Do you remember Montreal’s advertising slogan, “Pride has a city”?
Today it’s “Dirt Has a City.”
It’s quite simple, Montreal has become a dump.
Even New York isn’t this dirty.
Add to that potholes capable of accommodating a family of four, boarded-up buildings, orange cones growing like weeds and homeless people on every street corner, and you have a city capable of competing with Baltimore in its worst years.
It’s hard to believe that this city has already hosted a World’s Fair and the Olympic Games.
- Listen to Joseph Facal’s column via QUB :
IT’S OVERFLOWING
And you know how it goes with dirt.
The dirtier it is, the dirtier it is.
The more junk there is on the street, the less shame people feel about throwing their junk in the street.
It’s like a teenager’s bedroom.
It’s not one more bobette lying around on the ground that’s going to make a difference.
Anyway, mom’s going to pick it up, so…
The problem in Montreal is that mom doesn’t pick up.
The trash cans are more overflowing than fat Antonio’s belly when he was leaving Da Giovanni.
And don’t tell me it’s because of spring and the melting snow…
Last summer, I went to Beaver Lake, on Mount Royal, and the trash cans were overflowing everywhere.
There was more trash around the trash cans than in them.
Do you live in the region and you don’t know what to do with your old, dented sofa?
Come to Montreal and leave it in an alley.
Here, it’s called “urban furniture”.
ANATOMY OF A FALL
The next time you come to Montreal, remember: this city was declared the “world design capital” by UNESCO in 2006.
Yes Madam.
The jurors were probably the same bunch of jokers who named Wellington Street in Verdun “the coolest street in the world.”
“I dream of seeing Montreal have a center of excellence in housing in which all Montreal universities would collaborate,” said a design expert in 2005.
A center of excellence in housing, damn it! In a city where people fight for the chance to sleep in a cardboard box!
But what happened, great gods?
How could this city have been allowed to fall so low?
It only took 18 years for us to go from “world design capital” to “trash city”.
In QUB, this week, Marie Montpetit spoke to me about the CAQ which prefers to build brand new School Labs, Seniors’ Homes and Blue Spaces rather than renovate existing schools, CHSLDs and regional museums.
“It’s like living in a slum and buying a beautiful chalet in the countryside,” she told me.
Who knows? Maybe that’s what happened.
We bought all kinds of beautiful trinkets, but we didn’t put a penny into the maintenance and repair of the metropolis.
Result: the economic heart of Quebec looks like the one we see on cigarette packets.