Farewell to the Big Brown Tower

The big brown tower of Radio-Canada has been stripped of its signs. Exit the red molecule that some familiarly called “pizza” when it was multicolored! Gone are the letters of the Society that adorned the main entrance.

For the past few days, the building has looked like an old actor who has taken off his make-up and fake toupee after a show.

Photos have been circulating on social media over the past few days. A director friend sent me one: “It’s silly, but it makes my heart ache. There were pieces of one of the logos ready to go on a trailer.

Not melancholy for five cents, host Isabelle Craig wrote on Facebook: “No nostalgia. I’ve always hated that dark, brown building, resembling a vast credit union that had mated with a box of Chiffons J. I liked the people, not the building. »

She’s not wrong. The atmosphere of this building was deadly. Once inside, there was no difference between day and night. Guests rarely had the opportunity to go upstairs. When we went there, it was to go down into the basements, where it was even more depressing.

We have learned that the three signs removed have no heritage value. Indeed, they were installed after the inauguration of the building, in 1973. They have nevertheless been part of the Montreal landscape for many decades. The red logo of Radio-Canada that we could see from afar was a landmark, just like that of Molson or Farine Five Roses.

Many people have wondered why these signs were not installed on the new building. That was not possible, I was told on Radio-Canada. They had been designed to be attached to the concrete slabs of the large tower, while glass is omnipresent in the architecture of the new building.

Some worried about their fate. Will these items end up in a landfill? At Radio-Canada, I was told that they were considering the possibility of reconstituting one of the logos. As for the sign that was at the main entrance, it could be donated to the organization Project of Signs of Montreal, whose mandate is to recover and preserve these artifacts belonging to popular culture. Discussions are taking place on this subject.

We’ve been talking about the Radio-Canada move for months. It seems to me that the ends never end. Whenever a host does their latest show, they say so on social media. But hey, the real real cut is coming. By the end of the year, the final transfer to the new building will be completed.

Criticized by several employees at the time of its construction, the style of the new building now seems to appeal to those who work there. I was there last Tuesday. In the huge hall, which looks like an air terminal, but which has the quality of welcoming the light with open arms, we were busy setting up the decor for the next leaders’ debate.

It feels like the employees, their roles, and the place are a whole. People share common areas (no more cells that isolated teams and encouraged gossip). Some studios are near the offices, others overlook the hall. Welcome to XXI^e century.

Michel Bissonnette, vice-president of Radio-Canada, confided to me that during the event marking the start of the new school year a few days ago, he had the feeling that the employees were finally appropriating these places which will quickly drive away, I have the impression, the hints of nostalgia.

Because we have the nostalgia we wish we had. Or the one we invent.

Since the day I went to the Olympia in Paris, I understood that this feeling is a balloon that can deflate in two seconds. I spent Liane Foly’s show telling myself that it was extraordinary to be in this place haunted by so many legends. I watched the scene and I shivered at the thought that it had been trampled by Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. A little more and I imagined the heady scent of La Goulue.

A few days later, a Parisian friend abruptly snapped me out of my reverie by reminding me that the Olympia had been rebuilt identically in the mid-1990s. In short, the memory of Piaf is no longer present in the ‘Olympia than it is at Galeries Lafayette.

Nostalgia is the memory of who knows what, said Saint-Exupéry.

It’s funny to talk about nostalgia about a building that erased a neighborhood for which some still have nostalgia. I’m talking to you about the Faubourg à m’lasse that we butchered in order to erect the old tower there. The promoter of the new Radio-Canada building had the delicacy to commission a work that highlights this past. You can see the work Resonance of placesby Ianick Raymond, near rue Alexandre-DeSève.

This area where poor workers lived will soon be filled with condo buildings. The big brown tower, which has always looked like a menhir in the middle of the desert, will no longer be alone.

Come on, big brown tower, good luck for the future! With all the stories you’ve heard over the past 50 years, you should easily brighten up your old age!