Being a downtown resident, a Montreal lover and an ardent walker, I never cease to be moved by the hundreds of superb buildings that have emerged over the past decade in downtown and its surroundings.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
As a builder myself, in the senior living industry, I know almost every major developer in town who is responsible for those same buildings. I associate each of them with their director and, don’t laugh, I almost talk to them when I come across their creations…
I very simply wish here to salute the audacity, the courage, the vision, the confidence and the risk that these people have shown over the years vis-à-vis the city in which they believed so much. Les Serge Goulet, Vincent Chiara, Jacques and Laurence Vincent, Kheng Ly, Pierre Varadi, Sam Goertz, Christian Yaccarini, Annie Lemieux, Mathieu Duguay and Stéphane Côté, to name a few, have faced hundreds of obstacles of all kinds, for two, three, four and even five years before they can realize their dreams. They put their savings and their souls into it. They also made mistakes that sometimes earned them objections from citizens (not without reason), but they never gave up!
Without them, Montreal would not be what it has become. Thank you for your tenacity!
I write these words knowing full well that they will not be unanimous. It is important to welcome all opinions so that they contribute to enriching the debates surrounding the future of housing in Montreal. Before debating it, however, I take the liberty of asking these same great builders of Montreal to continue to show the same courage and the same determination to help build together, quickly, the some 12,000 new social and affordable housing units Montreal needs as soon as our three levels of government put in place regulations that will truly facilitate the construction and long-term management of these same units.
I will be there to help. In the meantime, I say thank you for brightening up all my evening walks. You are among my heroes. Too few citizens tell you that.