Rethinking Viger Square’s Rehabilitation
This is a bit late, but there’s a petition circulating I urge you to sign. We need to save Viger Square for demolition, as the city now intends to do. In point form, here’s why: 1. Viger Square’s...
View ArticleCabot Square Redux: not quite paradise, kind of a parking lot…
After about a year’s worth of work, Cabot Square re-opened to the public on Wednesday July 8th. The major improvement involves two outreach workers who will now use the square’s renovated stone kiosk...
View ArticleSabotaging Viger Square
Here’s a hypothetical situation: A city builds a park costing x millions of dollars with the intent to rehabilitate a given sector of its urban environment and cover over an exposed highway trench. It...
View ArticleDenis Coderre needs to stop spending money on parks
Another week, another colossal waste of our municipal tax dollars. Tuesday’s announcement: $12 million to renovate Place Vauquelin, the public square between City Hall and the Old Courthouse. Among the...
View ArticleChildren’s Hospital Field at Cabot Square®
Urban development news of the day: the former Montreal Children’s Hospital building at Cabot Square has been sold to real estate developer Luc Poirier for an undisclosed sum. The MUHC’s asking price,...
View ArticleIconic Montreal Architecture – Complexe Desjardins
A quick summation before my screed. Here’s why I think Complexe Desjardins is an exceptional example of Montreal architecture: 1. It’s balanced without being symmetrical. The four towers are of...
View ArticleThe odd saga of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s entrance
A few years ago I was at O’Hare with an hour and a half to kill between flights and after a quick bite and a coffee I was keen to go have a smoke. Unsure of where the exit was located, I approached two...
View ArticlePublic consultation can’t replace vision
If it weren’t for the fact that it’s apparently a great excuse for a lot of infrastructure spending, would anyone really care about the 375th anniversary of the founding of Ville Marie, which will...
View ArticleNothing succeeds like excess
The City of Montreal has announced plans to renovate the northernmost section of Dorchester Square at an estimated cost of $4.2 million. A $700,000 contract was awarded to noted local landscape...
View ArticleAbandoning the Maison Radio-Canada is as unwise as it is unethical
So once upon a time there was a large, densely populated working class neighbourhood just east of Old Montreal informally called the ‘Faubourg à m’lasse’. The estimate is that in the early 1960s...
View ArticleMontreal at the Crossroads: 1758
If you’ll indulge me for a moment, let’s take a trip back in time. The year is 1758 and the ‘Seven Years’ War‘ had entered its fourth year in North America. The conflict was the largest international...
View ArticleThree-Alarm Fire Nearly Destroys Historic Snowdon Theatre
That was a close one. According to the Journal de Montréal, the fire at Montreal’s historic Snowdon Theatre, though severe, was not so bad it weakened the structure. Damage seems to have been...
View ArticleGriffintown co-op to be rebuilt; residents offered accommodation at nearby...
Some late breaking good news. It appears the now homeless former residents of the Saint Anne housing co-op in Griffintown have caught a break after several days of devastating news. To recap, the...
View ArticleExpo 1881
Many years ago when I found myself making my way towards the Tam Tams one sunny summer Sunday and wound up in the middle of a strange festival going along the Mount Royal Avenue side of Parc...
View ArticleNattering Nabobs of Negativism*
Michael Sabia can’t catch a break. First he faced opposition for even being considered for the role of CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) back in 2009. It was quickly pointed out...
View ArticlePort of Call, Montreal
Days after Montrealers went home salivating at the thought of a proposed new trans-regional light rail system, the Port of Montreal, in conjunction with the municipal and provincial government,...
View ArticleMoney for Nothing
The Mordecai Richler Gazebo will now cost the taxpayers of Montreal nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. And a series of granite waypoints, apparently taking the form of stylized tree-stumps,...
View ArticleMontreal Movie Palaces – What are they now?
The very first film ever projected in North America for a paying audience was shown in this building – l’Édifice Robillard (standing yet abandoned at Viger and the Main) – on either June 27th or June...
View ArticlePublic consultation can’t replace vision
If it weren’t for the fact that it’s apparently a great excuse for a lot of infrastructure spending, would anyone really care about the 375th anniversary of the founding of Ville Marie, which will...
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