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A young homeless man gets a helping hand from a Good Samaritan truck driver – who also happens to be battling a serious drug addiction. This is their story.

In a relatively isolated section of Griffintown, where Murray St. dead ends at the Lachine canal, you can find Michäel Pinet’s ‘backyard’. You aren’t likely, however, to spot the tiny entrance to his squat unless you know to look for a hole of about one meter squared, cut into the backside of an abandoned CN Rail building.

Michäel, just 22 years old, has been living at the edge of the canal since June. Today, Tuesday Nov. 17, is a special day: Michäel is moving out. After seven months living in what he describes as “the bunker”, a heavy concrete building covered in generations of graffiti, the layers so old they’re cracked and peeling off the walls, he’s getting a leg up to help him make a new start in life. Someone has offered to let him move into his Verdun suite. The offer comes just in time: winter is beginning to bear down and the concrete structure keeps out the wind, but not the cold.

On this particular Tuesday afternoon, the canal in his backyard is washed in golden light, but the November sun fails to warm the chilly air. The city seems far away. The quiet is broken only by the sound of a train clacking past on the nearby tracks every twenty minutes.

Michäel says he’ll miss the view of the city from the third floor of the building, and it’s true, Montreal does show off nicely from the terrace. On the south side, just across the canal, is Montreal’s famous Five Roses sign.

This is Michäel’s second time living on Montreal’s city streets. He was just 18 years old when hit the streets for the first time. After living with his father for almost a year – “it was rough,” is all he’ll say about that period – he joined the ranks of the homeless because it was a better option than continuing to live with his dad.

He admits he wasn’t a saintly kid by any stretch of the imagination, saying he gave his mom a rough time when he was growing up, stealing and lying “to get attention.”

“I didn’t get the attention I craved when I did good things,” says Michäel, “but when I did bad things, at least my mom looked at me and there was that interaction. So I kept doing it… the bad behaviour.”

His first homeless experience happened not because of drugs – he stays away from hard drugs – but because he felt he had no other choice. “If I had had another option to being on the street, I would have done it. But sometimes without a job, without any money, without other options, you can’t end up anywhere else,” he says.

This second round of homelessness began when his girlfriend kicked him out of her place last June after her baby miscarried. Tragically, the girl eventually committed suicide because, according to Michäel, she was depressed over losing the baby. He says he had done everything he could to make her happy, “and it still wasn’t enough.”

Determined to find a safe place to stow his belongings during the day, Michäel came across the CN building when visiting a friend. Poking around in the windowless basement – “it was really dirty, but interesting,” he decided, “OK, let’s go, let’s do it, let’s make a room there.”

(to be cont’d…)

Check this out: Griffintown Graffiti.

Could be a good opportunity to network and discuss local projects such as that for The Dalhousie Corridor. That’s Wednesday, November 25th from 6-8 pm at the Griffintown cafe dining at 1378 Notre Dame O between Mountain and Guy.

MONTREAL, Nov. 22 /CNW Telbec/ РIt is this coming week that the Office de consultation publique de Montr̩al (OCPM) is launching the consultation process on the transformation project for the Bonaventure Expressway, at the limit of the boroughs of Sud-Ouest and Ville-Marie.

At the request of the Ville de Montréal, the Société du Havre de Montréal has prepared a detailed pre-project design report on the redevelopment of the Bonaventure Expressway, proposing the transformation of the expressway into an arterial urban road between Saint-Jacques and Brennan Streets, and the establishment of a living neighbourhood, on land freed up by the project, as a new downtown gateway. The report also proposes the development of an exclusive, dedicated corridor for public transportation along Dalhousie Street.

The development concept involves central city blocks, the Canadian National rail viaduct, the western frontage of the Récollets faubourg, the De la Commune city block to the south, the Dalhousie corridor to the west, and the transformation of the Bonaventure corridor where the expressway will be brought to ground level and transformed into an arterial urban road.

The Office de consultation publique received the mandate from the Montréal executive committee to consult the public on the project. Various issues will be examined at three information sessions in the next days , on November 24 and 26, and December 1, at 7:00 p.m. On the first evening, representatives of the Société du Havre will present the project and surrounding context. The second evening will be devoted to the viability and liveability of the new neighbourhood created by the project, while the third will focus on transportation issues, including the choice of the Dalhousie corridor. The three meetings will be held in the halls of the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde, 1110 Mansfield Street (Peel Metro). Citizens who attend will have the opportunity to ask any question they like about the project.

The presentation of briefs will take place on Tuesday, January 12, at 7:00 p.m., at the offices of the OCPM, 1550 Metcalfe Street, 14th floor (Peel Metro).

All available information may be obtained at the offices of the OCPM, the Ville-Marie borough office, 888 de Maisonneuve Boulevard East, 5th floor, and the Sud-Ouest borough office, 815 Bel-Air Street. The documentation is also available on the Office Web site, at www.ocpm.qc.ca . For information, please call 514 872-8510.

Griffintown…Griffintown..Griffintown…

Even for residents of Montreal it is not entirely clear where this borough is located. My answer is Griffintown is in South-West or Sud-Ouest Arrondissment in French.

Good to know… but it is still vague . Let’s get a look  what Wikipedia tells us about this district. Here comes a quote”Griffintown is the popular name given to the former southwestern downtown part of Montreal, Quebec, which existed from the 1820s until the 1960s and was mainly populated by Irish immigrants and their descendants. It is believed to have been vaguely defined by Notre-Dame street to the North, McGill and Guy streets to the East and the West respectively, and the Lachine Canal to the South, making Griffintown the earliest and largest faubourg ever annexed to Old Montreal (and its outskirts) before the introduction of the tram car in the 1840s.”

More info can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffintown

Hello people from Montreal, Quebec and the whole world.

Here comes a new resident of the lovely Montreal borough that is called Griffintown. I have been living in this neighborhood since the month of July 2009. Love it so far. I would like to explore more of the present life of this part of Montreal … And I hope you will enjoy this ride as well.

Sincerely, Griffintowngirl.

Well, almost 6 months to the day of defending my dissertation, I am heading out tomorrow to begin, in earnest, work on the book.  Now that I have interest, at least, from a publisher, I am getting going on the new research I want to do, and moving forth with the revisions and whatnot.  Next weekend or the following one, depending on when I get a bit of time, I am going to re-write the Preface of the dissertation to lay out where I want the book to go, though, of course, that will change a few times as I move forward.

Anyway, tomorrow I am meeting with a former Griffintowner I met at a talk I gave last year, to do an oral history interview.  This is kind of exciting for me, and I’m excited to learn that I am not, in fact, sick of Griffintown and its history yet.  In fact, I feel rather rejuvenated by 6 months away from it, as I have been immersed in Griffintown lore for most of the past 3 years, since I started writing the dissertation in earnest.

So let us hope the book doesn’t take as long to write as the dissertation did and sometime in the not-too-distant future, The House of the Irish: Diaspora, History & Memory in Griffintown, Montréal, 1900-2010, will be on the shelves of a bookstore near you.

This is a paper I presented to the Canadian Historical Association’s annual meeting at the University of Western Ontario in the spring of 2005.  It grew out of the final chapter of my dissertation, which examines the process by which the Irish of Montréal have reclaimed Griffintown as their own, despite the fact that 1) the majority of the Irish in Montréal never lived there, and 2) the Irish were a minority for the entirety of the 20th century in Griffintown.  Yet, the Griff is the site of remembrance of Irish Montréal, the city’s equivalent to Southie in Boston, or the 5 Points in Manhattan.  Of course, the Irish are just staking out their own space on the physical landscape of Montréal, like nearly all other ethnic groups here (for example, Jews in the Mile End, the québécois working classes of the east end, Anglos of the West Island or Westmount, etc.).

Stay tuned for the book, coming to a bookstore near you in 2011 (I hope).

Griffintown

i submitted a book proposal to mcgill-queens university press the other week.  i mailed it out monday, i got an email response on thursday.  i was astounded canada post could get something somewhere that fast, even if the proposal travelled no more than 3.5km from pointe-saint-charles to mcgill.  anyway, mqup liked what they read.  they are interested in publishing the book, once it becomes a book.

so now, i am beginning to ponder how to turn “the house of the irish”, the dissertation, into the house of the irish, the book.  i am cutting out the first substantive chapter, on the shamrock lacrosse club.  that will become an article or two.  and i am extending a chapter on nations and nationalism in griffintown, c. 1900-17 to at least 1922, with the establishment of the irish free state.  part of my argument is that once ireland gained something approximating independence, even if the north was left out (or, more properly stated, opted out), the irish of the diaspora more or less lost interest in ireland, at least that was, i think, the situation in montréal.  ireland was already an imagined nation by the early 20th century on account of there being hardly any irish-born irish in montréal by this time, immigration having dried up shortly after the famine.  but after the free state was established, the irish here turned even more inwards.  so that’s the first major revision or expansion.

the other is to correct the methodological issues in the last two chapters of the dissertation, which is too much reliance on the same set of sources.  to correct this, i am going to engage in some oral history.  but i am back to the same problem i had with the dissertation in a sense here.  i am not interested in talking to the professional griffintowners, the don pidgeons and denis delaneys of the world.  their thoughts and opinions on the griff are very well known, they are part of the commemorative process amongst the griffintown diaspora.  i want to talk to people who didn’t necessarily think that they grew up in shangri-la.  the ones who have an alternative view of the griff, or at least a more critical one.  one former griffintowner in burman’s film said something like it was a shame to see the griff go, as they had it all.  oh really?  despite the poverty, unemployment, insecurity of tenure, etc.?  of course, this is partly nostalgia, partly a child’s view of life in the 1940s.  but i want to talk to people who have a more critical memory.

and that’s the hard part.  where do i find these people?  they’re not the ones at all the various griff gatherings.  i have a few ideas, one of which is to make use of the parish of saint-gabriel, the historically irish church in the pointe (in fact, almost next door to us here).  i recognise old griffintowners standing outside of saint-gabriel’s every sunday morning, so i’m hoping i can start there, talk to a few of them, get references to their friends, and so on.

either way, i am excited about this, i’m excited to turn this story of griffintown into a book.  i think this is a story that has wider implications, not just for montréal, but for the irish diaspora, and even as an example of the acculturation of an ethnic group in a major metropolitan centre in north america.

as my favourite soccer blogger used to say at the end of each post: onwards!

more to come….

Spacing Montreal has an interesting article/series of pictures on an art-installation piece in the Montreal neighbourhood of Griffintown.

Griffintown, a historic working-class Irish neighbourhood bordering on the Lachine Canal, is a place of contrasts and curiosities bound to bring up visions of a low-rent developers’ game of Cadavre Exquis or something out of the mind of a hung-over Italo Calvino. A shimmering technical school stands several blocks away from a cluster of abandoned factories being gutted by a towering crane or a rundown historic building whose parking-lot houses a mobile-home and several meticulously-maintained horse-drawn carriages.

I’m working on a project in urban planning school which involves conceiving a potential redevelopment plan for this neighbourhood, and I’ll be sure to post updates when they come.

When we last heard from the project in May 2009, the OCPM had issued some recommendations based on the public consultation process, including alterations to the design plan. Today, Canada Lands Corporation announced that the City of Montreal intends to vote to approve the revised project next week.

Instead of four open basins (one of which was intended to be a kind of open-air pool, if I recall correctly) only two will be incorporated; these are linked together to form a loop that runs around the easternmost buildings. with three 20-storey towers.

The westernmost basins will be ceded to the City of Montreal, to become two continuous green spaces that run north-south between Ottawa and the public park alongside the Lachine Canal, one of which will be an “aire de jeux” – most likely a soccer/football field – and one partly an artificial reed-bed wetland that processes rainwater (and possibly, sewage?), reducing the new neighborhood’s impact on the existing infrastructure. Overall, the project is aiming for LEED-ND status, with green roofs to manage rainwater and reduce heating/cooling costs.

The percentage of space given over to mixed residential-commercial space seems to have increased; there seems to be a strong tilt towards creating artist workshop spaces and galleries in the area (expanding on Judith Bauer’s idea of a “cultural corridor”). They ask to hold architectural design contests for the proposed buildings; I’m hoping we don’t end up with starchitectural nightmares or East Bloc prison chic, but something that harmonizes well with its red-brick, turn-of-the-century neighbours.

What’s left to do is some consulting with the South-West Borough to ensure that the higher towers don’t have too bad an impact on sunlight and wind at ground level. I have to say that I was initially skeptical, but overall, it looks like a very good project, and an example of how public consultation ought to be done in this city.

Readers, thanks for supporting the movement to keep Griffintown’s fate in the hands of its citizens. At the moment it appears that Devimco’s plans have gone on hold, but the 1500 Ottawa (Canada Post) site development bears further watching. There’s only so many hours in the day I can devote to this project, and by this time next year I may no longer even live in this neighborhood. I’ll be watching from a distance, but I probably won’t be as closely involved from now on — barring any truly boneheaded plans, that is. In the meantime, I urge you to stay involved with the official Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown, now located at their spiffy new site, http://griffintown.org.

Yours,

AJ Kandy

My friend Alanah Heffez posted at SpacingMontreal.ca about architecture firm Cardinal Hardy’s concept for the Seville Residences project, proposed for the north side of Sainte-Catherine Street near Atwater by the Bronfman-controlled Claridge Properties. It’s named after the former Seville Theatre, a purpose-built movie theatre from 1929 with additional street-front retail spaces; in the 1940s, it hosted live acts including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett. Reverting to a repertory movie house, the building slowly decayed over the 70s and 80s until it was shuttered as unsafe. Part of an outside wall collapsed in 1994; its historic interiors were gutted for a never-realized redevelopment project. Now, with the heritage façade deemed unpreservable, it’s set to be demolished.

According to the Cardinal Hardy plan, the theatre would be recalled as a visual echo in the new building…as a symbolic corner of yellow brick.

The SpacingMontreal article raises the question of façadism —  the process of integrating heritage façades, typically the only portion of a building protected by a heritage designation, into new construction. She compares it to the retro-revival quest for authenticity among urban hipsters. I’m not sure I agree with that particular premise, because today’s architects seem to incorporate heritage elements only grudgingly, or when forced to by heritage preservation laws.

Occasionally, the results can be quite good, like the World Trade Centre in Old Montreal, which cleverly recycled an alleyway into a soaring atrium, used classical details inside, and largely matched new interiors to old exteriors. Sadly, the norm seems to be things like the mismatched 3-floor / 5-floor  chimera of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (with those infuriating, hobbling stairs); bluntly unfinished-looking black cinderblock boxes like the Hotel Opus, divorced from its Art Nouveau front on St-Laurent; and the unimaginative incorporation of Edwardian white-tile apartments to the tutti-frutti cubes of the Webster Library at Concordia. In all three cases, the architects paid no attention to the scale, rhythm, textures, or idioms of the preserved heritage elements.

No-one can really argue that the rejuvenation of this strip of Sainte Catherine Street isn’t vital to boosting downtown, nor that the creation of more rental apartments will help ease pressure on a market that has seen too many properties converted to condos. What I’m more skeptical about is what they’re planning to build on that block — if it’s anything like the mockup shown in the SpacingMontreal post, it’s yet another bland, postmodern set of cereal boxes with ‘interesting’ window lines. This, to be sited next to the clownish spectacle of the AMC Forum, does not bode well.

Does a corner of yellow brick do the memory of a minor architectural gem any service? The Seville, which my parents used to attend frequently during its years as a repertory cinema, was a place which inspired attention and imagination. I’m worried that what’s planned will induce a state of torpor instead. If the city really wants to honor the memories of M. Cajetan Dufort (architect) and Emmanuel Briffa (interiors), why couldn’t they insist that whatever gets built must be both future-focused, yet respectful of the neighborhood’s pre-war (as they say in NYC) architectural heritage? In short, why not build a 1929-esque building that’s up to LEED standards?

There is absolutely nothing on a technological level preventing today’s architects and builders from doing just that. I worry, however, that they’ve lost touch with basic architectural vocabulary. For instance,the new condo building that went up on the site of the old Unitarian church on Sherbrooke Street mimics the forms of its neighbors, but its proportions are all slightly off. The entrance portico seems like a Canadian Tire version of neoclassical; like nearly all new buildings, the windowsills (and hence, the implied thickness of the walls) are a bit too shallow; it appears to be clad in white styrofoam and tack-on MDF crown molding, as opposed to limestone and brick. Overall it’s a lot better than we might have expected — thank the gods it’s not another Port Royal — and it’s a bit of a novelty to see old forms pop up downtown again, but I can’t help wishing they had paid a little more attention to detail; that it had more of the sense of permanence as the Acadia or the Linton.

Whatever gets built on Sainte-Catherine Street, our main artery, ought to really feel of Montreal — new, yet familiar — and drawing on its neighbors for inspiration would be a welcome change.

After what has seemed like an eternity, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation, entitled, “‘The House of the Irish’: Irishness, History, and Memory in Griffintown, Montréal, 1868-2009,” on Friday, 13 March.  So now I am Dr. John Matthew Barlow.

This also explains my absence from this blog for the past month, as I prepared for and recovered from said defence.  I will be active again in the coming days.