photo by Nika Vee

by Hugh McGuire

In the mid 1840s, Sir James Alexander proposed that Mount Royal should be turned into a park, and twenty-five years later, 1869, the City of Montreal amended its charter to approve a $350,000 loan to purchase the land. At the time Montreal, population 112,000, was confined to ten city blocks by the river, and many city councilors argued that the Park was too far from the border of the city to be useful. But Mayor Aldis Bernard pushed for the project (as well as Ile St-Helene, and Parc Lafontaine), and the land was purchased, with a final bill of $1 million, an extraordinarily hefty sum for the time.

The park wasn't inaugurated until 1876, by which time the city had expanded significantly. A few decades later, the park was surrounded by houses and development: if the city had waited, the land would have been too expensive to buy. If Montreal had waited, Mount Royal would be a condo development, and not a park.

Yet the value of the Park, however you want to define the word value, is incalculable. The value to ordinary citizens, the values of properties near the park, the value to (...read more...)

Speaking of islands, there a quite a few of them in Casco Bay off the coast of Portland, not to mention the thousands that lie off the coast of Maine generally. These floating oases, along with the myriad inlets and rocky shores that make up the meandering coastline of the state, have drawn Canadian visitors for decades. Maine has all the advantages of feeling like it is part of the Maritimes while still having the allure of a 'foreign' country (it's feeling more foreign down here every day in Bush-land, let me tell you...)

A row-boatable distance away from the beauty of Peaks Island, where Aunt Emma and Virginia lived out their days, is another, much smaller island, called Cushing's. I'm not even sure that Emma knew, but this mile-by-a-mile-and-a-half plot of land had been purchased by Lemuel Cushing - most often described simply as a 'wealthy Canadian' - in 1859. That, in itself, is not so significant as much of Maine's generous coastal and coniferous landscape had for years served both English and French interests in the leisure and business side of things.

But what was significant about Lemuel, and later about his son, Francis, who took over the management (...read more...)

I had dinner with one of the town planners for Westbrook the other night. He was at the other end of the table from me and, from what I could see, was not feeling very well that evening so I didn't get the chance to ask all the questions I had always wanted to ask a Westbrook town planner. Not that I had any of these questions in my mind before last week, mind you - but they're burning ones now.

Like, where was Hottentot, for example? What ever happen to this 'S.D. Warren development for employees', as Aunt Emma calls it in her journal? Has it been torn down? Condo-ized? Made into an old folks home?

And what will happen to this mill town - where nearly all the residents at one time worked for the same employer - now that the trough is running dry? How does a planner deal with the changing demographics, aesthetics, and logistics of a place as it morphs into a small city that is no longer a self-sustaining, one-gig town but acts as a dispersed bedroom community for other cities that are miles away?

And where have all the Tourangeaus and the Duclos gone (...read more...)

One never knows what Google will provide.

Being here in Maine without the home comforts of a scanner or a camera, I am at the mercy of the internet for images this week. So, as would be expected, I half-heartedly typed in the name of my Great Aunt 'Emma Tourangeau' this morning knowing that I would likely find nothing in the picture department. Although Aunt Emma was a bit of a celebrity in southern Maine when a resurgence of interest in French Canadian heritage began happening in the 1970's, I doubted whether the beautiful portrait of her from an old interview she did for Yankee Magazine would have been transferred onto the journal's website.

I was right, there was no picture.

But what I did find on Google was astonishing - excerpts from Aunt Emma's Island Cookbook Featuring Old French Canadian Recipes comes up first! Since she was born in 1884 (and died at the ripe old age of 101 in 1985) she would have no idea of the jealousy that her Google-positioning might inspire amongst the net-climbers vying for the top line. In fact, she would likely laugh and launch one her pithy phrases that I find dotted throughout her (...read more...)

Rebecca Duclos, Reading Montreal editor

Acting as a 'foreign correspondent' this week, I am reporting from the field of Portland, Maine USA. As many of you will be quick to point out, though, Maine is not such a foreign country for many Quebec families who, for generations, have migrated or travelled to these parts. Whether it was by the Grand Trunk Railroad or from the back seat of their dad's old car, the view of Maine's thick forests, rocky coasts, tacky seafood joints, and endless motels sporting names like 'Allouette' or 'La Belle Vue' has for decades been a familiar sight to many.

This week's offerings, like my great Aunt Emma's tourtière, will contain a mix of what is at hand for me here in my temporary Maine perch. I'll be excerpting from the Tourangeau and Duclos family history and private journals that I recently discovered in my father's closet. These precious sources describe the life of my French Canadian (or Franco American, depending upon which side of the border one favours) ancestors who came down to work in the Westbrook paper mill in the 1800's.

I'll also be taking Reading Montréal out onto Cushing's Island, a tiny spec of heaven (...read more...)

Image: Azzaelea

RM: Did you choose Montreal or did Montreal choose you?


[JP] Well, I grew up in the suburbs, so I would say that from an early age I wanted to be in the city.

[MLe]. Me too, I chose to be here too.

[MLa] Well, I’m from Toronto originally, actually. So, I guess I chose it, but I think I could say that Montreal hasn’t really chosen us yet. It is still struggling to understand us [laughs].

Photo: Karnak Temple by Audijeep

RM: A theoretical question for you: Reading Montreal has three cheques in its hand for $1,000,000 to go to each of you. But the only stipulation is that you have to walk away from this place, walk away from NOMADE for two months and go to a city or town where you are not allowed to do any work related to the office. You have to study how your chosen destination operates. You can photograph and draw its spaces, visit its galleries, museum, and libraries - eat in its restaurants, crawl around in its sewers, mix with its nightlife, whatever you like… what place would you chose and why?

[MLa] Well, for me it’s a toss-up between two things: I’d love to go to Eygpt - to the place where architecture started, where so much of it began…or I would go somewhere where there is absolutely NO architecture - like maybe the middle of a jungle somewhere -in Costa Rica, maybe, or somewhere on the African continent.


Image: Roman Hotel Room, Lance Hayden

[JP] Well, for me it’s not fancy or even that exotic, but I would probably go to Rome. I’ve been there before, but (...read more...)

RM: What do you think the biggest mistake the city of Montreal has ever made?

N: That’s an easy question to answer. Montreal suffered a kind of serious urban post-tramautic stress disorder from the Olympic stadium. Yes, there were a lot of problems with that project, but we should be over them by now. People here have not gotten over those mistakes. This has lead to a lot of problems here with people thinking big, thinking about ‘out there’ projects that are audacious and ambitious. You will always have that response that ‘oh no, it will become a new Olympic stadium’! It's like a ghost, and it’s still out there haunting us - even after thirty years. It isn’t even the fact that that project it cost a lot of money, it’s that the Stadium has had a huge impact on the psyche of the city.



It is a shame because we had things going here like Expo 67. It seems that the city has lost its nerve with large scale projects, unlike what is happening in Toronto where there doesn’t seem to a problem with doing large scale projects with big architects that are relevant at a global level. So, (...read more...)