On the southern slope of Mount Royal, between maples, spruces and poplars, grows a bicentennial oak, a giant tree that stands out for its twisted shape, its gnarled branches, its dark foliage and its harsh bark. This oak is Quentin Rubio, a guide, witness to all the changes that Montreal has experienced over the decades.
From the pen of the poet and novelist Bertrand Laverdure, Quentin Rubio offers “human animals” an exercise in humility. By going back through its history, the tree confronts man with his arrogance, his lack of vision, his selfishness, his smallness and his many flaws.
“You have invaded everything. You are animals that move, evolve, scream, break, pierce, cut, kill and conquer. Crazy passengers, thirsty for ideas, money, power or incessant travel. We talk a lot about the human animal. We only talk about him. » What if, for once, we let other living beings speak?
The oak tells. He evokes his ancestors, then his birth, in 1819, during a dark night which “covered the mountain with a shackles of darkness and rain”. It recalls the way of life of the first inhabitants of the mountain, the Iroquoians of the St. Lawrence, who harvested water from maple trees, cultivated squash, corn and beans and used corneal rock to make tools.
He returns to the epidemics of cholera, smallpox and Spanish flu, the torchlight evenings of the Montreal Snow Shoe Club, the great fire of 1852 and the creation of the funicular, which for a time allowed for visitors to get to the top of the mountain.
He remembers the construction of the Mount Royal chalet, one of the major projects implemented during the crash of 1929, and the development of Beaver Lake, and deplores the massive cuts ordered by Mayor Jean Drapeau in 1954, to keep away the “undesirables” who were engaged in “immoral” activities in the oak groves at the summit. He remembers the ice crisis and talks about its imminent end and his desire to give back to the nature that saw him born.
Between the more intimate and poetic stories of the tree – “I will have lived where the earth invents us. I would have felt with you the sky emptying. I would have been that which continues in the eternal draft of everything, this lineage which speaks to us of the past and of mystery” -, Bertrand Laverdure inserts instructive historical vignettes which bear witness to an imposing work of research and analysis of archives .
Even if the different segments do not always fit together in a coherent manner, the reader is easily carried away by his curiosity and by the singularity of the proposal, which offers, in particular thanks to illustrations wonderfully reflecting the eclectic side of the subject, a room for reflection and interpretation.
Catherine Filteau’s deep line – between lead pencil and digital – also oscillates between the abundance of details and the more abstract and dreamlike suggestion. The illustrator reinforces the impression of evanescence and humility of humanity by positioning the oak at the center of her compositions. A book that can be enjoyed like a walk in the mountains: slowly, in random order, with new discoveries each time.