around Lionel-Groulx

Westmount on the right

Rose-de-Lima

Ad-hoc memorial

With that in mind, here is a picture made with MS Paint:

Photoshop has nothing on me

Photo by Elena Sicconi, who nearly got fined for riding without a ticket

Riding on one of Milan’s 200 Peter Witt model streetcars is alternatingly exhilarating and soul-crushing for the transit geek. Exhilarating, because it’s an 80-year-old piece of transportation history, remarkably beautiful and well-maintained. Soul crushing, because it’s an 80-year-old piece of transportation history, remarkably more effective than the modern $500,000 Novabuses putting around the streets of Montreal. There’s a similarity between these wonderful Milanese trams and the STM’s combustion-prone lemons, though.

They were both built in Montreal.

Kind of.*

Technically speaking, Milan’s trams were built in Northern Italian factories, according to American specifications. However, Milan’s Carminati & Toselli and Officine elettroferroviarie Tallero were but two of the many factories putting Peter Witt trams at the time– Canadian Car and Foundry, based in Montreal, manufactured hundreds of the identical model. (Interestingly, the Canada Car Company–one of three companies merged to form Canada Car and Foundry in 1909– was based in Turcot, Quebec. Perhaps someone can shred some light onto whether “Turcot” here corresponds to Turcot Village, and the present site of the interchange. Highways running over an old streetcar factory? Talk about totally symbolic, tra-la-la.) Like much else in Montreal, many streetcars left the city for Toronto; 100 went to the TTC, where they served until the introduction of the Yonge subway in 1954.

You can still head over to the big T-City to ride ride one of these heritage beauties for the low, low price of $45. Or you can shell out €1 in Milan.

Novabus LFS in front of Gare Lucien-L'Allier (CC license??)

*It should be noted that Novabus is actually located in Saint-Eustache–not Montreal–but is close enough for the author’s taste.

Where's my (fair trade) beans at??

In an age where the Oscar Wilde maxim “Nothing succeeds like excess,” is decidedly passé, the old red-light is apparently going green. The Maison du développement durable promises a new take on spectacle , one where “synergies between social and environmental organizations” are en vedette. Sponsored in large part by Hydro-Québec–renowned for their spectacular environmental record–this green machine of a building will include:

Offices, café, retail store, daycare centre, Sustainable Building Interpretation Centre, portal on sustainable development, citizens’ forum, conference rooms, laboratory for monitoring the building performance, inside parking for bikes.

Wow! The excitement is definitely palpable! The author of this blog–along with others, no doubt– was seriously concerned about the lack of “conference rooms”, “offices”, and “Sustainable Building Interpretation Centres” in an area once known for its hedonistic pleasures. I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t like taking their nightlife with a side of ecological responsibility?

The building will include random images, rusted steel paneling, and translucent human silhouettes

But wait, there’s more! Those among us who could no longer tolerate the emissions given off by the fry-cookers at Frite Dorée will be pleased to note that the properties on the Monument-National block (including the Montreal Pool Room and Café Cléopatre) have been acquired by the Société de développement Angus. The group, known for their exemplary work in the field of office park development, plans to replace the current block with the Rue du commerce responsable, featuring businesses that will close at a reasonable hours.

Word is not yet forthcoming on the status of plans to transform Metropolis and Foufounes into a Whole Foods and a Ten Thousand Villages, respectively.

Like many other post-industrial cities in perpetual decline, Montreal suffers neither a lack of municipal problems, nor a lack of enterprising individuals willing to exploit them for personal gain. However, it is the elan and grace with which the city’s politicians and media gadflies manage to obfuscate simple facts and oversimplify complex issues that distinguish Montreal amongst its more functional peers. Our homegrown political theater is blessed to play host to a cast of characters who– day in and day out– rise above and beyond the call of duty to exemplify the meaning of the phrase “garbage sandwich with a side of beans”.

With this in mind, NONTREAL is proud to bring you the semi-regular series, Team of Assholes, “AWESOME SQUAD” featuring cursory research, out-of-context quotes, and resolutely negative commentary. We hope this will serve as proper tribute to those we profile, those who truly put the “M-T-L” in “dysfunctional”.

–The NONTREAL Editorial Board

Benoît Labonté:

Chilling Hard? Or Hardly Chilling?

The B-Dog

Peu connu des Montréalais, les sondages lui donnent 5%, Benoit Labonté ne s’en inquiète pas, affirmant que l’approche des élections lui donnera plus de visibilité.” –Le Messager Verdun, March 24, 2009

While he may command a paltry five percent support among likely voters, headstrong Benoît Labonté takes his shity poll numbers in stride, treating every day like it’s election day. As mayor of the central borough of Ville-Marie since 2005, his principle duties include updating the Ville de Montreal website’s Vos élus section and organizing a semi-annual potluck. Happily, since his 2007 break with Gérald Tremblay’s Union Montreal, the Vision Montreal chief has been able to engage his true passion: bitching about things over which he has little to no control.

Unfortunately, his invariable opposition to every single Tremblay position has forced Benoît into some pretty sticky situations. Compulsively forced to attack every Union Montreal proposal tabled, our friend has found himself on the wrong side of the occasional issue or two:

• The pedestrianization of Rue Saint-Paul: Playing up the whole “Europe in North America” angle may be okay for the marketers at Tourisme Montreal, but Benoît was having having none of it when Tremblay proposed turning Vieux-Montreal’s main drag into a euro-style pedestrian mall during the summer of 2008.  (Oddly, Labonté had just okayed a similar project in the Gay Village.)  The B-dog–as he is known in some circles– has relented somewhat this year, in exchange for the removal of the infernal bus lane on De La Commune. Can’t have both; what are we– France??
• Downtown Parking Meters: Having forgotten about the basic laws of supply and demand–useful knowledge during his stints as head of the Montreal World Trade Center and president of the city’s chamber of commerce–the B.L. advocated free parking meters during the 2008 Christmas shopping season. Regrettably, parking meters ration a limited resource and facilitate the maximum number of shoppers in a given area. Add that to the fact that the proposal hardly seemed to be a transit-positive initiative, and the idea roundly sounded like shit.
• Other issues: Searching “Benoît Labonté” and “contre” on Google comes up with around 17,000 hits. “Benoît Labonté” and “against” is 56,000. Too much negativity, if you ask the author. Too much to sort through, as well.

Too much negativity indeed. Our friend–the B-dog, if you will– needs to step up his positive attitude quotient. As they say, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar!

More importantly, his chief rival founded Dans un Jardin which (according to Wikipedia) “sold mostly perfume, but also jam, and other small delicacies“. Perfume, jam, and small delicacies? Your humble correspondent thought he disliked Gérald Tremblay until he read that. It increases the mayor’s benevolent-grandfather-likability factor by a factor of five, at least. No one wants to see a kindly old confectionist being attacked. And with the recent revelation that Richard Bergeron is actually functionally retarded, it looks like our friend Benoît needs to drop his “Negative Nancy” act and instead “spice up the nice”. For real this time.

Edit: Wow. Looking back, this post is pretty pointless.

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At Saint-Denis and René-Lévesque, of course!

Does her current chum know about this? Poor guy.

Though I guess she doesn’t need to break the bad news to him right away, given that her future chum isn’t coming around until 2018.

Barring any more consultations, that is.

Google Maps, circa 1955

Since then, the boulevard has grown out of its bit role as Sainte-Catherine’s service street.  New developments such as Le Roc Fleuri, Les Tours Lépine, and the upcoming Louis Bohème contribute to the once-moribund streetlife with ground-level retail. A coherent redesign of public spaces (PDF) has given the boulevard an aesthetic cachet all its own. And of course, the bike path further cements the boulevard’s place as a vital, multi-modal transportation corridor. With each new project, De Maisonneuve develops a more cohesive streetscape, a more coherent identity.

So then: what the hell is this?

Maybe it's better feng shui?

In addition to new zoning guidelines, the programme particulier d’urbanisme for the Quartier des Spectacles (Available here as a large PDF) provides for major infrastructure work. The area, roughly bounded by René-Lévesque St-Alexandre, De Maisonneuve and Saint Dominique will see several new public spaces, sidewalk redesign, Sainte-Catherine covered in paving stones, and, not least, the rerouting of De Maisonneuve.

Tic-Tac-Toe play-by-play.

The PPU plans for the boulevard to be split in two, with the eastern section following the De Montigny alignment from Clark to Saint-Urbain.  A block to the north, the current western alignment would be extended east from St-Urbain to Clark. (Currently De Maisonneuve follows the curvilinear path of the metro as it winds its way from Saint-Laurent towards Place-Des-Arts.)

Inexplicably, the rendering provided in the PPU seems to have St-Urbain and Clark both running one way south.  As such, motorists would be forced to turn left, making following the boulevard itself impossible. Assuming that the rendering is incorrect, and that the city’s traffic engineers and urban designers haven’t totally lost it, one would still be forced to navigate two more intersections than necessary, turning right onto either St-Urbain or Clark, then turning left in order to continue onto De Maisonneuve. In addition to these two turns, motorists will have to contend with a loss of a lane– this will likely pose traffic issues, as it seems doubtful a third of the traffic turns south in current configuration.

The urban core, though, shouldn’t be tailored around the car– why shouldn’t this plan be hailed as a major traffic-calming measure? Well, there’s the bike lane.  Cyclists too will have to turn at the two intersections, possibly across traffic.  It seems assine– and dangerous– to make bikers navigate what amounts to a quadrilateral traffic circle.

To be sure, the current set up is hardly ideal. De Maisonneuve’s bend leaves two awkward lots between Ontario and De Montigny– afterthought greenspace that surely ranks among the city’s worst. Empty and uninviting, stranded between major traffic corridors, the lots–technically city parks– are scars on the urban fabric and in desperate need of a re-imagining.  Surely the PPUs provisions provide for better public space?

Eh. The quadrilateral between De Maisonneuve, St-Urbain, Clark and De Montin-neuve– the future Place de l’Adresse symphonique– certainly seems to be an improvement. The square would serve to frame OSM’s concert hall (the contract having been awarded yesterday) and would allow the possibility of outdoor performances. One wonders, however, about the suitability of the site’s acoustics, being surrounded by traffic on four sides. One wonders, as well, as to what exactly the rendering is trying to represent with the bizarre football field yardlines on the left-hand side of the square.

The most convivial traffic median ever.

More frustrating are horrible residual spaces between Ontario and De Maisonneuve that the plan maintains. Now redubbed Promenade des Festivals, the two awkward median spaces will see marginal sidewalk widening, a series of awkward commercial kiosks, and, if renders are to be believed, the removal of grass and trees to improve sightlines. The end result is a public space that sucks just as much as the current one, with the added bonus of permanent vending stalls that will see business all of three weeks a year.

Is there an upshot in all of this? The plan seems to rationalize sightlines and streetscapes, repairing the destructured urban fabric. Is the southern half of De Maisonneuve to serve a sort of structural axis, with views terminating at the future OSM hall? Planned, coherent urban vistas are certainly something Montreal is lacking. Unfortunately, design niceties or not, the view to the east is unlikely to be inspiring:

The downside of building a performing arts center alongside a housing project.