Overkill

14 May


Sad and frustrating all at the same time…

Restraint
Restraint
Restraint

The only three Rs I could care about in times like these.

Let me get this straight: the education minister quits as a result of the impasse what with the student strike.

She’s replaced by the old education minister, who is already the head of the treasury board as well as the deputy premier. The crisis has no conclusion in sight.

So why was she allowed to up and quit?

There ought to be penalties against this – how many times have various politicians, cabinet ministers, presidents of public universities or public transit agencies simply walked out on the job (in some cases collecting major severance packages) without facing their critics and any potential lawsuits heading their way?

It’s sad that she felt compelled to leave as a result of the student strike. It infuriates me that Charest would accept that. What kind of message are they sending to the youth of Québec? Is the strike working in that its forcing ministers to quit? Will this not encourage students (and the myriad anti-government organizations going along for the ride) to press on?

And it’s not like it will change anything. Both sides have dug in their heels, without wanting to give an inch. At a certain point standing by your convictions becomes hopelessly futile and anti-productive. Refusing to negotiate with a lunatic despot is one thing. Charest hardly qualifies, he can be negotiated with.

Now I’m less certain though – allowing Beauchamp to resign her post means he has to come back to the table even more stubborn than before. And now the more militant core of the protest movement may feel their tactics are working.

All of this is leaving the general public in a hopeless state – if the government can’t do anything to resolve the crisis, what do the students propose we should do? It’s not like they have any better answer than ‘give in’.

Ideally, education should be 100% state funded, but that won;t happen with the current government and I can guarantee you won’t happen under any péquiste government either. The student movement could be working out a brilliant solution to this mess, but they can’t seem to do more than bully those who disagree with them.

Not to mention pissing off the general public. Last week’s Métro smoke-bombing was idiotic to say the least. Take it as an indicator the general public is losing faith in the student leadership and the movement as a whole – the cops used social media and found a plethora of willing tattle-tales to rat out these presumed free-tuition fighters.

But now they may face a terrorism charge, and five years in one of El Presidente Harper’s ‘supermax prisons for leftist intellectual re-education’. Okay, I’ll admit it – they haven’t yet settled on the new name.

A terrorism charge? For a smoke bomb you can pick up at any military supply store?

They didn’t kill anyone. No one was hurt. The economy didn’t grind to a halt.

All they did was piss Montrealers off and lose credibility.

It almost makes me think they should be let go, but that’s not right either. Five years of community service, helping young immigrant kids learn how to speak French… now there’s an idea I’m certain would make almost everyone happy.

And finally in this cavalcade of excess: Victoriaville, and the SQ’s annual attempt to remind everyone that yes, indeed, they are still the thugs we know and loathe from Oka.

All of this is leading me to an awful conclusion. When it comes time for the next provincial election, my choice will be between a bunch of closet social conservatives who smell to high hell of collusion, nepotism and myopic ‘nation-building’ policies, and Jean Charest’s inept PLQ.

Why do we do this to ourselves? We were once so very great.

Dreaded Development

9 May

It can’t all be bad, right?

I’m kinda impressed with this proposal rendering of the new Icone condominium project. I’d have chosen a different name, and I’d like to put it somewhere else ideally, but if it actually looks like this and is placed over an ugly parking lot, well, then I’m typically sold. That said, I’m curious as to what they plan on doing with the heritage property half-way up the block from René-Lévesque.

It doesn’t look like a Montréal skyscraper per se, but then again I don’t think we’re so easily pigeonholed. I have a feeling, with the recent spate of new condo and tall-building construction that we may be in for a very well-defined local look in twenty years. The question is, do we want this kind of look?

It’s not just condo towers, though there certainly seems to be a lot of interest, capital and active projects, there are whole neighbourhoods which may very quickly disappear and get replaced with something wholly foreign to what was there prior. As one may imagine, it’s pissed off Phyllis Lambert.

And for good reason. I’m not keen on the development taking place in Griffintown, though that’s largely because I’d prefer to see new versions of the classic Montréal triplex going up in neat tree-lined rows instead. Whether these new residential developments will actually lead to the creation of viable neighbourhoods and a real sense of community remains to be seen. I’ve noticed very little in terms of cultural or social development. No new schools, no libraries, no community nor cultural centres. Can the city afford an urban high-end real-estate market dominated by singles? Where’s the long-term investment? If we develop new residential areas as mere geographic manifestations of our consumer culture, well, guess what? These new towers will be tall slums as quickly as tastes may change, leaving the buildings either uninhabited or sold to the lowest bidder. Unless community is constructed, new towers are white elephants in waiting.

I’ve looked over a lot of the conceptual drawings for new condo and office construction and a lot of lit looks very similar in style and general layout. I approve of the fact that these project are mostly slated for empty lots or parking lots, but there’s still the potential danger of losing a landmark like the Lafontaine House or the Horse Palace. Then there’s the issue of scale – a lot of these buildings are very, very large compared to the buildings around them, yet are typically on smallish plots of open land, meaning there’s a requirement to maximize space use that may give the impression of a large and obtrusive box where a view once was. This is a city built on exceptional perspectives on the urban core made available to the everyman. We should be cautious to proceed in such a manner that this doesn’t become a thing of the past, inasmuch as we ought to sincerely develop a broader cultural attachment to heritage architecture and urbanism. When it was far more complicated to build a high-quality city, you better believe people took their time and worked fastidiously to produce beautiful landmarks.

Are any of the recent additions or towers going up majestic or awe-inspiring in their own right? or we just happy to finally see a skyline choked with construction cranes?

Looks can be deceiving…

And in other development and re-development news:

There’s a new plan for the Empress Theatre, but it seems to be little more than a new conceptual rendering and the added provision that among the Empress’ supposed limitless possibilities, an analog film institute.

Neat.

But why?

Although I suppose if there’s enough room to accomodate that and everything else on the Empress wish list, it’s no harm no foul. No official word on who’s ponying up, but apparently there are ‘several interested parties’. Cost estimated at $6 million. This seems very low to me, but what do I know?

Having been inside on a few occasions and from my previous experiences discovering the ECC, I feel the cost just to bring the building up to code (and to pay off the construction companies) may bring this well into double digits.

That said, I really hope they accomplish their goal and make it profitable. If the ECC works as so many NDG residents want it to, the whole community will experience a dynamic transition. Call it the Plateau’s western cousin, but a brand new performance venue in the dead centre of NDG will have a positive effect on the local economy to say the least. It may very well stimulate a vast renovation and gentrification of the Sherbrooke West corridor, and this would be very good indeed. An economic and societal anchor if there ever was one.

And finally, yet another bump in the long railroad saga that stubbornly refuses to resolve itself (what else might that remind me of? Hmmm…), Clifford Lincoln’s Train de l’Ouest lobby group has refused to endorse the ADM’s new ‘elevated light rail’ proposal (which apparently might even share track and run in the same corridor as VIA, CN, the AMT and CP trains).

Once again, the issue is not about how to get people from the airport to the city and back again in the quickest and most efficient manner (which may actually lead to a rise in tourism, but that’s another issue), but about West Islanders not having enough regular service on commuter rail lines.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – these issues are distinct and need to be treated as such. Aeroports de Montréal should know better than to clog the highest traffic rail corridor in the Americas with yet another train, and Lincoln’s group should be looking at making better use of the existing branch lines which may just as easily serve commuters’ needs. Further, I’m pretty sure there’s a rather large stockyard just next to the airport, and several other branch lines which approach the airport from the North rather than the high-traffic South.

Find another way, and I’d like to ask the AdM to not pursue the absolute most expensive alternative they can think of. An elevated line is unnecessary and impractical, especially if it will cause disruptions on the existing CN/CP infrastructure. You may as well build a Métro tunnel at that rate.

Frustrating!

The Four Years We Fix Everything

8 May

Turcot Interchange, aerial perspective shortly before completion

Call this an early campaign promise.

I figure we can fix more-or-less every major infrastructure problem in our city in a single concerted effort – a four year program of various projects all set into action simultaneously and inter-dependently. In other words, the mother of all public works projects.

A program designed with maximum operational efficiency at the forefront of all planning – nothing happens unless we can do it all at the same time. Consider the near-perpetual closures of Parc Avenue and St. Lawrence Boulevard over the past few years – how many times were the streets ripped open because no one had bothered to schedule all the maintenance at the same time? How is it that public utilities can operate complex networks yet can’t call some other large utility to try work out a mutually agreeable schedule for renovations? And why doesn’t our city have an infrastructure oversight committee do ensure our city gets repaired efficiently and effectively, and then move onto instituting best-practices solutions so we don’t have a re-cap of the infrastructure problems we’ve been dealing with over the last decade. You’d figure we’d have preventative maintenance policies already in place, so it really makes you wonder how holes can develop on regularly used bridges and concrete slabs just fall off buildings or (worse) over-passes.

It’ll doubtless be a gargantuan under-taking, involving multiple engineering and construction firms (hell, maybe all of them!) working hand in hand with transit agencies, public and private utilities and government agencies. It’ll be inconvenient, in some cases, and will require short-term solutions to cope with disruptions to traffic and transit. Our roads need to be thoroughly repaired, with new measures put in place so as to minimize corrosion and increase the relative lifespan of all road types. And then we’ll have to do the same with the bridges, tunnels, railways etc. Our parks, squares and plazas need a collective sprucing up. Almost all of our Métro stations could use aesthetic improvements and a solid coat of graffiti-resistant wall-treatment; the AMT stations need break-resistant glass to cover the station displays. Bus and train shelters need to be similarly upgraded, and it wouldn’t kill anyone if we installed solar-powered space-heaters within (it might even save a homeless fellow from freezing to death, so why not?) Finally, we should put one of those First World War helmets atop King Edward VII’s head in Phillip’s Square; I’m sick and tired of the accumulated pigeon poop up there, and cleaning it off is clearly too expensive.

Okay, I’m joking about that last part. That would be historically inaccurate.

In any event – what do you think? How are we going to fix these seemingly never-ending problems?

Adam Yauch – 1964-2012 / The In Sound From Way Out

6 May

Late to the party as always.

Found out after reading Cadence Weapon’s tweet – a simple ‘oh no’. It definitely sucks, I am a huge Beastie Boys fan, but I never had a chance to see them perform live.

The Beastie Boys were obviously influential and ground-breaking in numerous ways, not least of which was that they were an early hip-hop group that was born, more or less, out of the early-1980s NYC hardcore & post-punk scene. The Beastie Boys played one of their first shows on the last night Max’s Kansas City was open.

My introduction to them was the double-CD compilation issued in 1998, The Sounds of Science. I bought it mostly because I wanted to get a better idea of what they were all about, and wanted to see how the band had evolved over time. The personalities of the three members came to light, and MCA stood out as the slightly quieter one, the background man with the raspy voice.

I’d discover later on that he had directed numerous Beastie Boys videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower, a character who would come to some national prominence at the 1994 MTV VMAs, when the band lost multiple times (including twice to Aerosmith) in various categories – in my honest opinion, Sabotage, nominated in four or five categories, should have won easily. Not only is it one of the finest general rock songs of all time, but the video is a classic. The song demonstrated a number of things, chiefly that they were at home in multiple genres, that they were sonic experimenters de rigeur, that they legitimized sonic sub-cultures etc. It also features MCA rocking a solid bass line, notable in the break before Ad-Rock screams Why? halfway through the track.

Yauch was also one of the first musicians I associated with public political consciousness in my own youth. It wasn’t so much that I perceived the Beastie Boys as somewhat enlightened post-punk pugilists and perennial smart-asses, but that at their core there was artistry, business and causes. I was mad disappointed when the Rhyme and Reason Tour was cancelled in 2000, but impressed with Yauch’s work with regards to the Tibetan Freedom Copncert. If you remember the mid-1990s, trying to get people to pay attention to all the shitty things going on in the world wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today, and some even questioned whether or not rock and rap groups should be so political in the first place. These same individuals kinda missed the point to begin with – perhaps this explains the rise of ICP and Limp Bizkit in that era, following in the wake of what the Beastie Boys had crafted so many years before. But those latter groups were created by some record label to fill a void; the Beasties were the real deal, which is why I’m certain their music will entertain many more generations of fans.

Above, a favourite video. It’s rather long at ten minutes, but features MCA as Nathanial Hornblower interrupting Michael Stipe’s acceptance speech for the ‘Everybody Hurts’ video. Towards the end, the Beastie Boy’s revenge – one of the tightest live performances of Sabotage I’ve ever seen. Worth waiting and feeling the build up as they lose in every category. At the end, they demonstrated clearly what made them just so ground-breaking. It wasn’t so simply that they were suburban white boys in a black man’s world, it’s that they were damn good musicians and lyricists, with a clear understanding of their style, image, and perhaps thanks in large part to MCA, a defined aesthetic and message too.

He’ll surely be missed.

Sugar Sammy has the Pulse of the City

29 Apr

Saw Sugar Sammy’s Le Show Franglais at l’Olympia on Friday night. Wow. Simply excellent.

I know I’m late to the party, but the tickets were purchased over a month ago by my mom – a birthday gift, and a testament to the enduring popularity of Sammy’s unique show. My understanding is that it was initially supposed to have only a limited run and that there was a lot of speculation it wouldn’t go over terribly well. That was three months ago. My mother was astounded she couldn’t get anything before last Friday, but took it as a good sign that everything else was sold out. I’ll cut right to the chase, you should see this show at any cost. It was immediately apparent the show was running like a well-oiled machine; everything from the choice of venue, to the MC, the opening acts and the flow of the main performance was indicative of someone exhibiting a well-honed craft. Sugar Sammy, and this show in particular, may very well spear-head a revolution in this city of the Juste pour rire. If we can laugh together, there won’t be much left to keep us apart, and a whole new brand of comedy may very well come into existence. Thus, I feel there are many comedians who will rise in his wake; it’s more than just the novelty of bilingual comedy, it’s that the model allows for a relaxed and open discussion of culture. This innovation is fascinating to me, because ‘cultural comedy’ has largely seemed to be of an exclusionary nature, or pejorative. Perhaps until now.

It was smooth, it was relentless. It was unforgiving, unyielding – at the end I saw a vast group of Montréalais gently massaging their Joker-esque perma-grins as they stumbled out into the cold and chaos in the direction of Place Emilie-Gamelin. As I strode out with them, listening to the on-going laughter as those attending reminisced about their favourite moments, it contrasted sharply with the apparent seriousness of the reality beyond the well appointed Vaudeville-styled theatre (and by the way – I can’t believe I hadn’t seen a show there previously – a very nice retro theatre and local landmark). And yet the show was our reality too. I wouldn’t pigeon-hole the show as being ‘cultural comedy’ – it was so much more than that chiefly because it was about all of us, our shared society. The somewhat lackadaisical NDP slogan from the last federal election, ‘travaillons ensemble’ was often repeated throughout. Though it’s insufferably Canadian in its modesty, it fits what I feel is a growing general sentiment in this city, this province and country – put aside your differences and get to work. Besides, you might discover you enjoy ‘les autres’, or maybe even les maudits anglais.

While I feel the implications of a show like this might be significant, I don’t want it to detract from what is first and foremost an excellent comedy show by anyone’s definition. There was a fair bit of improvisation and lots of interaction with the crowd, hallmarks of any good entertainer. What made the show great was the incisive wit, the rhythm, the equilibrium. It was evenly French and English, evenly contrasted moments of electric, unrelenting cheeky rejoinders contrasted with slower, constructed anecdotes. His social commentary is wide-reaching but takes on a particularly funny perspective when understood in the context of this show, with the city and it’s unique cultural identity serving to throw misperceptions and prejudices a curveball. Plus he’s a devout trouble-maker and smart-ass, which plays well with Montrealers regardless of cultural or linguistic backgrounds. I think his story about how he trolled his hardcore separatist history teacher the day after the 1995 Referendum was the joke that brought the house down – a collective ‘oh snap’ of nervous laughter boomed out of more than a thousand people after several bear-baiter jokes concerning the Referendum which had set the mood. It was explosive. It was awesome.

Also – my date for the evening comes from a small town in the Pacific Northwest. She had never been to a comedy show before. She was really impressed. I’m really glad this was her introduction to the world of Montreal comedy.

So what can I say – go do whatever you can to see this show. You won’t be disappointed.

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A Change of Tactics

26 Apr

The very definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result.

It’s high-time the student leaders of Québec recognized this fundamental truth.

We’re almost into the third month of 2012′s Maple Spring and nothing has changed, other than public sentiment towards the striking student protesters. To say nothing of the rest of Canada, where the vitriol often reaches into the depths of anti-Francophone racism and hysteria. But one thing at a time, we’ll deal with our federal PR ratings later on.

The talks have broken off because the largest, or at least most visible, most provocative organization CLASSE, was not recognized by the education minister. Bad move on her part. It’s not just that the protest is now a 24-hour kind of affair, but it happens in multiple locations too. It is all-encompassing, and includes a general population of the disenchanted and disenfranchised.

But the violence which has characterized almost every major demonstration, largely as a result of the heavy-handed tactics employed by the SPVM, in addition to the disruptions to traffic and transit, the lost revenues and the bad morale, bad blood, is all starting to pile up like so much unwanted garbage. Because neither the apparent ‘leaders’ in government, nor the legitimate student protest movement, can accomplish anything as long as both sides dig in their heels, the city as a whole suffers. As Charest fails to act, opposition to him will manifest itself in multiple ways. Already, fringe extremist elements have indeed infiltrated the student movement, inasmuch as those generally displeased with the current provincial government, or separatists, or trade-unionists. I sometimes wonder how politically savvy Charest really is, as his inattention and ill-advised stance seems to making a bad problem worse.

Yet, when it comes to the inevitable provincial election, it will not be the students playing king-maker – students don’t generally pull themselves together to get out the vote (and by that I mean actively engage themselves in making sure others vote, and not just exercising their own limited franchise individually). Thus, the decision will be made by a small majority of primarily middle-class and middle-aged Québecois, as it is and seems always to have been. And they support Charest. Some of them are ‘happy’ the police are ‘kicking ass’.

And it’s the police which ultimately wins out. The estimated $3 million in extra costs associated with the student demos will be paid – I can guarantee it – by the tax-payers. These are primarily the same people who will determine who wins the next election. They want well paid cops, and they see police in riot gear as money well spent. There’s every reason for the SPVM to encourage additional violence, additional rioting – it makes sure they get paid, and that’s the bottom line.

So the student movement is going to have to consider some alternative actions if they have any hope of reaching out to this key demographic and effecting a change. But what could they do?

For one, they could exercise far stricter control of rallies, marches and the like. And I mean Malcolm X, early-1960s Nation of Islam in Harlem styled discipline. Perfect manners, a ‘uniform’ of individuals’ Sunday best, rank and file marching etc. It will shock and awe if only for its sheer novelty, and will convey a crucial message: we mean business. Imagine if the striking students wore business attire or their closest approximation – it would be very hard to distinguish ‘dirty hippies’ from ‘respectable citizens’ and it would win hearts and minds too.

For two, information. The most crucial part of any mass public protest is communications, and this student movement sucks at broadcasting the message. The argument is that the mainstream media won’t listen or will manipulate the message is a lazy cop-out, frankly. What’s ironic is that the movement has excellently employed the use of modern mass communications tools to organize their demos, but hasn’t done much to actually reach the public, present a clear and concise case, and win-over public sentiment. I suggest going old-school, really old-school. Hand out pamphlets, newsletters, flyers. Post bills. Build websites and centralize the voice of the movement around it’s most eloquent spokespeople. Again, exercise strict discipline in how and who disseminates the message, but do everything you can to ensure the progressive point of view is ubiquitous and understood by any interested citizen (and remember as well – the majority does not have a university or college education, and the establishment went to school so long ago we have almost nothing in common with them). Yes, this will cost a small amount of money – the leaders, many of who are paid union members, can use their salaries to pay the printing and hosting costs, or else a collection should go around.

And be consistent. Is this not the iPhone generation? A generation of tech-savvy communications specialists hooked up (in most cases since birth) to the greatest self-expression machine of all time? So why is it so hard to get a consistent, clear and concise message across to the general public?

Stop fucking up the transit and traffic system – it’s bad enough as it is. Either get a full police escort for the march and inform people of the route, or don’t do it at all, because it’s pissing people off unnecessarily. I don’t think the smoke-bombers are anything more than wannabe anarchist poseurs, perhaps mere vandals, but either way, attacking the public transit system is just idiotic. We want people using the Métro – remember we still need to save the planet on top of figuring a way out of the tuition increase, right?

It’s time to change the tactics. It’s time the student movement takes a close look at the popular revolutions which have actually succeeded long-term and forget about the populist, and fundamentally lazy and self-destructive methods used up until this point.

If it’s not working today, why expect it to work tomorrow?

It’s time to build a student society – real connection through hard-work, altruism and cooperation. Let our generation turn the tide by doing things differently, and forget the methods which have failed so broadly.

Ultimately, ask not what the movement, our government or our society can do for you, but what you can do for your society – today but most importantly, for tomorrow as well.

A Hidden History

23 Apr

The Burning of Parliament at Place d’Youville, Montréal – 1849

The painting above is of a fascinating moment in our shared history, and yet all to often I’ve heard it described as something of a joke. Perhaps that’s all it’s worth today anyways, and given there’s very little in terms of general acknowledgement of that intrepid pre-Confederation era, no memorials, no markers. The joke goes something along the lines of Montrealers being so passionate (if not violent) when it comes to politics that the only time they tried to make Montreal the capital, the locals burned the parliament buildings. It’s a joke about the feverish Latin blood of the Québecois, of French Canadians. It’s also grossly inaccurate. The mob was English, no British, and defiantly so. A mob of elites who stood in the way of responsible government, democracy, and a defined, unique character.

The site of this parliament is today a parking lot at Place d’Youville – the rough outline of the building conforming very nicely to the limits of the asphalt. There’s nothing at the Bonsecours Market either – it served as parliament too. And LaFontaine’s House, as we all know, is presently a squat. As per the custom of Montréal, it’s much vaulted history is a mystery. We’ve Disneyfied ourselves – plenty of places which look historical but very little in terms of public education, interpretation. Sometimes this city seems to be a study in half-assing it. We don’t do monuments, let alone plaques, memorials or museums – we don’t bother trying to explain to ourselves or others why we’re historically significant, but there always seems to be both time and money for theatre students to dress up like soldiers or blacksmiths.

In the words of the arrested prophet Gob: c’mon!

We can do better, and I would argue that if we did have a fundamentally better appreciation of the critical time in our nation’s evolution we’d have a more perfect society today. For those of you who know me, you know that I’m a student of John Ralston Saul, who it seems wants nothing more than to remind Canadians that we are, at our very core, a complex society which stands in stark contrast to anything to ever come out of Europe or the Americas. We are integrated, multi-cultural, bi-lingual – and above built up through patience and restraint. All of these are our virtues, and most of the necessary political philosophizing was accomplished here, in Montréal, prior to the BNA Act of 1867.

There’s reason to rejoice here, especially if you’re a federalist at heart. Our nation’s founding fathers were not ardent supporters of the British Empire – they wanted out, but they didn’t want to do so via bloodshed. They wanted to create a new nation in which European nationalism was seen for what it was – out-of-touch, out-of-step and thoroughly unacceptable in the Canadian context. The Patriote’s Rebellion was an effort to remove the British from impeding the creation of a multi-racial, multi-lingual Canada, where social and political values of brotherhood and commonwealth were viewed as superior to the status quo. Today the flag is flown as a general statement of discontent with the establishment, and many separatists have taken up as their standard. If they only knew.

If we all only knew. If only we had the balls to tell one of the most fascinating, violent and intellectually awe-inspiring stories from our great history – we could do much to remind all Canadians that the nation we have today is not in fact the mis-guided creation of an opposition political party (as Stephen harper would like you to believe), but rather a very deliberate and controversial creation which has been evolving for years, generations even.

The linguistic battles we fight today are not as a result of something from our past left unfinished, incomplete or unaddressed. We fight them simply because we forgot who we are and why we’re here. We forgot because we’re pathetically humble sometimes. See this link for a book I’m reading now on the lives of our nation’s first real leaders, LaFontaine & Baldwin. Much of the great work they did which would ultimately lead to Confederation occurred in Montréal, and yet there’s nothing at all to remind the locals and tourists of their monumental accomplishment. It’s a shame we should let weigh heavy on our hearts, as failure to adequately and appropriately recognize the significance of these men, and that key era between 1837 and 1867 when Montréal was the laboratory of Canadian democracy should be front and centre – with or without the government grant. We must endeavour to educate the public for the common good, which is incidentally precisely what these men – our nation’s grandfathers in a sense – were trying to accomplish.

It’s an inconvenient truth for the hardcore separatist inasmuch as Stephen Harper’s brainless ‘conservatives’, and it’s our saving grace.

There’s going to be a lot of ‘blood & guts’ history to appease the militarist-nationalists in this country for the next year. I can only hope when the tide goes back out we recognize that it was still a battle between empires with legitimate Canadians caught like pawns in the middle. The War of 1812 was not the birth of our country, it was simply our first instance of collective defence against naken aggression. What is infinitely more significant is the effect the war had on our founding fathers, many of whom openly rebelled against the British Empire a quarter-century later. The crucible of our creation, miraculously, lies outside any field of battle, and instead can be found in addresses, debates, letters and laws.

When will we stand to acknowledge that we were created by peace? When will we have the balls to cast off bloodshed as a necessary condition of our creation and subsequent evolution?

When will we recognize ourselves for who we really are, and accept it?

Food for thought. I’d like nothing more than to solve our nation’s never-ending crises with a simple history lesson.

The city from up on high…

19 Apr

So I’ve recently started working in an office tower Downtown. Try to guess which one based off these pics, it should be fairly obvious. All correct answers will receive infinite karma, as will incorrect answers. You can’t possibly go wrong!

A few things I’ve noticed about working on the 24th floor of this building. For one, I feel like I’ve become a lot more aware of how urban density is a very subjective, aesthetic affair once you get past the human-scale street-side. We benefit from excellent urban planning, and as such I feel that the towers are less imposing in some cases. The tallest seem less overwhelming when viewed in relation to the large open spaces they’re located next to, whereas the more intermediate towers in the ‘uptown’ area (along Boul. de Maisonneuve in was once referred to as the Place du Centre) are spaced apart more-or-less evenly, so that views are open rather than obscured (consider Toronto, which placed all their tallest buildings in the same small confined area, with few set-backs). When I turned the corner in the office on my first day, and saw the other principle skyscrapers of the urban core rising high above the more cluttered mass below, I felt like I was standing amongst giants. A very inspiring place to be indeed. It was something else to see the other giants at a more-or-less dead-on perspective.

Our city has a fair number of falcons prowling the city skies for unsuspecting rodents or pigeons. I’m okay with that – though admittedly they tend to be rather ominous looking, circling as they do, waiting to dive in for the kill. Majestic too, if majesty can be foreboding too.

I’m surprised I have this much empathy for rats and their winged equivalents.

In any event – it’s re-assuring to see our city coming together as it is, with empty lots slated for immediate development. The urban housing boom seems to have finally made its way to Montréal, and in my opinion, I sincerely feel development is proceeding far more cautiously than in other major urban centres. From the window I can watch the new residential towers rising. Hopefully, they will lead to the re-establishment of a veritable sense of community in our urban core.

That’s all for now. More soon.

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