Small or large, urban parks are even more a part of our daily lives in the summer. But what makes up their soul? Which one occupies a special place in our hearts and our routine? For this series, The duty explores some of them, sometimes accompanied by readers who wanted to share their stories. Today: Moussette and Brébeuf parks in Gatineau.
Frédéric Gourd knows Parc Moussette like the back of his hand. He drank beers there, found, and then found love again. This haven of peace, which became his “center of the world,” also soothed him during his long convalescence after surviving cancer.
“The park gave me everything,” he says as he walks around the grounds. “I did all my bad things as a teenager here. But something even better happened to me. I met the mother of my four children.” A divorce and some thirty years later, he would meet another “young love,” a girl who frequented the park when he was 12, and move in with her.
The “almost sacred” part for Frédéric Gourd is to the east of the park. In fact, it is more precisely in Brébeuf Park. But for the man who has spent the 50 years of his life on these two playgrounds, the boundaries are blurring.
His “temple, without being religious,” overlooks the rapids of the Ottawa River, where dozens of birds rest and a few devotees surf. “It’s a really important place for me,” he says, explaining that he has spent hours thinking about “existential questions” in front of this view. “There were times when I lived two hours away. Every time a baby was born, when you want to decide if it’s time to break up, when my father died, during big moments like that, I would come here.”
“When you beat stage 4 cancer, you don’t see things the same way anymore. It allows you to appreciate the present moment. And what better place than here? There are always animals, birds, interesting people. Nature is beautiful when I come here. Now, I remember the questions asked that were answered, and then I just say thank you,” he says, looking at the horizon.
Then he turns and points to a bench. “I went to convalesce on this bench. I don’t know if you can hear the sound of the water. It did me the world of good.”
Roll youth
Each path reminds him of a memory. Where the “first kisses” were exchanged, this circle, now concreted, on which the young people of the neighborhood played aki ball for hours, to the point of stripping the lawn, or the island on which they celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste out of reach of the police.
There’s also this place, in the woods, where he camped for three weeks with about thirty friends. “We knew that adulthood was coming soon, we wanted to enjoy the summer,” he says, recalling sausages grilled on rakes. Even though they kindly stopped the festivities, the police “weren’t there to throw us out,” Mr. Gourd emphasizes.
And the night watchman, “who was only a few years older,” would give them the keys to his building, now a community center. While the guard would go “sleep at his girlfriend’s house,” the kids would “go into his shelter when it rained,” then continue their party. “We were super aware that there were limits that we couldn’t cross. We protected our park, we kept it clean,” Gourd said, explaining that they even made arrangements with homeless people to pick up their beer crates in the early morning.
All of this, teenagers aged 12 to 16 would no longer be able to do today, he laments, finding it “a shame” that it is no longer allowed to stay in the park after 10 p.m. “While for us, that was our life!”
Secrets that are passed on
Some traditions have nevertheless endured. Starting with Mr. Gourd’s children. “They also did their bad things there, as teenagers. Except that I knew all the paths. So I could provide benevolent supervision, avoid excesses,” he says with a laugh.
A corner that required climbing up slightly steeper paths was the favorite place to jump into the water from a small cliff, then make a fire without being noticed by the police. And the word seems to have been passed on to new generations, since fresh ashes were found there when the Duty.
Other young people have also inherited a famous “secret” that allows them to reach a small island without “ever getting wet above their knees.” “The rock walkway is invisible. When you have your feet in the water, you can see it clearly, but from the shore, you can’t see it,” explains Mr. Gourd. “It’s a secret that people reveal to each other from generation to generation. I’ve seen young people pass exactly at the right place recently,” he adds, visibly delighted that the information is being passed on.