Let’s start with the end, which also turns out to be a distant beginning. The interview ends, and after a stroll down Avenue du Parc, the history of which he writes in his new book, historian journalist Yves Desjardins stops at the Laurier intersection to show two triplexes on the southeast side. bricks built by his great-grandfather.
“He had a farm in Saint-Michel,” says the great-grandson. He sold much of his land to quarries. His brother, a lawyer for the City of Montreal, speculated on the new Saint-Joseph Boulevard, opened between Parc and Henri-Julien in 1905. He recommended to my great-grandfather the purchase of the two lots to build the triplexes. »
The ground floor now houses the Pelican tavern, which replaced the Widow Wilson tavern (known as “La Wil”) from her father’s time. Louis Fournier alludes to it, in FLQ. History of a clandestine movement, as one of their main meeting places in the early 1960s.
“At the time, Outremont [à l’ouest de l’avenue] was a zone without alcohol and without bars, says Mr. Desjardins. Even grocery stores weren’t allowed to sell beer. To get to the University of Montreal, which had moved to the mountain, students took two trams: the one on Avenue du Parc and the one on Rue Laurier. The Widow Wilson Tavern at their intersection became their spot. »
The two triplexes (“considered worthless slums”) were sold and the Desjardins family moved to the suburbs at the end of the 1950s. The son returned to live in Le Plateau Mont-Royal to study history at UQAM. two decades later and has never left it since. He still lives nearby (“I was part of the first wave of gentrification”) and spent 34 years as a journalist at Radio-Canada.
Retirement taken around ten years ago was an opportunity to reconnect with his passions for the past of his city, and even his neighborhood, and ultimately also a little of his own lineage. He published six years ago History of Mile End and is one of the co-authors of Historical dictionary of Plateau Mont-Royal. The book Avenue du Parc and its history (Septentrion) is part of this production of topohistory – and also a touch of egohistory – by this time offering a sort of biography of a central axis of Montreal.
The author describes the avenue as the third artery of the city, after Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Sainte-Catherine Street. It wanted to be an avenue of residential prestige, but above all it became the “boulevard of immigrants’ dreams”. The gateway to Mount Royal has also been the meeting place for countless popular demonstrations, from the Eucharistic Congress of 1910 to the union rallies last month, including the Climate March behind young activist Greta Thunberg in 2019.
“It is a very complex street and, for me, this complexity, its hybrid character, reflects many things about Montreal, what is the basis of Montreal,” explains Mr. Desjardins. […] It’s not even easy to simply grasp your identity, as we know that rue Sainte-Catherine is used for shopping or entertainment. The avenue is completely different from one segment to another. You’re not going there to gaze at the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but you’ll be happy with what you’ll find there: a restaurant, a library or the entrance to Mount Royal. »
The avenue is completely different from one segment to another. You’re not going there to gaze at the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but you’ll be happy with what you’ll find there: a restaurant, a library or the entrance to Mount Royal.
He then transplants a quote from Dinu Bumbaru into the introduction to his book. In an interview with Duty in 1993, the program director of Héritage Montréal spoke of the “charm of disorder” by adding: “It’s all crooked, but there is a very strong soul on Parc. »
All-in-one
The magnificently illustrated book, very well written, full of enlightening boxes, tells how this endearing mess going from Sherbrooke Street to Jean-Talon station, crossing the two and the hundred solitudes of Montreal, was born and developed. The historian extensively searched the city’s archives, but also conducted interviews with municipal actors to recount the more recent transformations.
The synthesis multiplies the examples of more or less failed urban planning which have often failed to make Park Avenue the prestigious street that its name announces. The mobilization at the turn of the century to prevent it from being renamed Avenue Robert-Bourassa concentrated the attachment to what was (notably for the Greek community) as much as to what could have been, but which never really was. existed, or the dazzling and extremely wealthy artery worthy of a metropolis.
The best rubs shoulders with the worst in this perpetual upheaval, a huge portion of which, as wide as a highway, complicates access to the mountain. Citizen mobilization in the 1970s and 1980s led to the creation of the Milton Park cooperative, which saved more than 135 homes and around 600 housing units, at a time when the brutalist towers of the Cité complex were also growing.
The case of the neighboring Carrefour des Pins also remains emblematic of what the automobile has done to this city, in this country, on this continent. After driving out the tramway that had been running on the avenue for half a century, the post-war all-car drive led to the construction of a terrible interchange that was finally demolished in the last decade. On the other hand, plans to erect a monumental work of art there and reinstall the tramway failed, like so many others.
Porn and strippers
The short walk with the historian shows to what extent Mr. Desjardins knows the place down to the smallest details. “We are in my hood “, he said proudly.
He stops in front of buildings as diverse as the street, evoking the French Renaissance, a complex built by the architect Joseph Perrault between 1904 and 1912. Developers then dreamed of making this sector a French-Canadian Westmount. Outremont will ultimately play this role. The Le Châtelet cooperative purchased the buildings for $151,000 in 1977, the current price of a single room in a nearby condo.
The expert also shows a barricaded plex almost opposite the coop. “It was the last strip bar and there were a lot of them around here for a period of 15 or 20 years. When people from the Greek community migrated to the suburbs, many local shops, travel agencies, butchers and grocery stores lost their customers. They looked for new vocations. Some have become strip bars and the Renaud-Bray bookstore has already been a porn cinema. »
The interview began around signs announcing the exhibition The faces of Mile End, which celebrates photos from the 1980s-1990s by Michel Élie Tremblay, currently on display at the Mordecai-Richler library. This former Anglican church, magnificently renovated and transformed, bears the name of a famous Montreal Jewish writer from the neighborhood. With this history and its name, this place also concentrates something of this heterogeneous and cosmopolitan avenue, which has been transformed again in recent years by the settlement of members of the Hasidic community.
“At the time when my father grew up in Mile End, in the 1930s to 1950s, we were in the heart of the Canadian Jewish neighborhood,” says Yves Desjardins, returning one last time to what intersects in Avenue du Parc and its history and its own history. Not just Montrealer, Canadian. Mordecai Richler lived two blocks from my father, who jabbered in Yiddish. He told us about his role as a “Shabbat Goy” like turning off or turning on the lights on the Sabbath, a way of making pocket money. When he told me about it, it all intrigued me. Especially since I grew up in Laval in the 1960s, a much less multi-ethnic city than today. This Montreal reality has always intrigued me and the book pays homage to it in a way. »