In case you've suspected that NDG is the most relentlessly abused area of Montreal, here's a list of examples demonstrating how the neighbourhood has repeatedly been ripped off over the years.
The sad part is that the authorities have done, and continue to pile on the abuse without encountering any significant resistance.
Circumstances have conspired to make the area a difficult place to live and I'm starting to think that separating from Montreal would be a solid idea.
Here's a quick list of some of the terribly damaging events that have severely damaged NDG over recent decades....after proposing a north-south highway for St. Lawrence, St. Denis, Cote des Neiges and many other routes, authorities finally decided to place the highway in NDG in 1964, eviscerating Decarie, demolishing countless homes on Minto, Addington and Prud'homme in the process. They never put a roof over the thing to noise and pollution to kill neighbourhood life.... the area has been stuck into the same borough as Cote-des-Neiges, meaning that its powers were split and borough discussion has been distracted by another area that it has little to do with.. the southern section of NDG has been the target of terrible planning: St. James St. West was zoned to allow for hideous warehouses, green spaces were wiped out to the point where the St. Raymonds borough (below the tracks) has one-tenth of the standard green space... the historic stone house in Oxford Park was demolished in spite of Lucien L'Allier's gentleman's agreement in 1949 to maintain it... the only green space left in the area were fields in Oxford Park but they were handed over to sports associations and covered with plastic turf and concrete by councillors Sonya Biddle and Peter McQueen.. the entrance to Highways 15 South and 40 West on Girouard has been closed.. the access to the superhospital will be concentrated entirely on the NDG side with no traffic going through the Westmount entrance... the highway on-ramp to the 20 East is slated to be demolished.. a third straight long-term closure of Highway 20 westbound exit to the area was announced, as was a lengthy removal of the viaduct that enables people to cross over the Decarie on St. James... the Turcot rebuild program is to put the highways at the foot of the St. James cliff, meaning that the noise and smog will hit NDG.
There are many other examples (feel free to add any in the comments below).
It begs the question of why this area has been so badly punished by planners and authorities.
The low rate of owner occupancy in the southern area, as well as low levels of political participation and high levels of immigrant residents who speak neither English nor French have doomed the St. Raymond's area. I've personally gone door to door several times throughout the years for various causes and have found nothing but indifference.
So once again, this proves that when it comes to city politics, those who are indifferent will be punished.
There is a series of upcoming sessions to hear residents out on the future of the area and we urge people to register to express their grievances. (link to come)
21 comments:
Historically a majority-English-speaking district, NDG's city councillors have had minority say in Montreal City Hall matters.
The late councillor Gerry Snyder represented a large portion of this district, yet seemed to have little influence when he was in power, the various PQ governments having little sympathy for a district which historically voted against it during elections.
Even the Snowdon Metro Orange Line station turns north into the Cote des Neiges district (the border between NDG and CdN being Westbury Avenue).
NDG deserves the Metro Blue Line to extend into it, yet politicians
continue to make lame excuses--including city councillor and NDG resident Marvin Rotrand.
Kristian, why not corner "the Martian" and get some answers?
Nostalgia is a funny thing. It is easy to get things out of perspective if one wants to go there.
Many of us look at the years gone by when we were young and growing up in Montreal and remember what seemed like simpler times, partly because we were simpler people as kids.
There are so many things that are better today than they were 50 or 60 years ago.
Back in the day a bus driver had zero chance of owning a house for starters.
We are living in a time when with just a few keystrokes we can research the past in great detail.
Progress is not always totally good but it is totally unrealistic to think that our favourite store from long ago, run by some old carmugeon should still be in existance today with the proprietor still alive and not having aged a bit.
Times change. Us baby boomers have had a pretty long run. A lot of younger people couldn't care less about how things used to be. Why should they? When I was their age I wasn't particulary concerned about the history around me.
So...I'm reading this stuff about how the Decarie Expressway tore NDG and areas close to it apart. In the 50s Decarie Boulevard had a lot of low rent apartments, drive-in restaurants, and small stores. It wasn't exactly the Champs Elysees.
The Expressway may not have been the ideal engineering project but it has been mostly functional for over 50 years.
I think it is in a lot of people's genes to bitch and whine the older they get.
Most housing in NDG is now over 80 years old. It is still a pretty community in a lot of areas. The demographics have changed dramatically over the years.
It is what it is. If all one does is bitch and complain and you are not happy maybe, just maybe, it is time to move along to somewhere more promising.
Memories are something you take off of the shelf every now and then unless you are writing a book. Today and tomorrow are what we have to deal with.
High school and grade school, contrary to many beliefs, were not the best years of most of our lives.
It is great to reminisce but we tend to leave out any discomfort from years gone by. One of the nicer things about time passing I guess.
Well...that's my 2 cents worth.
.....I've personally gone door to door several times throughout the years for various causes and have found nothing but indifference.....
I think you hit the nail on the head - democracy works when you participate....if citizens don't make a fuss they're liable to passed over and neglected. And as urban legend says the english-french thing doesn't help.
btw you need to get over your beef with with Peter McQ...I've never seen a city councillor so active and involved with his community...whether you agree with all his ideas, his heart is in the right place and after next election he might actually have some power - you might do better to have him on your side....
If he gets re-elected. Sure won't be getting my vote after wiping out the green space in Oxford Park.
While it is true that one can get carried away with nostalgia, the undeniable fact remains that our society--tied so closely to the economy--has had its ups and downs so it is only natural that many of us will pine for "the good old days"--at least when they WERE good.
Remember the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Kick the Can" which dealt with this very topic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_Can
The grandparents of today's baby boomers had to deal with (and the young men fight in) World War I, which knocked their lives out of kilter and stymied world progress.
This was followed by "The Roaring Twenties" which offered much unprecedented prosperity, until eventually, the bubble burst and "The Great Depression" signalled the end of the former happier times--about which people unavoidably held fond memories.
Next, just as "The Dirty Thirties" came to a close, however, our parents had to deal with the fascists and World War II. Another setback.
This is clearly why today's "boomers" who grew up in the 50s and 60s are fortunate in that they were never compelled to fight in any major war; our military service being voluntary--the obvious exception being the U.S. where the draft for the Viet Nam War created violent protest south of the border.
Certainly, since WWII there have been various crises in the world, and new crises continue to this day--although they have become a lot more sinister with lunatic renegade states threatening to become nuclear and cyber-terror on our very doorstep.
Decades ago an adult's life expectancy was much shorter than today with children regularly dying from diseases that have now essentially been wiped out entirely or at least neutralized as a minor threat. However, NEW deadly viruses have recently appeared to threaten us once again.
As far as neighbourhoods are concerned, how can one forget how many of them were originally clean and green, but how over the decades some have become run down either because their new owners refuse to make the expensive repairs, or some recently-arrived immigrant tenants with their poor Third World habits have no conception as to how to maintain a proper household.
To witness such sad decay and decline compels us to feel dismay and, inevitably nostalgia for how life was "back in the day" before the rot set in.
So, there is nothing "wrong" with wistfully remember a better time before some highway monstrosity was bulldozed through it, ruining a formerly pleasant district. How could we be expected to think otherwise?
Childhood is generally a happy time, anyway. Few responsibilities and no bills to pay!
So trust me: the next generation will be thinking exactly the same way about THEIR "good old days".
UrbanLegend...
Don't get me wrong. I think it is wonderful that many on this site can remember so much of years gone by. Part of my point is that we shouldn'trewrite history to suit ourselves.
By the way the 1920s wasn't a time of unprecedented prosperity for most people. It was the wealthy that were having a good time. Poor houses existed back then along with low wages.
WW2, althogh gawdawful, helped end the great Depression.
We were still years away from universal healthcare and Canada pensions.
For those of us who grew up in the 1950s there was always the fear that the USSR and the US would go to war. Not the most comforting thought for a child reading the newspaper.
Big cities change over the years. The skyline of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver have all been altered.
If you look at a city like Vancouver, it only has about a few dozen landmark buildings.
When I was a kid in Montreal we didn't, as a family, spend time in NDG or Trenholm Park. We went to Murray Hill for tobagganing and up to Mount Royal. Sometimes as kids we would wade in the pond at Hampstead Park.
Greenspace is nice if you have to walk a dog but if you hang out on a park bench consistently people might wonder what you are up to.
When you are a kid you really don't have much of a choice as to where you live. As an adult you do.
By the way...the ups and down of a country's economy doesn't effect everyone. Many do quite well regardless.
I'm not sure what you mean about "new deadly viruses". The flu? Even if a few die in the winter it will never compare to the the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918.
Everything wasn't rosey back in the day 50 or so years ago in Montreal. There were bank robberies every week. Many lived in poverty. The Catholic church had a stranglehold on their flocks. Office jobs paid as low as 40 bucks a week. Most Montrealers couldn't afford to buy a house and were renters. Old money controlled the Montreal business world.
A lot has changed for the better.
When people stop visiting parks it can make sense to add basketball and tennis courts to make better use of the space.
There was a time when some families would spread out a blanket in a local park and have a picnic. Today they are more likely to have the grill fired up on the back deck.
You have to roll with it man!
I grew up in NDG, and I was glad to leave.
For me, NDG is a bunch of dull duplexes with a horrible central corridor leading onto dark rooms, with a nonexistent backyard that is used for parking.
The stores are few and far between if you live on Côte-Sainte-Antoine, Notre-Dame-de-Grâces, Terrebonne and Somerled… And what few stores were on Monkland (where I lived) were rather lackluster, forcing one to exile himself downtown for better choices. (Oddly enough, I never went on Sherbrooke, which I regret since I have discovered it from about 10 years ago, so my few strolls there are devoid of any nostalgia).
Back then, of course, it was during the “speak white” era, so for me, who knew nothing else, it was perfectly normal to not get any kind of service in french in any store — when we moved to Outremont in 1976, it was a cultural shock to actually have people serve you in french!!!
So, I can’t really say that the english sucked in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, because I never had lived in a french place before I was a teen.
But the thing that sucked the most in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce was to have to take a bus from/to the Métro (that was the part that sucked in Outremont, too) and made me swear to never live far from a Métro station.
This article's about the continual dissruption + entire disregard for our No Damned Good section of Montreal, in particular its south-west. Featured this week in an article by Maya Johnston on CTR Montreal.
Beautifully eloquent pieces from C. Paterson & Urban Legend, which agree with to some extent.
Childhood is often most bittersweet, indeed.
Not sure if
one outbreak has not already been replaced with another, EMDX, 'tho Spanish Flu still holds record-I think.
Can't comment regarding new 3rd world tenants.
Otherwise in UL's 2nd set, in particular, of comments, make lotsa sense to me.
Also agree with fact that this town has seen a decimation (that ain't 10%!) of green space overall.
And while not great oil painting, there are some nice places and areas in NDG still left.
See this:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/case-sars-virus-shows-person-person-transmission-115342518.html
Correction:
See this instead:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21442519
The earlier link has apparently "expired" (an ominous sign? ;-)
When I hear talk about the "good old days," I shake my head.
Not everything was good. Take medical treatment alone. My brother-in-law had to have very serious brain surgery in the early 1960s. His family, who were of ordinary means, had to beg family and friends for loans to cover the cost of the procedure. Luckily he survived. Think of all the technical advances that have since been made for that type of operation and many others. The same goes for the greatly improved diagnostic techniques. Or the biggest -- we don't have to worry about coming up with the money for a catastrophic health problem.
Dental care is another. There is no way I would go to a dentist with 1940s or 1950s equipment and skills.
Polio and iron lungs were part of the late 1940s and early 1950s too. As were diptheria and a host of childhood diseases.
Home ownership before World War II for a big chunk of the population was an impossible dream. Many of us then worked five and a half day weeks or longer. There used to be a Saturday noon rush hour in Montreal.
While I love Montreal's old streetcars, it was very different riding most of them back then. Except for the streamlined cars on the "29 Outremont" route, they were old, slow as other traffic increased, and overcrowded with rough rattan seats snagging your pants or skirt.
We grew up in the Snowdon area and I have to agree with Colin's beautiful line about Decarie, "It wasn't exactly the Champs Elysees." Undoubtedly the Expressway was perhaps a mistake and a wide treed boulevard might have been better, but it was the 1950s when it was designed. Like in every other city, Montreal saw the future in the car.
But that thought is being chipped away slowly. The Park/Pine spaghetti interchange is no more, the St. Jacques/Upper Lachine overpass is being torn down and there are others. The renewed Place d'Armes was designed to fit better into the streetscape.
The Lachine Canal used to be a slow moving cesspool where cars and bodies were dumped. Today, it's a beautiful spot with lawns, trees, pleasure boats and bicycle paths.
Snowdon -- particularly its epicentre at Queen Mary and Decarie -- was hard hit by the construction of the Expressway but other factors contributed. As more and more people were able to afford cars, there were fewer and fewer parking spaces in the area with or without the Expressway. Shining brand new shopping malls with acres of free parking beckoned in Cote des Neiges, Cote St. Luc and elsewhere.
The wide open spaces of the West Island and South Shore also beckoned and many people headed for suburbia and its larger homes and backyards. Of course, now we're seeing the problems with long commute times, new highways taking up space and creating noise and pollution.
That's our lot in life -- we think we have a better idea, we change. It turns out the idea is not that good, we change again. And so on. Then city is organic and I doubt it will ever be perfect or even close to perfect for every resident.
Obviously, one can easily cherry-pick the best memories of one's childhood and focus on them rather than the "bad times" when you fell off your bike, and had the mumps, measles, and chicken pox (which, by the way, are diseases unknown to most of today's youth).
Up until about 1962, it was taken for granted that your family doctor made house calls, something which is unfortunately very rare today and then mainly for seniors who cannot leave their homes. And, by the way, for some inexplicable reason, the letters "MD" were no longer permitted on doctors' car license plates--as had been the norm for decades. Not exactly sure why that was the case. Was it because some of their cars were being broken into by criminals seeking drugs?
Regarding the ability to afford one's own home: in my opinion, there is way too much emphasis placed on home ownership in our society, and it has become more of a compulsion to "keep up with the Jones's" than on a reasonable plan based on one's actual income and projected job security.
Do we need any more proof of this than what has happened in the U.S. with the economic meltdown created by bad loans made to people who had unreasonable expectations and who were then exploited by greedy real estate brokers? And isn't is odd that nothing is ever said in the media about the fact that the majority of those homes now "underwater" had inflated prices to begin with and that their real value was much lower.
For a couple with children, home ownership may be an acceptable option if the traditional, male bread-winner can make the payments and where the wife remains at home to raise their children. The problems began when that successful formula was tinkered with: BOTH parents working to maintain a false facade of "status" while expenses mounted and marriages became strained, too often resulting in divorce, property-settlement disputes and nasty custody battles. Not a way to succeed in life.
And then, wouldn't it be wiser for a childless couple or single person to rent an apartment or a duplex rather than take out a risky mortgage to own a house with rooms they really don't need?
Everybody wants to "get ahead", but often end up way behind simply because they followed the "herd instinct" and wanted something they weren't able to manage in the real world.
My rant for today.
I agree that home ownership isn't for everyone but it does have it's practical side in creating equity verses rent which is just money spent.
I also find it a bit silly to own a home with several unused bedrooms when the owners get older. If your family likes you and is considerate they should either get a hotel room when coming to town to visit or be content to sleep on the couch or in a sleeping bag on the floor.
As far as US banks go, one should start off with the premise that they are thieves and criminals.
Many of the larger US banks actually hired people off of the street to forge signatures on mortgages. The whole credit card business is a scam.
As far as divorce being an issue related to home ownership....I don't get it. People (mostly women) used to remain in crumby marriages and today because many women make decent wages they have an alternative to throwing their lives away.
Life always involves choices. If one is unhappy with their work or where they are living or with local politics for that matter, you sit down and make a plan on how to make things better. Many don't.
We only go around once.
Life can get stale when there are no new horizons and you are stuck in a rut complainingg about things you have little power to change.
Canada is a big country. There are plenty of places to move to if you are not conent where you are.
Just to put everything into perspective as part of the Big Picture: the Decarie Expressway is symbolic of what was wrong with city planning in general for many major cities throughout North America where the car was king and the notion of green spaces was shoved aside in the name of "progress". The idea that carbon monoxide could be the cause of serious health problems was dismissed as well.
Just as we gripe about the poor design of a depressed highway right through a formerly thriving neighbourhood, so did Bostonians gripe about their cross-town elevated monstrosity--which, along with the similar one in San Francisco--was eventually demolished, their city administrations finally realizing the error of their ways.
What may be good for the moment often proves to be a very unwise choice in the long run.
Remember too that the Decarie Expressway was rushed through in anticipation of Expo67 to handle the expected volume of visitors.
Obviously, a wiser engineering plan would have had it completely underground.
How many know that many more exits and onramps were considered than what eventually materialized?
Addendum:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20770518
Nostalgia aside, the points about the closure or our entrance ramp onto the Turcot interchange, the closing of Upper Lachine rd., the lack of planning for the real onslaught of traffic, no bike and pedestrian bridge, no access for folks who live off of deMaisonneuve from the newly built but not opened exit ramp on the Decarie expressway, the zoning of the area around the super hospital site as "defavorized" so developers can get five year tax brakes on building and improving real estate right next to the hospital... the list does seem quite lengthy.
Enough with the off-topic discussions as to whether we accurately remember the past. I'm new to Montreal and heard the suggestion to live in NDG many times but couldn't bring myself to do it because the area feels like it's been messed around/beaten up too many times.
Decarie doesn't look fancy, but I get the sense that it was a vital part of a neighbourhood. Those dead end residential streets beside the highway are the saddest. That a metro line doesn't continue west is a joke; a line runs much further to the east and there's kind of a major airport heading west...
I also find it mind-boggling that a billion dollar tramline is still on the agenda linking Cote des Neiges Road to downtown. Who really wants more digging up of streets, re-installation of overhead wires, and endless traffic disruptions?
Whatever happened to the required public consultations about this ill-conceived project, and why have I not seen any convincing arguments for such an inner-city, non-right-of-way tramline to exist in the first place.
Furthermore, I am not the only one who would prefer that public funds be spent instead on extending the Metro Blue Line to Anjou and Lachine--as has been proposed for decades--particularly since this could already have been accomplished for much less than it would cost today!
And why is it that more important projects such as Metro extension are constantly pushed aside in favour of potential boondoggles like brand new arenas we don't need.
As usual, the wrong people are too often in power.
"Who really wants more digging up of streets, re-installation of overhead wires, and endless traffic disruptions?"
Modern tramways don't need overhead wires.
"Whatever happened to the required public consultations about this ill-conceived project, and why have I not seen any convincing arguments for such an inner-city, non-right-of-way tramline to exist in the first place."
For a consultation, you can do that yourself by looking at CDN road. And for the justification, you'll see a street perpetually jammed end-to-end with single-occupant cars.
"would prefer that public funds be spent instead on extending the Metro Blue Line to Anjou and Lachine."
The low population density just doesn't justify the $1 billion per km. expense.
The currently-existing population densities of the West End and out towards Anjou are sufficient to justify the extension of the Metro Blue Line. If this were not the case, why is it that such extension proposals routinely appear during election campaigns and have done so for decades?
All one has to do is witness the growing school and rush-hour lineups of people waiting at Vendome for the westbound 105 bus, for the westbound 51 bus at Snowdon, and for the always crowded 141 bus which runs along Jean Talon between the St. Michel Metro and Anjou, and beyond.
The Blue Line could have/should have been completed decades ago at much less cost than what would be required today, but sadly it has become a political football--a game the government plays with an increasingly outraged and disgusted public.
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