Pioneer of architecture and urban planning in Canada, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel died last Thursday in Toronto at the age of 98. It is to this adopted Montrealer and her husband that we owe the safeguard of Old Montreal threatened by a highway project at the turn of the 1960s. A disaster narrowly avoided.
In March 1960, the City of Montreal unveiled the detailed plans for the eight-lane highway that was to cross Old Montreal from east to west, a $130 million project. In The duty of March 25, 1960, the president of the executive committee, Joseph-Marie Savignac, described the project as a “decisive step in the history of the metropolis of Canada”. The elevated freeway will make it possible to cross the city center in 20 minutes, will contribute to decongesting the port and will lead to substantial savings in time and money for truckers and motorists, argued Mr. Savignac at the time.
A few months later, however, the firm of Blanche Lemco van Ginkel and her husband, Daniel (nicknamed Sandy) van Ginkel, submitted a document to the port authorities describing this motorway project in the heart of the historic district as a serious error. The firm will instead propose to move this highway further north, which will become the Ville-Marie highway. Old Montreal had just escaped it.
Unsung visionaries
“We forgot them, because these people succeeded. They pulled off an improbable fight,” says Dinu Bumbaru, Policy Director at Héritage Montréal. According to him, this episode is reminiscent of that of the initial project of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM) in the East, whose aerial structures were to be deployed above René-Lévesque Boulevard.
However, Old Montreal was not among the concerns of the authorities in the 1960s. “At that time, no one was interested in Old Montreal. At that time, in all the big cities, we were building elevated freeways crossing the urban core,” recalled Blanche Lemco van Ginkel in an interview given in 2012 to theARQthe magazine for members of the Ordre des architectes du Québec.
Neglected, the old part of the city included dilapidated buildings, which disappeared according to fires or demolitions authorized by the City. “Society has been quite indifferent to things we cherish today. Old Montreal was one of them, as was Mount Royal,” confirms Mr. Bumbaru.
“We both avoided a catastrophe and at the same time initiated a reconquest of Old Montreal, which did not look like much at the time,” explains Gérard Beaudet, full professor at the Faculty of Planning at the Université de Montreal. “Apart from a few institutions like the town hall, the courthouse or the Papineau house, not much was going on there. To have understood that Old Montreal had to be thought of as a whole, and not as a collection of a few old buildings, and to have carried out a study which revealed its characteristics was invaluable. »
It is further to this movement of opposition to this highway project that the profession of urban planner in Canada was born.
While saving Old Montreal was a great source of pride for Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, her legacies go far beyond this feat. In addition to the plans developed for Old Montreal, the Port of Montreal and downtown traffic, the van Ginkel firm will lead the planning and design of Expo 67.
Le Corbusier
Born in London in 1924, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel moved to Montreal with her family at the age of 13. Enrolled at McGill University in 1940, she was one of the first students to be admitted to McGill’s School of Architecture. With a bachelor’s degree and distinctions in hand, she continued her studies at Harvard University, where she obtained a master’s degree in urban planning in 1950.
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel notably worked in Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris (1948) and took part in the Cité radieuse project in Marseille. She then plunged into teaching, developing the first urban design courses at the University of Montreal and McGill University.
Her career is closely linked to that of her husband, the Dutch architect Daniel van Ginkel, whom she met in 1953 in France. They return to Montreal four years later to open an office.
“Blanche was one of the founders of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec in 1963,” recalls Jean Paré, urban planner emeritus and president of the recognition committee of the Order. “She had license number 6, whereas today we have exceeded 2000.”
Since 2003, the Order has periodically awarded a prize in its name to citizens who have made “a significant contribution to the development of town planning”. Last year, this award was given to André Lavallée, former mayor of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, who died last August.
In 2019, director Joseph Hillel paid tribute to Mme Lemco in City dreamersa film portraying four pioneering architects in their profession.