Montrealers should appreciate their city more and realize that they are “the envy of many people,” according to the outgoing head of the metropolis’ 28,000 municipal employees.
Serge Lamontagne is stepping down these days after six years as director general of the City of Montreal. A record for longevity since the municipal mergers of 2002.
Montreal, “it’s a beautiful, safe city, it’s a beautiful metropolis. And I would like us to talk about it like that,” said Mr. Lamontagne, earlier this summer, in an interview with The Press. “We are the envy of many people. People want to come.”
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Serge Lamontagne at the Esplanade Tranquille in Montreal
The self-described “pure Montrealer” was chosen as Valérie Plante’s first civil servant in her first months at city hall. He had offered to accompany her for two terms, but he realized in recent months that at 66 and after more than 35 years of career, the time had come for him to retire. Official start of this new chapter: 1er August. His replacement, Benoit Dagenais, has however been in the saddle for several weeks.
“There was a turning point,” he described, arguing that the broad directions of the mandate had been taken and that the next year would be “more about implementation.”
The machine is gone. So it’s time for me to retire. It was now or never.
Serge Lamontagne, outgoing general director of the City of Montreal
And there is no question of a gradual departure in this type of job. “I will never find a job as intense as that. There are days when I go from a cultural file to homelessness, to the police, to the firefighters. And what goes up to the general manager is often just problems,” he said. Faced with the immense administrative machine of the City of Montreal, “you have to be strong.”
“It comes to get me”
On his smartphone, Serge Lamontagne shows a video of Bryant Park, captured while he was traveling in New York with one of his sons in 2014. An urban park of relatively modest dimensions, inserted in the heart of a dense neighborhood and equipped with a public skating rink.
“I told my guy, ‘We’re going to have this downtown,'” he recalled.
Montreal’s version of Bryant Park is the Esplanade Tranquille, in the Quartier des spectacles. That’s where the outgoing general director met with The Press. “I had already worked on this project, as deputy general manager, in 2011-2012,” he said. “It takes time before it comes to fruition,” he said. The premises were finally inaugurated in August 2021.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
The Tranquille esplanade, inaugurated in 2021, hosts events all year round.
Behind him, in addition to the Esplanade Tranquille, we see the Centre des mémoires montréalaises (MEM), a historical museum that opened last September, a few years late. All located at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Street and Saint-Laurent Boulevard, a hot spot in the social crisis currently shaking the streets of Montreal.
Serge Lamontagne says he understands that this type of bad news makes headlines, but defends the way Montreal is run.
Unfortunately, we generalize too often about the deficiency of administration. And that, yes, that gets to me.
Serge Lamontagne, outgoing general director of the City of Montreal
The scandal of the expenses of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), for example, “we looked at it and we are going to correct it, but we cannot say that the City is poorly managed.”
And the manager looked into otherwise problematic situations: after witnessing repeated scandals at Montreal city hall between 2010 and 2013, Serge Lamontagne led the administrative apparatus of Laval, following the departure of Gilles Vaillancourt.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Serge Lamontagne was general manager of the City of Laval from 2013 to 2018. On the right, the former mayor of Laval, Marc Demers.
“The government asked me to go and reorganize,” he said. “I lived through all the major crises of ethics and then reorganization.”
“A big step”
The new retiree has no specific retirement plans, beyond a month-long trip to Europe this summer. He readily admits that his values are close to those of the Plante administration, but completely rules out the possibility of running in politics in the November 2025 elections.
I will work on causes, but not politics. I am not comfortable publicly, I am not a politician.
Serge Lamontagne, outgoing general director of the City of Montreal
Above all, he will have more time to devote to his children and grandchildren. In particular Henri, “soon to be 5 years old”, whom he has been featuring for several years in his emails to the thousands of city employees.
“You have seen him grow through my Friday words,” the CEO wrote in his last message, in early June. “We are both about to take a big step in our lives. The start of school for him and, for me, retirement and the joy of devoting myself more fully to my children and grandchildren.”
“Urban by nature”, Serge Lamontagne leaves the City, but not the city.