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 that's got a bonafide patch of woods. It may only be the size of a city block, but something very important has happened here: someone has built a fortress.

Why is this of such tantamount important? Take a look at what the experts have to say.

Louise Chawla is a professor of planning and urban design, and coordinated Growing up in Cities, a UNESCO program that seeks to involve children in evaluating and improving urban environments in over 50 countries worldwide. Chawla argues that a responsive environment can help prepare young people to participate as citizens:

"For ball play, rollerblading, or cycling, nothing is better than hard, flat surfaces. For most other actions, children need a more malleable world. Natural elements are particularly rich in the effects they offer, and what  is more, although they are predictable to a point, they also offer intriguing surprises.  Water flows and splashes in fluid forms. Soft earth can be dug and moulded in infinite iterations. Every rock has a different heft and shape for building. Every rotting  log reveals a different universe of insect life inside. Convivial city streets and public spaces offer similarly responsive settings for social interactions, which – like natural elements – never do exactly the same thing twice...

"Adults’ accounts of special childhood places show that they tend to be on the margins of the adult world, where children can find freedom to take risks and prove themselves, get dirty, make and unmake play worlds with abandon and interact intensively both with the physical world and with friends (Cooper Marcus 1978; Goodenough 2003). These sites include tree houses, play forts, creek banks, and overgrown lots, colonised by children on the edge of the adult world in both cities and rural areas. They also include public spaces where children feel welcomed by adults..." (Chawla, 2008).

...

"This reciprocity between self-produced action and environmental events lies at the heart of the development of a sense of competence (Bandura 1997). For this reason, Fuglesang and Chandler (1997) argue that responsive early childhood programmes and parent training to increase interactive experiences of this kind are important precursors to children’s readiness for more formal types of participation. In research with adolescents and adults, this experience of self-efficacy promotes learned optimism (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000) and life satisfaction (Ryan and Deci 2001). As Bandura (1997) has noted, to inspire people to continue working towards goals, nothing is as motivating as ‘mastery experiences’ of their own capability." (Chawla, 2008, emphasis added).

Which is all a rather academic way of saying that surely, this is the way children were meant to play?

-----

Source: Chawla, L. (2008). Participation and the Ecology of Environmental Awareness and Action. In: Participation and Learning. Eds: Reid, A, Jensen, B. B. Nikel, J. et Simovska, V. Springer. (PDF)

#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 and their supporters marching by day and by night; in rain and shine; with raised voices and in silence; on bicycles and in their underwear. They have numbered in the hundreds of thousands and, whether or not one supports the strikers' demands, or approves of the Liberals' proposed deal, it is impossible to deny that movement's dedication, organization and visibility have made their plight impossible to ignore.

It has also been chilling, each night, to hear the sirens and the helicopters, to see the paddywagons and riot-shields. And it has been heartbreaking to read, each morning, the tally of arrests, injuries and vandalism suffered in our city streets. Before the student strike, we were not strangers to this kind of clash: we have had our hockey riots and our yearly police-brutality showdown; we have lived tear-gas like a right of passage at the G20 and the FTAA. But never has kind of conflict become so thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. This is how we live now.

Things get tumultuous

The freedoms of expression and of peaceful assembly are, of course, guaranteed by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet it seems that nearly every night, somewhere along the way, the protest gets declared illegal.

The protests have become so pervasive that last month the Montreal Police put out a communiqué and an FAQ about how to run a smooth demo. As soon as criminal acts are committed, the SPVM writes, a protest will be declared illegal. The police will give a verbal warning (and usually a tweet) and then riot police will move in wearing helmets and shields. They advise the public to leave the premises as soon as they either witness an illegal act, hear the warning, or see the riot police. (On a side note, the @SPVM twitter account is cordial, personable and informative - Benjamin Shingler delves into police's use of social media on OpenFile).

Why don't the police simply stop the individual lawbreakers? They respond that, since they must re-establish the peace, the priority becomes to put an end to the demonstration, meaning that everyone, including peaceful protestors, must leave the site.

Here's how it's laid out in the Criminal code:

So one minute you may be marching along chanting slogans lawfully; the next moment somebody a block away has smashed a window and you've become part of an unlawful assembly.

This instinctively seems strange to us because it implies that the group becomes responsible, to a certain extent, for the criminal act of one individual - a pretty rare situation in our legal system. Whether they are frustrated students, or undercover police, or just unaffiliated shit-disturbers, the "casseurs" can override charter rights and snatch away our access to public spaces with a flick of the wrist. Are they aware that, far from "sticking it to the man," acts of vandalism actually strip fellow citizens' right to the street?

Note that the SPVM site specifies that a protest is deemed illegal when a criminal act (such as vandalism) is committed, while according to the criminal code, simply frightening people in the neighbourhood would seem to be grounds to deem an assembly unlawful.

So at the end of the day, the right to express ourselves in public space only goes so far as the neighbours trust us. On private property, a protest will be declared illegal the moment the proprietor asks police to intervene, but the law thrusts a collective responsibility upon those who assemble and express themselves in public spaces.

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 the chain-link fence.

When I began developing an urban planning unit for the secondary 1 geography class, in collaboration with CURA and Youth Fusion, the schoolyard seemed like a good place to start. Students were overflowing with creative ideas to improve their school yard: benches and picnic tables; a flower garden, more trees and fruit-bearing bushes; birdhouses, a graffiti wall, a fountain. As the students' ideas began taking shape in 3D models, I suggested looking for a schoolyard greening grant so that the they could see some of their proposals realized in the real world.

But my hopes were dashed when I learned that the land, which belongs to the English Montreal School Board, is going to be expropriated by the Quebec government as part of the Turcot project. "We're going to be losing this land for sure," said Richard Lalonde, the EMSB School Commissioner responsible for this district. He added that the EMSB is currently trying to negotiate a better deal for compensation.

The MTQ's map of Turcot "ameliorations" does not show how the schoolyard land will be used in the project.

Photos by James Lyng secondary 1 students, 2010.

Full Disclosure: I sit on the James Lyng Governing Board as a non-voting community representative.

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 Accès Montréal was enthusiastic and helpful. He asked for specific details about where I wanted bike racks (along Sherbrooke W, between Décarie and Grand Boulevard), filled out a request and gave me a dossier number. There were bike racks on the street within a few weeks. Perhaps this was part of the plan all along, but I still sent a thank you email.

2. Can we drink in the park? The 311 operator was able to answer this one, clarifying that Montrealers are allowed to consume wine or beer in public as part of a picnic in all boroughs. What constitutes a picnic in the eyes of the law may be less clear.

3. Were can we have a bonfire? The 311 operator didn't have an answer off-hand but put me in touch with the borough permits office who explained the rules around backyard cooking fires. Then I was shuffled to the recreation department to ask about fires in public spaces. Here I ran up against one of Montreal's famous wishy-washy bylaws: although there was no rule banning public bonfires, we couldn't get a permit unless it was for a special organized event "because of the precedent it would set."

4. Can we organize a festival, with live music, food and beer in the park? Once again, the 311 operator put me in touch with the correct department (culture, sport et loisirs), who forwarded me the "application to use Ville de Montréal facilities" form by email. The request rapidly got bogged down in the question of insurance for the event,  a burden that the city employee put squarely on my shoulders.

5. I received a notice about roadwork on de Maisonneuve and I'd like to suggest that they repave the bike path at the same time. This one did not go well. The operator I spoke to said the the borough knew nothing about the roadwork or the notice that I had received at home. She seemed incredulous that I would deign to tell the city how to do their job, and actually hung up on me. Interestingly, when I then wrote to my borough counsellor, he confirmed that the borough had no knowledge of the roadwork, which was being done as part of the MUHC hospital development. He asked me to send a copy of the notice, informed the borough director and followed up with me after.

Lessons learned

I have had the chance to speak with various city counsellors and have mentioned how frustrating it can be to run an idea like a public bonfire, or a neighbourhood festival, up against city bureaucracy. Invariably, their response is "call me."

For some reason, I had always assumed that City councillors had no time or interest for little grassroots initiatives. I assumed that things like bonfires or putting a band in the park, were considered subversive and that in order to do them, I had to slip under the radar, dissecting city bylaws to find the loopholes. Initiatives like the Dalhousie art space, and the initiative to get a level crossing between Mile-End and Petite-Patrie have helped change my perspective.

If I want to be propose a creative event or a change to the urban landscape, I need to start thinking of elected councillors as allies. On the other hand, when I want a cut and dry answer - when to put out the recycling; what the pool schedule is - I'll 311 and speak with a bureaucrat. Sometimes they're nice; sometimes they're jerks; usually, the most they can do transfer you to the right department; often the bylaws themselves are wishy-washy and the boroughs have difficulty untangling their mandate from that of the central city's.

Oh, and when I need to contact the City for an article or a blog post, I know that the City's press secretary is the only one I'll ever get an answer out of.

The idea of using food as a lens to explore and understand the city is something that Avenue 8 has held dear for a long time. We were initially inspired by the Foodprint project in New York City. And we were even more inspired when we realized that everyone - from our friends to the people in the mayor's cabinet responsible for the new urban plan - had a story to tell. That's why story-telling became one focus of A Taste for the City last week.

Illustrators Marta Juliol Masferrer (ab0ve) and Vincent Giard (below) captured some of the stories told on April 5th:

Growing, discovering, buying, preparing and eating food is a huge part of how we experience the city. Food has the power to draw us off our beaten paths, pull and into new neighbourhoods, and plunge us into different cultures. The tastes and smells of the city can send us reeling back to grandma's gardens and mama's kitchens and first dates: the things inextricably linked to who we are.

Now, as public participation becomes the mot du jour, the vital question is: how can we tap into that visceral experience of the city when we think about urban policy or planning? How do decision-makers and planners deal with stories?

Three years ago, I lamented that Place d'Armes was just a pretty picture: The public space that had been the heart of  Montreal for over 300 years had become nothing but a spot for tour-buses to dump snap-happy tourists. After nearly 3 years of construction, a redesigned Place d'Armes was unveiled this Spring, and I happened upon it last Sunday. So how does it compare?

Well, there ares still lots of cameras out (including my own!), but it also feels like people are lingering more in this space, even on a chilly Sunday morning. The photographer above seems more interested in his little girl tottering across the paving stones than the Gothic church behind her. People sit and talk or hang out with their dogs, and kids are happily climbing on the street furniture. And aren't those over-sized benches are just asking to be transformed into an impromptu stage?

Previously, the whole square was raised and, set apart from the surrounding streets by short flights of stairs and planters (a pair of long-disaffected washrooms lay underneath). Now, with everything is on ground-level, Place d'Armes feels more like a dynamic destination and less like a like a traffic island.

A more subtle yet profound difference is the massive reduction in traffic around the square. The redesign uses cobblestone to explicitly stretch the boundaries of Place d'Armes right up to the edge of the buildings and down the surrounding streets. But landscape architecture is not the only thing curbing the traffic flow: the Place d'Armes website includes this map for tourist bus drivers, showing designated drop-off points for passengers on Saint-Antoine and de la Commune, a 2-block walk on either side of Place d'Armes. (I'm pleased to note that's exactly what I had proposed in this post.)

 

Three years ago, I critiqued the plans for treating Place d'Armes "more like an observatory of historic buildings than part of the city." In hindsight, the function of the square ultimately has less to do with design and more to do with who uses the neighbourhood and what draws us there.

The numerous incarnations that Place d'Armes - battlefield, market, marching ground, Victorian garden, and trolley-terminal, to name a few - speak volumes about our city's evolution. What will the latest redesign tell future Montrealers about our present-day values?

Boul Saint-Joseph près de de Lorimier

Patch of grass on the edge of Chinatown, Easter Sunday, 2012

I was overwhelmed (and exhausted) by the outpouring of interest for A Taste for Montreal / Le goût de la ville at the CCA last Thursday April 5th. Nearly 400 people - from foodies to farmers to architects - attended and participated in the soirée.

A huge thanks to the CCA, and especially to Elsa Lam, for being so willing to open up every nook and cranny - from the library to the winter garden. This event would not have been possible without the experienced and imaginative team at Avenue 8 who saw the potential of using food as an angle to experience and understand the city, and whose creative animation filled every corner of the CCA. And finally, the event would not have been worthy of its title without the SAT Foodlab, who were willing to take their show to the Shaughnessy house and treating us to delicious - and local - tapas.

I still can't decide whether it was a triumph or a disaster for Spacing Montreal to turn the newsroom into a performance art for the evening. I'm proud to say that we went to press within 5 minutes of the closing remarks. But I also have to admit that I only read some of the articles this morning!

A big thank you to the Spacing team who was willing to take on the challenge: Jonathan Lapalme, Devin Alfaro, Alexandre Campeau-Vallée, Joel Thibert, Jean Desjardins and Guillaume Saint-Jean. I also want to give a shout-out to our photographer, Tristan Brand (who took the photo above as well as all the photos in the newspaper), and our two itinerant illustrators, Vincent Giard and Marta Masferrer Juliol. So much content did not make it into the paper, and we will be posting it here on the blog over the coming days and weeks.

Thanks to all who came! It was all a bit experimental, so please feel free to give us feedback in the comments!

The Spacing Montreal team is getting excited for A Tate for Montréal / Le goût de Montréal this Thursday April 5th from 4pm-9pm at the CCA.

The "unconference" format provides a multitude of ways to get involved in the conversation - from sharing food memories, to brainstorming about how food and urbanism will intersect in the future.

The full schedule for the event, which is organized in partnership with Spacing Montreal, the CCA and Avenue8, is now online in English and French. Participants are welcome to drop by any time and it is not necessary to be present from beginning to end.

Of course no foodie event would be complete without snacks. Here's what the chefs from the SAT Foodlab will be dishing up ($5-6 for a small plate):

• Saucisson à la bière noire du Fou de Cochon with bread, mustard and house-made pickles
• Smoked bone marrow tartine on house-made brioche, apple slaw and herbs
• Quebec goat cheese, kamut sables, apricots, chicory and honey
• Asparagus salad, boiled egg, parmesan and vinaigrette
• Marinated olives with citrus

Note that the event will be "Montreal bilingual" - participants are welcome to express themselves in English or French.

It's free to attend and we hope to see you there!

Intrigued by the signs posted outside this residential building on St-Antoine street in Westmount, I googled "Musée d'histoire d'harcèlement par Westmount." To my immense surprise, it led me straight to an ad in the Westmount Independent, wishing a Happy Easter to the tenants of the building, along with contact info for potential renters. Curious, I contacted the landlord, Sam Fattal, for more information about his signage.

In lieu of a comment, Mr Fattal emailed me this elephant graphic, representing his view of the town council and encouraged me to publish it. When I persisted for extra clarification, Mr Fattal expressed that Westmount had unjustly blocked off the street and sidewalk in front of his building due to concerns about the structure. He said that, since Westmount elected officials had not been open to communicating with him, the solution would be for his property to separate from Westmount and join the "City of Montreal, Land of freedom."

When I pointed out that Mr Fattal had recently come into conflict with both the South-West and Rosemont boroughs over the state of other residential properties, Mr Fattal replied that he had no trouble communicating with the City of Montreal. "I respect them," he said.

The northern side of St-Antoine W is part of the town of Westmount, while the southern side of the same street lies in the St-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal.

April fools day note: although I find this situation bizarre and sort of hilarious, I assure you that it is entirely true.

Montrealers asked for it, and the City of Montreal is delivering: the OCPM has announced a public consultation about Urban Agriculture from May 12th - June 18th.

Since 2009, Montreal's Charter of rights and responsibilities gives citizens the right to initiate a public consultation on almost any municipal issue: they simply have to gather 15,000 supporting signatures within 90 days.

Last fall, the Working Group on Urban Agriculture doubled that number: on November 15th they presented 29,000 signatures at city hall to initiate a city-wide consultation about urban agriculture.

CRAPAUD, one of the members of proposed a  citizens charter on urban agriculture, taking into account such elements as:

• urban agriculture as a way of addressing of food security;
• transportation of food and support for local food production;
• educational opportunities and potential for social, intergenerational and intercultural mixing;
• the value of urban agriculture in term sof urban sustainability, greening and biodiversity.

While that may all seem relatively uncontroversial, the propositions also have far-reaching implications in terms of urbanism and citizen's rights to urban space. The proposed working group would like the City to recognize urban agriculture as a necessary and essential component of a sustainable urban system. This would require developing a specific zoning and land valuation system to allow land to be permanently dedicated to urban agriculture, with the implication that all citizens mush have access.

The Working Group is composed of Action Communiterre, Alternatives, the Urban Ecology Centre, Conseil régional de l’environnement Montréal, Marché solidaire frontenac, CRAPAUD (Collectif de Recherche sur l’aménagement paysager et l’agriculture urbaine durable), Regroupement des jardins collectifs du Québec and Santropol Roulant.

Urban agriculture will certainly be one of the topics adressed during  A Taste for Montreal, an event in collaboration with Spacing Montreal, Avenue 8 and the CCA, which takes place on April 5th 2012.

From Gotham City to Metropolis?

Yet it seems that many Montrealers want nothing more than to put the homeless out of sight and out of mind. Earlier this month, the mayor recommended shortening the Ste-Catherine pedestrian zone to exclude Berri Square from the seasonal festivities, citing police concerns about safety around Berri Square.

And last November, when Warner Brothers opened an studio in the tower on the East side of the park, the studio director compared Place Emilie-Gamelin to Gotham City, home to Batman and well-known for it's dark atmosphere, crime, corruption and decay.  Naturally, the studio announced that they hoped to make the neighbourhood "less like Gotham City and more like Metropolis," Superman's world-class city. And he was clear about the demographic change that would imply.

So on one hand they're trying to keep festival-goers and terrace-hoppers away from Berri Square while on they other, they would push out the homeless and marginalized people who do use it.

This unwillingness to find common ground is even more shameful when you consider the 170-year-old tradition of providing help and resources to those in need at Berri Square.

A place for Montreal's homeless since 1841.

Asile de la Providence 1943. Source: BANQ via Philippe Du Berger cc Flickr

Montreal's down and out laid claim to Berri Square long before the shops, hotels, bus station, university or even the church were established. In 1841 Emilie Gamelin founded a hospice called l’Asile de la Providence in the very same spot. Its main purpose was to provide sanctuary for elderly women, but the nuns who ran the charity also handed out hundreds of meals to the poor and homeless every day. In 1844, a wing was added along Ste-Catherine Street to house 50 orphans. But after 120 years of service, the hospice came under the developer’s axe: the City bought the land in 1962 and razed the building in order to excavate the Berri-UQAM metro terminal.

From Square to Parc to Quartier

The lot then sat empty until 1993 when it became Berri Square. and three years later, it renamed Emilie Gamelin Park. While the new name honoured Gamelin’s work with the poor, it hid a more subtle and far-reaching implication: as a park, the city was able to enforce a curfew in the space from midnight until 6am.

In protest, 250 punks and street kids camped out overnight in the square. A flyer promoting the demonstration read: “As the corporate monopoly on land continues to grow, our free public spaces become fewer and fewer…Such is the story of Berri Square. Once a place for all, now closed for business and open only to the well-groomed.” Riot police arrested 70 people and fined them for breaking the curfew, which still remains in place today.

A further bylaw in 2006 banned dogs from Parc Emilie-Gamelin and Viger Squares, which some interpret as a blatant message that street kids are unwelcome in these public spaces.

But there remained at least one occasion each year when the curfew was broken: ATSA's annual État d'Urgence, a 3-day event that aimed to bring together homeless and the general public, in a festive atmosphere of free food, artistic performances, and urban camping. But in November 2011, the festival's organizers wrote an open letter to Voir, explaining that they were unable to get funding to sustain the event:

Notre festival était un geste d’espoir, de création, de civisme, d’humanité. Mais le quartier change… il se nomme maintenant le Quartier des spectacles. Beaucoup d’argent y a été investi, mais l’ATSA, elle, n’a pas su en trouver pour pérenniser l’État d’urgence! On peut penser que l’argent est plus rare pour ceux qui proposent autre chose que du formaté «tourisme culturel».

État d'Urgence is an example of how programming a public space can be inclusive of more marginalized people (I blogged about the 2009 edition here). Sentier Urbain has created another inspiring model for shared public spaces. With Berri Square set to be revitalized beyond recognition, I argue that a common ground, where the homeless can be visible and find help when and if they want it, is part of our city’s heritage that is worth preserving.

On Thursday April 5th, 2012, from 4-9pm, Spacing Montreal is teaming up with the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Avenue Huit to present A Taste for Montreal / Le goût de Montréal, an event about all the ways that food urbanism intersect. From urban agriculture to the late-night diner, everyone's relationship with the city is influenced what we eat and how we chose to eat it.

The unconference format creates different spaces where everyone can contribute their experience: Gather in the library for a salon, hop into a fishbowl conversation in the Shaughnessy house, or take part in a story-telling event in the CCA's bookstore. There will also be a cash bar and tapas by the SAT's Foodlab.

It's free to attend, but please either RSVP on Facebook, or by emailing bouffe@cca.qc.ca so we have a sense of how much food to prepare.

You may also leave your favourite Montreal food story in 8 words or less the comments section below. The best stories will be incorporated into the event!

Can the City sell a park? That's the question that question raised by the decision earlier this week to put the Dow Planetarium up for sale.

Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron fears that the sale of the lot, which is zoned as a park, will set a dangerous precedent for the privatization of public space. The Tremblay administration has replied that only the area covered by the planetarium and it's parking lot are for sale, not the little park bordering the Planetarium on the north side, called Chaboillez square.

However, historical maps from the Montreal Archives show that, at one time or another, Chaboillez Square actually covered the entire lot where the planetarium now sits:

Square Chaboillez in 1948 (Archives de Montréal) via Montréalités Urbaines

Square Chaboillez was ceded to the City of Montreal by a private owner in 1813. In 1953, after the old Gare Bonaventure burned, the borders of square were redefined:

Transformation of Square Chaboillez in 1953 (Archives de Montréal: VM6 D1901-218) via Montréalités Urbaines

From 1956-1964, Square Chaboillez was used as a parking lot for the Bonaventure train station, until the planetarium was built on the site in 1966.

Plans for the new CN station in 1956 (published in the Gazette, Archives de Montréal) via Montréalités Urbaines

Here's my best attempt at placing the historic Square on a present-day map. The area up for sale represents more than two thirds of Square Chaboillez as it was defined in 1953 (pink boundary), as well as the remaining part of the original 1813 square. The area that the City currently recognizes as "Square Chaboillez" lies in the north-most part of the 1953 boundary.

La Presse reports that the City has put the planetarium up for sale for less than a tenth of the estimated value of the land and building, but with a number of conditions: the owners must respect the enveloppe of the building, without making any additions, and must invest at least $1 million in renovating the building within the next two years. The parking lot south of the building must be transformed into a green space. No subsidies will accompany the sale. Currently , the zoning permits a convention centre, museum, show-space, library or daycare.

Bergeron points out that a recent OCPM consultation about the future of Griffintown found that the neighbourhood suffered from an acute shortage of park space. Héritage Montréal has listed the old planetarium among the city's threatened heritage buildings. The conditions seem to respect both of these priorities - if, of course, the buyer actually respects them. In an interview with Journal Metro, Héritage Montréal's Dinu Bumbaru says he sees hope in the low asking price of the lot. He points out that a higher price would suggest that this site could become profitable through conversion to condos while the low asking price is more in line with a community vocation.

The City's action suggests that we are lacking the public resources to invest in renovating and maintaining the 1966 building and the park space. A recycled architectural icon and a private green space is certainly better than a neglected historic building and an overgrown lot - but at what cost? The unilateral decision to sell a space zoned as a park, without any debate, could have a profound effect on how we treat public space.

Of course if we are to put any weight the story of Square Chaboillez, we have a precedent for rewriting the boundaries of a 150-year old public space and turning into a parking lot. I guess things could be worse.

1879 map of Montreal's municipally-owed water-works

If you're among the 50% of Montrealers who rent their homes, and the 38% of Montrealers who vote in municipal elections, you may have one extra reason to be thankful today on World Water Day. A recently-published essay by by UdeM History prof, Michèle Dagenais, explains how Montreal's water-works transformed the nature of citizenship and democracy in the 19th century.

At this time, it was believed that stagnant water caused epidemics of cholera, typhus and typhoid fever, so engineering a way for water to continuously flow through the city became a public health priority.

In 1845, the fledgling municipality of Montreal, with permission from the federal government, purchased the privately-owned Montreal Water Works. During it's 44 years of operation, the water-works company had laid 14 miles of pipes and signed up 1064 paying subscribers. The other 98% of the city's population fetched their water from source-points scattered throughout the city.

In order to cover the cost of distributing water throughout the city, all property owners and tenants - both residential and commercial - were obliged to connect to the system, and then tax for the service as soon as they were hooked up. Because the water tax was destined to pay for the infrastructure rather than the water itself, the tax was calculated based on property value rather than the quantity of water used (this state of affairs has only recently been re-called into question with the proposal for water-counters). It was also the only public service that tenants payed for directly.

At this time, only property owners had the right to vote in municipal elections (in provincial and federal elections, a minimum income or holding was a condition to vote). But with the water tax, renters became tax-payers, the city had to grant them a say in municipal affairs. As of 1860, tenants could vote in municipal elections on the condition that they paid the water tax.

Dagenais points out that the water-works systematically connected the public sphere to the private sphere in households throughout the city. The water distribution network embodied a new political power, traced the boundaries of its territory and allowed, in turn, for more rapid urbanization.

Dagenais' essay is one of 14 chapters in a new book called Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal, edited by Stéphane Castonguay and Michèle Dagenais, and published in 2011 by University of Pittsburgh press.

The first stop was just east of Mont-Royal metro. When the van rolled up, the stone steps of the Sanctuaire de Saint-Sacrément were an animated plaza. The colourful boutiques and bistros that lined the avenue seemed garish and clown-like in comparison. Couples walking hand-in-hand with ice-cream cones, mothers pushing toddlers in tank-like strollers, workers sipping espresso from paper cups, passed through the throngs of scraggly old men on the sidewalk like oil through water. When I would leave the van pick up day-old pastries at Second Cup, darting down the familiar stretch of Mount-Royal avenue in ketchup-stained jeans, I felt like I was inhabiting a parallel universe.

At the third stop, on Ste-Catherine east and Morgan street, we were plunged into that parallel existence. Punks poured out of the apartments they shared, dozens to the flat it seemed, to show off half-finished tattoos and perfectly-trained dogs with studded collars. They grabbed hot-dogs to go and stocked up on toilet paper and pet food, as much as we could spare. Hookers would sometimes duck in between two tricks for a cup of hot coffee and kids barely out of elementary school would show up for a midnight snack and pick up food bags to bring home to their parents. A young woman once came in carrying her worldly posessions in two plastic grocery bags, crying and cursing the landlord who put her out on the curb. It was a volatile world inhabited by those for whom it is a constant struggle to stay a step ahead of the streets: les sans adresse fixe.

The second stop at Berri Square was halfway between these two extremes. Here, the realm inhabited by homeless and marginalized people seems to intersect, in both space and mind, with the world in which other Montrealers dwell. The Berri Square that Dans la Rue visited - the most boisterous of the nightly stops - is the same place that I cross on the way to classes at UQAM, to pick up books at the Grande Bibliothèque, or to get a coffee at l'Escalier.

But that dosen't meant that Montrealers are comfortable with this collision of worlds: the Ville Marie borough recently suggested excluding Berri Square from the festive Ste-Catherine pedestrian zone in order to reduce the threat of aggression. I don't like it. Although many of the homeless and the sans adresse fixe suffer from mental illness, physical disability, addiction and abuse, they are nearly always courteous and appreciative when the hot dog van rolls around.

I realize that I have probably come to know these people at their very best, but if the hot dog van has taught me anything, it is that people are at their best when they are visible.

This post is part of a series of articles examining the relationship between food and the urban experience, leading up A Taste for Montreal, an event in collaboration with Spacing Montreal, Avenue 8 and the CCA, which takes place on April 5th 2012.

When I met Santropol owner Garth Gilker to talk about the café's impact on the urban landscape, I ended up with more stories than I had bargained for. Before I left, Gilker dashed up to his third-floor apartment and brought down three editions of the "Montreal People's Yellow Pages," a guide-book to free-wheelin underground of 1970s Montreal that he and his friends had published in the 1970s under the banner of egg publishing. Although the books aren't dated, this 1973 Montreal Gazette article reviews the second edition.

Each book offers an alphabetic listing of local "attractions" - from Abortions to Zoos - interspersed with short stories, trippy '70s doodles and hand-drawn maps of the downtown neighbourhoods.

Under the "drugs" section, visitors were informed that the staples in Montreal are hash in the winter and grass in the summer, given a list of reliable pickup-spots and a price guide, and encouraged to "be free."

"Out-of-towners find it incredible how almost arrogantly Montrealers parade their dope habits. In clubs, on the streets, and especially at concerts (even in the staid and bejewelled Place des Arts) you can get very high just breathing there!" the authors added.

In the "Street Sleeping" section, the authors recommend the "spacious, private monastery lawn" located on the north side of Sherbrooke between St-Matthew and Atwater.

There are also sections dedicated to Chess Clubs, Leather, Headshops, Hitchhiking, and even Horse Riding, as well as a rather extensive Waterbeds section.

None of that is as surprising as the fact that so few of the cafés, restaurants, and boutiques are familiar to this Montrealer 35 years later. Only a few hold-overs like the Yellow Door, Cheap Thrills, and Cock n Bulls are still on the scene. Where's the "Gay dance party" at 57 Prince-Arthur E? Or the indoor children's park at 3597 St-Urbain street? Or the Karma Coffee House whose ad read "Together is when the where meets the what."

Oh, for a glimpse of the city where my parents once met for coffee dates at Santropol. Incidentally, I wonder whether the internet will leave our children such entertaining gems to dig up in the future?

Café Santropol by Mike Gifford (cc flickr)

Garth Gilker moved in to the third floor of the triplex on the corner of Duluth and St-Urbain street around 1970. An anglo Gaspésien, Gilker says that he picked the apartment because he'd grown up with a horizon and the view of Mount-Royal was the closest he could get in the city.

"I lived upstairs and downstairs there was this dirty, ugly, disgusting old plumbing store called Shanks," Gilker says.

The triplexes on St-Urban street were in bad shape, but the real estate office that he dealt with in lieu of the landlord barely bothered to make repairs. "This old guy would come by and take a piece of wood off the neighbour's house and put it on mine," Gilker recalls. It was assumed that the buildings would eventually be demolished and redeveloped.

Demolition was in the air-du-temps, but so was citizen resistance. Milton-Park citizens were mobilizing  to halt La Cité; St-Norbert residents were protesting their own demolition, and Berri street residents managed to cut the Berri highway plans off atRoy. St-Urban street triplexes were coming down as well: Gilker says that there were once 85 civic addresses on his block where now there are sixteen.

One day in 1975, Gilker came across a demonstration led by "Save Montreal," the group that later became Heritage Montréal, against the demolition of the buildings on the east side of Bishop street. He asked one of the demonstrators what could be done to save his block and was shocked by her reply: "That old plumber's shop? It's so bad, forget it!"

Soon after, Mr Shanks the plumber passed away. Recalling how the Save Montreal activists had been so disdainful of his building he thought he'd better try and clean the place up. Gilker called the real estate office and they offered him the ground-floor shop for $50 a month. Impulsively, he decided rent it out, and got to work clearing out the old junk and re-painting.

Over the winter, the idea for the café was born: Gilker figured that if the café became popular he'd be able to get his clients out in the street to demonstrate against an eventual demolition. When Saint-Jean Baptiste day rolled around, and the mountain was packed with partyers, he decided to sell sandwiches in order to make a little extra money for the renos.

Later that summer, he put in a couple tables and opened a clandestine terrace in front of the building. Terrace permits were virtually non-existant at this time, so Gilker improvised by throwing down some railroad ties, filling it in with earth, and making patio stones, tables and seats out of tree stumps. When the inspectors came by, he'd tell them "there's no tables and chairs there - it's a garden."

Santropol's back garden, 1972. Photo by Garth Gilker

He also began landscaping a back garden with stones and a little pond, thinking that the greenspace could give them extra clout against demolition. Fortuitously, this attracted the attention of the Soeurs Hôpitaliers de Saint-Joseph, who run the hospice next door. It turns out the order of nuns actually owned Gilker's building and 4 neighbouring triplexes. The nuns eventually sold the five buildings as a co-op, and some of the sisters even moved in for a time. "They helped us out financially and in so many ways," Gilker says.

In the 1980s, the co-op's owners started seriously renovating the block more thoroughly, as some of the buildings had been completely abandoned. The city's penchant for demolition had it's up-side: Gilker was able to scavenge pressed tin from buildings like Murray Sports and Woolworths that were knocked down when McGill college street was widened. The ornate polished wood sandwich counter was cobbled together from maple and oak doors found discarded in an alleyway.

Santropol owner Garth Gilker leans on his sandwich counter made of scavenged doors

Today, Santropol has become a beloved institution and the Gilker's block of St-Urban street falls within Mount Royal's protection zone. Gilker is still working to improve the back terrace: this summer he plans to put in a vegetable wall, a stone outcropping to act as a stage, and maybe even an occasional farmer's stand.

But he attributes the restaurant's success to it's community-building motive: "I didn't open the café for business purposes," he says. "It has a raison d'être - it did save the buildings...That's an example of how food can change a place."

This post is part of a series of articles examining the relationship between food and urbanism, leading up A Taste for Montreal, an event in collaboration with Spacing Montreal, Avenue 8 and the CCA, which takes place on April 5th 2012.