As August dawns, a different kind of perrenial pops up without fail for those of us in the Park Extension neighbourhood of Montreal - and it's not a flower, but a world-class, professional tennis tournament. For two weeks (since 1981), the tournament is hosted within a big chunk of our beloved Jarry Park, which is our one jewel and salvation of green space amidst an otherwise densely-built heat island of mostly over-packed appartments.
This year it is a reminder that Tennis Canada has its eye on yet another land grab within Jarry Park, one that threatens the majority of Park Ex residents' single foot/bike/scooter access point to our oasis (through Parc St-Roch and a level railway crossing). But they won't share with us citizens any details of their plans, other than that the large baseball diamond fronting that access point is directly on the spot planned to become a new, covered stadium to replace the existing open-air facility that has served their needs for the last couple of decades.
Ah, but the world of professional sports is driven by capitalist greed and we lap it all up gladly, now with legalized betting on everything from the number of games going to Deuce in a given tennis match, to the point spread in a given football game, and the number of homeruns a guy like Vladdy Guerrero Jr. is going to hit in a season.
There is so much money tied up in pro sport, even the tournament name itself is for sale. What is supposed to be the Canadian Open sold itself out long ago, and had to be referred to as the "Rothmans/Players/DuMaurier Open" then the "Rogers Cup" for a time and now is the "National Bank Open presented by Rogers" all to sop up more money for organizers. As I write this, the rain is coming down, dampening their monetary fortunes with rain delays, as if to help buttress their argument for the necessity of a roofed stadium.
Why not le Stade (the Olympic Stadium)?
With the Quebec government having just borrowed nearly a billion Canadian dollars to replace the Olympic Stadium roof a few kilometres away, and now set to borrow untold amounts more to renovate its Brutalist concrete interior, I hardly see the need to build a new indoor stadium for Tennis Canada's benefit, at the cost of public space and the public money Tennis Canada is already eyeing to help pay for it.
So Jarry Park being a municipal responsibility, a bunch of us Park Ex residents tried to make our voices heard at the monthly borough council meetings. I even sent in a question ahead of time via the City of Montreal's website tool. (Your question will be addressed by electronic response, I was told by the man holding closed the door to the borough office after the scant 50 maximum number of public residents had been allowed in, before even the start of the meeting).
I left outraged. I wanted answers. I wanted access to my government officials. I was being shown the hand.
I later watched the online stream of the Q&A portion where it was clear our borough mayor and local councillor both had nothing but vague reassurances to other likewise concerned residents that their voices will be considered "among all the various" voices getting their ear. A later statement from the borrough outlined that the city's Executive Committee (controlled by rival party Ensemble Montreal, and its leader, our recently elected first-time mayor, Soraya Martinez Ferrada) would have final say on whatever Tennis Canada and the city and those other interested parties, whoever they may be, shall do.
So much for people power eh?
Martinez Ferrada, a former Justin Trudeau federal cabinet minister, seemed like a decent bet to a plurality of Montreal voters last November when she came to power at the end of a two-term city goverment run by grassroots party Projet Montreal and their bubbly-but-savvy leader (former Mayor Valerie Plante). Plante's popularity had waned considerably as the reality of her "Pink line" new subway route eventually proved as efforvescent as her personality. Her government also failed dismally at one of their signature goals: getting more social housing built to meet the growing needs of the citizenry.
Her team passed legislation that looked like a surefire win, enforcing the building contractors to build not just premium new condo units, but a fixed percentage of decidedly affordable housing alongside. But these contractors didn't want to build any low-return-on-investment social housing when they knew they could get a higher return (that more than covers any fines for non-compliance) by cooling their heels just a few years, sitting on prime land that would only rise in value as housing costs surge. So that policy failed dismally.
Not all bike paths improve public safety
And then there were the bike paths... Despite the platform she ran on, Martinez Ferrada hasn't moved with any speed to undo some of the more poorly thought-out bike paths engineered into our city network. I use them myself daily and I think some have greatly improved the city, while others are a result of over-reach and misguided designs, meant to secure cyclist safety, but unwittingly having the opposite effect on drivers and pedestrians. While I admit this is entirely anecdotal, I find the more the infrastructure favours the cyclist, the more brazen and careless the cycling.
The bike path installed on Querbes Avenue two years ago was met with great local opposition, only to fall on deaf ears. With a dedicated path next to the sidewalk and parking spots on only one side, pushed out towards the middle of the road, they have created a space where people getting in and out of their cars (or clearing snow off of them) are now in much greater danger than before, while the cyclists gain what to me is a false sense of security, at intersections especially, where drivers making right turns are scarcely able to see the cyclists going straight through. This story from the CBC notes one such example as a newly dangerous intersection due to exactly this sort of over-engineering, at St-Denis and Gilford. All of this over-design was enthusiastically sold to the Plante government by the masterminds at Vélo-Quéebec, a local cycling lobby group that was central to the planning, former Park Ex city councillor Mary Deros confirmed to me personally at the time.
Another ridiculously over-engineered intersection is on du Mont-Royal and de l'Esplanade, where the difficult-to-follow markings for pedestrians, cyclists and cars (without any traffic lights, mind), intersect to create a space almost impossible to navigate for all, even when traffic is light.
It didn't always used to be this way. I have been a renter or homeowner in Montreal for pretty much my entire adult life. I recall the horrible snow clearing debacles of Mayors Doré and Bourque, when it didn't seem possible they could screw it up so fantastically (while Westmount roads got cleared with easy efficiency).
I recall Gerald Tremblay and his disastrous and scandalous water-meter project that died on the corrupt vine. Denis Coderre and his ill-advised concrete makeover of Parc Jean-Drapeau, the corrupt Michael Applebaum and before all of them, the decades of questionable city planning that left us with city blocks of mismatched industrial-residential-commercial oddities that to this day make little sense from an urban planning perspective.
The Helen Fotopolous example
One bright spot remains (for me) as an example of how to get things down in a way that improves the city for residents and small business owners alike, from a quarter century ago. That was when Helen Fotopolous was in charge of the Plateau-Mile End borough (in the early days of the Tremblay years, when he had decentralized a great deal of decision-making to the boroughs - since undone - and before Applebaum's greed and grift had a chance to infect his administration).
When Fotopolous was borrough mayor, she listened to the citizens' concerns and pushed for a complete teardown of the concrete jungle of overpasses that made up the Pine-Park interchange at the time, hugely improving it for all (not just pedestrians and cyclists, but drivers!) with a much better, ground-level design governed by smart traffic lights and well-thought-out bike lanes that don't hinder or endanger pedestrian, car or mass-transit throughput. It remains a safe and even fun route for many daily commuters, McGill students and tourists who had been rightly fearful of the highway-like design it replaced, near the entrance to Percival Molson Memorial Stadium, home of both the McGill Redmen and the CFL's Montreal Alouettes.
I got to watch Fotopolous and her team up close about that time when she invited citizens and local small business owners (via pamphlets left at our doors) to a public consultation on the updating of Bernard Street, between Park Avenue and Saint-Laurent Blvd. Her team presented three detailed proposals to a group that counted in the few dozens, and then sat back and listened to our feedback. It was clear she was slightly discouraged that the plan she herself favoured didn't impress as much as another, which included the widened sidewalks at intersections (then a new concept), but preserved a few parking spaces important for local businesses. And to our delight, the people's choice won out, creating a very accomodating compromise that seems to be working well for everybody to this day. Now, the widened sidewalks have been successfully added in hundreds of spots around the city.
So you take the good with the bad, but above all else: listen to the people. Open democratic tools, used sincerely and humbly, helps keep out the stupid and build great living spaces for generations to enjoy.
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