Pattie O’Green was a teenager when she discovered Mount Royal “for real”. From Saturday evenings, when she went deep into the woods, map in hand, to find bonfires, to Sundays, dancing to the sounds of tom-toms, she felt the intoxication, the wonder and the desire to introspection that nature, its mysteries and secrets can cause.
Today, resident of an old building on Laurier Avenue West and mother of two teenagers, the writer has made the mountain her backyard, her playground, her engine of creation. For nearly two years, she went there daily to take notes and paint watercolors, departing from prescribed routes to explore less traveled paths.
From these pilgrimages was born The Mountain Propheciesa hybrid novel which draws on history, biology and philosophy to better highlight the reflections and intuitions of its author, who reflects during her walks on our relationship to the world, to love, to art and friendship.
“When I travel the mountain, I experience a multitude of relationships with nature: there is a big difference between the Mount Royal park and the cemeteries, and these in turn diverge from the garden which is located near the Oratory or even the uses that are made of part of the north flank or at Beaver Lake on Saturday evenings. These differences greatly stimulate my thinking and my imagination. They lead me to think about the different relationships with nature that inhabit us and which are at the origin of our actions or our inaction. These relationships with nature seem so natural that we forget their construction: we no longer wonder where they come from and, above all, what their consequences are. »
After two publications with Éditions du Stir-Mage, the writer this time collaborated with Marchand de Feuilles, which fit, “through its concern for the environment and its feminist approach”, perfectly with her project.
The eclecticism of Mount Royal
Semiologist and art historian, Pattie O’Green makes it her duty to get away from the story that we always tell about Mount Royal, linked to the founding of Montreal and the notable people and the different institutions that participated to its construction. “This story appears to me to be much too linear and unambiguous to account for this multifaceted urban natural environment. When you go through it, you come across a ton of anachronisms, stories on the fringes that have shaped it and continue to shape it today. I wanted to pay homage to this eclecticism, but I was also in search of its uniqueness which in turn allows us to reveal what unites us, those of us who frequent the mountains. »
For example, Mount Royal becomes for the writer a way of thinking about feminism. She evokes the works created by women, but also the feminicide of the École Polytechnique, as well as the sorority which unites the dawn runners, these women who jog on the sides of the mountain early in the morning, before the day, with its performance demands and feelings of fear and inadequacy, begins.
“The story has something very masculine, very conquering. Yes, there is the cross, but we never talk about the big vulva located in the grassy area between Beaver Lake and the Smith house. » Pattie O’Green here refers to an untitled sculpture by the Indian artist Krishna Reddy, created as part of the Montreal International Symposium in 1964, and which, although it obviously embraces the forms of the female sex, is never recognized as such.
“I think that if we never name this sculpture, it is not because it is a vulva, but rather because of the position in which this vulva is held. We are not dealing here with an extended and relaxed vulva which would be willing and passive, waiting for penetration. NO ! We are rather dealing with a vulva which stands STANDING…” she writes.
A mountain for everyone
While urban natural spaces are mostly heteronormative and reflect a discriminatory social hierarchy, she recalls the importance of queer natural spaces, which allow those who live on the margins to inhabit and love urban nature differently. On Mount Royal, the jungle, a place where homosexual men organize impromptu meetings, has long been the target of attacks and deforestation due to the immorality of the activities practiced there. Today, it is still condemned, in the name of “good biodiversity.” »
“However, it is [la présence transitoire de personnes marginales et homosexuelles] which, in a certain way, allowed the wasteland to spread, because it scared away the majority, who are rather destructive in their tendency to develop everything in a permanent manner,” she explains in her narrative.
Pattie O’Green claims a mountain for all…at least for all those who love and respect her. In her reflection, she tends never to prioritize the forms of love that it is possible to bring to the living. While traveling the side paths that lead to the summit, she observes, probes, invests each of the spaces, plants and human traces that dot her route to better understand the world and the society in which she evolves.
“We must understand who is behind the construction of the place in which we walk, know its past, know how our gaze is oriented, our relationship to nature and, ultimately, our gestures and our demands. These questions are essential to heal, to respond to the various environmental issues and to work towards a fairer, more beautiful world. For me, beauty is in truth. »