Between the tree trunks, I can spot the traffic light at the corner of Cote-Saint-Catherine road. The outline of apartment buildings half a block away is hardly subtle, yet I still have the distinct impression that I am in a forest. It must be the wildness of the forest floor, where heaps of scraggly branches tangle on the ground and a bushy green layer of underbrush is pushing up through the whispy remains of last year's fallen leaves. Mackenzie-King Park in Côte-des-Neiges, is one of the few neighbourhood parks ...

#manifencours. The students are on the march again tonight, as they have been on the march every night for the past two weeks. This is how we live now. Public space as an arena for expression has always been at the core of Spacing's values but never, in my experience, has Montreal's public space been appropriated so thoroughly and on such a large scale as it has over the past 12 weeks, with students demonstrating daily and nightly against tuition hikes imposed by the provincial government. It has been exhilarating to witness the students ...

It may not be the most lush, nor the most welcoming patch of grass in the city, but it is none-the-less the school yard for 200 students who attend James Lyng, the high school nearly tucked under the Turcot interchange in Saint-Henri. In the spring they host a celebratory end-of-year BBQ here. Last year the students in the Green Team built composter and placed it in the space. Some of the younger students say they like to play in the little tunnels under the thick vines that grow over ...

  Montreal OpenFile recently published an article called Tangling with the 311, in which the author critiqued the hotline introduced by the City of Montreal in order to improve access to the City. The article prompted me to think back on my experience with 311 and the Accès Montréal network. Soon my comment on OpenFile got so long that I decided to write my own reflection based on the 5 or 6 times I've tangled with the 311: 1. Can the borough install some bike racks here?  The guy at ...