Montreal, I still love you | Press

Nancy Guilmette makes life grow in concrete. It fills abandoned garages, buildings under construction and even cinemas with plants. I knew his work, but not the woman. Then, one day, she sent me an Instagram invitation. ” Drop by ! We’re going to drink wine… ”

I rarely refuse to go where there are brilliant performers and alcohol. So I took my friend Frédérique with me to Nancy’s most recent installation, which had just planted her plants in a hotel under construction in the Mile End district. The ephemeral work Room 202 was designed to be observed from the sidewalk, but we had the chance to go up to see the small jungle erected on the second floor. A bewitching painting, a lung in the city.

Nancy pointed to three folding chairs, then poured wine into coffee cups. “I don’t bring up a lot of people, but I’m glad you’re here!” I like it, meeting new world. After a while she handed us a cigar. And if I write it, it’s because I believe that the scene bears witness to the dreaminess of the moment. We were three women, cigars in hand, looking at a lighted flora in a half-built building. Passers-by stopped to observe us, curious.

I wonder if, for a moment, we weren’t part of the installation …

***

We came to talk about Montreal. Frédérique said she was struggling to regain her enthusiasm for the city since the pandemic. As if a part of the metropolis had died with the confinement. Nancy then told us about Montreal in the 1990s, a period of effervescence …

“We entered into a relationship with greater ease, I think. There was more networking between artists and a better neighborhood life. Probably because the apartments were really less expensive! ”

Nancy told us about a social mix and a thirst for meeting that has diminished, while staying on the island has become more difficult. She painted the portrait of a decade when lofts were filled with people as free as they were creative. She also lived in the one in which Charles Binamé shot Eldorado : “A film that depicts exactly the Montreal we were proud of at the time …”

Does all this still exist, Nancy? “I think the community bond is still there, but I feel like we need to be more on the lookout. We must take the time to stop to see people. I notice it in my facilities. Two days after I arrived, residents of the neighborhood began to greet me, to ask me questions, to come and see me… It could still be, but we have to be open to what surrounds us. ”

It made me smile. Of course it still exists! Weren’t we there, chatting with this woman we didn’t know, a few minutes earlier? I realized that Nancy Guilmette embodies exactly the Montreal that I love, in fact. She keeps him alive. The one who surprises, who awaits you in the detour. Who holds out his hand to you in the hope of making you experience something. Anything. You can be whoever you want here. With whoever you want.

Pandemic or not, Montreal remains a city that is both vibrant and secret. The one where your neighbors hide the best stories and where you always meet your exes. Montreal is a double bed, privacy comes through all its corners.

This is the place to cycle at night, smell the charcoal of the parks and the smoke of Portuguese rotisseries.

It’s the kids who stop by your window to talk to your cat and the restaurant owners who know your favorite dishes. It’s a sight on every street corner and people kissing under the lampposts.

It is culture in the rooms, in front and outside. Everywhere, all the time.

Vacant lots revitalized by citizens, balcony gardens, vulgar graffiti, art full of alleys, neighborhood parties with stray cats who bypass the balloons.

Dog parks – official or not. Mount Royal with the sixty-year-old who still runs barefoot. The strange world, the stag parties and the women in high heels without coats, despite January.

Montreal is Saint-Laurent Boulevard on a Friday evening and Émilie-Gamelin Park on a Sunday morning. It’s ordering a drink in a semi-basement, then waiting a lifetime for the work on your street to be finished.

The SAQ employees share their pack of cigarettes with the man sitting on a cardboard box in front of the entrance.

The workers who go to the job on cross-country skis, with each first snowfall. The languages ​​that mix, the accents that rain, the imaginary underground cities, the dance clubs, the basketball courts, the community groups, the seniors having their coffee, the queues at brunch time, the people of business, students, activists, fortune tellers, lost, found.

This is the one I chose, the second I saw it.

“I remember promising myself, looking at the skyscrapers, to live here when I grew up. I have never regretted it.

– You should write a column on this. You just reminded me why Montreal deserves to be loved.

– Oh yes ? If you say so, Fred… ”

Visit Nancy Guilmette’s Instagram account