What inspires us | Stéphane Boyer: dreaming better for Laval

All summer long, our columnists go to meet personalities who inspire them. To discuss what, in life, motivates us, gives us wings, pushes us to create or act. During a bike ride, Isabelle Hachey talks this week with the mayor of Laval, Stéphane Boyer.

We parked our bikes in the middle of the abandoned quarry. The mayor of Laval was enthusiastic, even though he didn’t have much to show me. A vast field of rocks caught in a concrete vice, between the Laurentian highway and three major boulevards. At the heart of this wasteland, a gigantic hole bordered by cliffs plunging into a lake of grayish water.

Nothing to get excited about, I say to myself. But Stéphane Boyer clearly doesn’t see the same thing as me.

“Here, there will be a school. There, homes. In the center, a huge park,” he lists, pointing into the void. Okay, so for now, there’s nothing to see. But in 10 years, a whole neighborhood on a human scale will rise up here. According to the mayor, there will be 4,000 homes, innovative businesses, university buildings, a lake, a beach, maybe even a floating stage…

In short, in 10 years, we will find ourselves, in this precise location, at the very heart of what Laval has been sorely lacking since the merger of the 14 municipalities of Île Jésus in 1965: a real, true city centre. Better yet: a car-free city centre, where buildings will produce their own electricity and where people will travel on foot or by bike.

For now, it must be admitted that it takes a lot of imagination to see this city of the future. Idealism, too. Perhaps even a touch of naivety, the cynics will say.

Until recently, this vast piece of land, worth a good $100 million, served as a common snow dump for the City of Laval. For a while, contaminated soil from surrounding construction sites was even dumped there…

Stéphane Boyer is certainly not the first mayor to dream better for this sad desert of rocks, called Carré Laval. In 1981, Lucien Paiement was already planning to transform the old quarry into a recreational tourism center. His successors have also imagined more or less great things. Their projects have all sunk to the bottom of the hole.

But I have the feeling that with Stéphane Boyer, it could be different.

First, because it would be wrong to think that at 36, the youngest mayor in the history of Laval is just an idealistic dreamer. There is some of that in him, without a doubt. But not only that. “My big motivation is ideas. I’m a bit of a nerd. I like to try to find solutions. I have a weird passion, which is doing business plans. Whenever I see something that’s not working, I think, ‘How can I change that?’”

Then, if I have the impression that Stéphane Boyer could succeed in his bet, it is because he has already succeeded in one, almost as crazy: that of taking me here… to BIXI.

I, who have only ever been in the area by car, either to head to the Laurentians or to laboriously make my way through the Carrefour Laval parking lot, found his suggestion of a summer activity to be outlandish. To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was humanly feasible.

But I survived to tell you about it. So nothing is impossible.

We had arranged to meet at the embankment of the Commodore, in the Pont-Viau district. For Stéphane Boyer, this is where the political adventure began.

Although it overlooks the Rivière des Prairies, this poor asphalt bank, abandoned to the geese, is not very impressive. But it could have been worse.

In 2011, a developer decided to build two 30-storey luxury condo towers on this land – the last in the neighbourhood with access to the river. For citizen Boyer, it made no sense. It was all the more frustrating because Gilles Vaillancourt’s administration had arranged – well, well – to avoid holding public consultations.

Stéphane Boyer started a petition. He created a Facebook page. With other citizens, he demanded a height limit for new constructions on Île Jésus.

But he had never thought of going into politics, much less becoming mayor of Laval one day.

When he was younger, he wanted to change the world.

But as he thought about it, Stéphane Boyer came to the conclusion that he should perhaps start by taking an interest in what was happening at home. After all, corruption and collusion were not just the business of faraway countries. It was happening right under his nose.

In 2012, for the first time in his life, he went to city hall to attend a municipal meeting. That day, a citizen stood up to ask Gilles Vaillancourt a question.

“He asked the mayor what the city’s strategy was for social housing and fighting poverty. The mayor replied: ‘Continue your question, I’m going to go to the bathroom.’ And he left the meeting. It was like a way of saying to him: ‘I’m going to go take a shit while you talk to me about poverty.’ It shocked me.”

It shocked him so much, in fact, that it gave him the impetus to go into politics!

In 2013, he was elected city councillor for Duvernay–Pont-Viau. A height limit was set for new buildings in Laval. The luxury condo tower project was cancelled. And soon, the city will give the Commodore embankment a makeover.

Stéphane Boyer wanted to change the world. He will change Laval instead.

Between two pedal strokes, Stéphane Boyer tells me that he is working to “deconstruct prejudices” about his city. I grant him that prejudices are tenacious, sometimes undeserved. We must nevertheless admit that the image we have of Laval does not come out of nowhere.

I remember an old report where the developer of Centropolis, just north of Carré Laval, boasted of having built the city centre single-handedly, inspired by the “public squares of major European cities”. We are talking here about an open-air shopping centre, whose most remarkable architectural element remains, to this day, a cinema in the shape of a flying saucer…

The great tragedy of Laval, apart from the corruption that has eaten away at it from the inside for too long, is that for decades the city has abandoned its development to developers who were not working in the interests of the community.

But that time is well and truly over, Stéphane Boyer tells me.

“I am a bit of a child of the Charbonneau Commission. I became a city councillor in 2013, after 23 years of Mayor Vaillancourt’s reign. Beyond the corruption, Laval had not modernized. The urban planning regulations dated back to the 1970s, the development plan had not been revised for a very long time, fax machines were still being used… The city was not modern. It was not equipped to deliver major projects.”

It took six years to build a park chalet, six months to launch a call for tenders. Today, when a project is deemed a priority, the call for tenders can be launched in three weeks, the mayor boasts.

It’s “not sexy,” admits Stéphane Boyer, but making his administration more efficient is exactly the kind of challenge that gets him out of bed every morning. “What interests me in life is finding solutions. That’s what motivates me.”

See you in 10 years, Mr. Mayor, to see for yourself – we hope – how far your dreams have taken you.