Tag Archives: Québec Politics

A modest proposal, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Political commentary, Urban Redevelopment, What were they thinking?, Worth reconsidering

If only I had a machine to rage against… {MUHC Superhospital WTF!}

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Conceptual image of the planned MUHC Superhospital - gladly, not the work of the author

So today I was treated to a lecture by a McGill architecture prof on the history of Montréal hospitals, with a focus on the Royal Victoria Hospital as an interesting perspective on local social history. Among several key themes, the idea of a personal and societal connexion to a particular hospital arose, with the Vic serving as an even better case study on some of the cultural and ethical considerations to make when proposing radical modernization of institutions. As we ought to know, the Vic, along with the Montreal Children’s, a sizable chunk of the General and the Montreal Chest Institute will all be folded into the new MUHC Superhospital currently being excavated at the site of the former Glen Yard, near Vendome Métro.

If you’ve been reading the news for the last twenty years, you no doubt have a vague, intrinsically hostile reaction to the mere mention of the new compound word superhospital; it’s a seemingly endless quagmire of incompetence, delays and, compounding it all, that eerie sixth-sense tingling at the back of your spine nagging as to its fundamental necessity. Unfortunately for those of us not yet completely numbed to the inertia of the Québec government (in any form), we’ve been left to go back and look over the evidence, and its pretty damning. Worse still is that the superhospital project has finally broken ground – literally. They’re excavating about five floors worth of highly contaminated soil to eventually build a 2,500 car capacity parking garage – right at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in the entire country. Atop this vehicular birdhouse will sit the hospital digitally rendered above; easily twenty years behind schedule, both new superhospitals have entered the preliminary stages of construction – that is to say, the demolition, excavation component. I encourage all of you to go see the mesmerizing sight of roughly ten construction towers looming over a massive floodlit pit – it’s truly breath-taking. The problem here is that the MUHC Superhospital is gearing up to be yet another white elephant in a city which has too many as is. Given that the buildings are in such an early stage of development, I think a new round of public debate needs to occur to make sure this project doesn’t become a complete disaster.

Here’s a short list of what’s going wrong. We’ve already covered the toxic soil – a result of the site’s former occupation as a freight railyard, pictured here:

The Glen Yard in the 1960s, looking east-northeast (I think)

And the fact that it’s located in the worst possible location, adjacent to the Turcot Interchange – which is due for a major renovation. And that they still haven’t factored in connecting this damned hospital to the Vendome Intermodal station (which is beyond incompetence – it seems clear to me that this omission was on purpose so that a contractor could benefit from an inflated price (estimated at $30 million to build a tunnel under the railway).

So on top of these scandals, and that the project is retarded to the tune of twenty years, it also won’t be able to accommodate the number of beds available in the hospitals it will replace – about 800 for the new hospital compared with about 1200 spread out through the current MUHC system. Read all about that here.

And then there are the common sense issues, like why anyone would build one big hospital when the city and province have already had considerable problems containing hospital based disease, such as C. difficile. Then there are the practical considerations: communities require hospitals, and hospitals build and maintain communities. Institutional memory and public reverence for institutions build character and solidify the social solidarity. It builds community consciousness and civic proprietorship. Building a white elephant superhospital, which is what this plan is shaping up to be, will not only result in cost overruns and traffic jams, it may also result in the hospital’s public losing faith in the institution. I don’t think Montréal Anglophones have much left to lose faith in – can we afford to lose important hospitals for the sake of modernization and efficiency?

That last point is another bone of contention. While the argument that a superhospital will save money because expensive equipment can be shared, the idea that the superhospital will be in any architectural or societal fashion ‘modern’ is blatantly false. This hospital was designed and conceived of in the 1980s. And it has been such an ordeal just to get to the point of breaking ground no one has given much thought to finding a more suitable location (ideally, closer to the city and university it is affiliated with and away from a traffic logjam) or what impact the hospital closings may have on the population it is intended to serve.

Among the hospitals slated for closing, the Royal Victoria Hospital is perhaps the most iconic and established amongst Montreal’s anglophone population; a building with far too many memories to be demolished. It has been expanded several times since it opened in 1893, and carries a caveat attached to the donated land and buildings – they can only ever be used for education and healing. A very old woman in Westmount is committed to making sure the wishes of Lord Strathcona & Mount Royal and Lord Mount Stephen are carried out, if it’s the last thing she ever does.

There has been speculation that the Vic may simply be absorbed into McGill University, which could greatly expand its medical school and potentially convert some buildings into student dormitories – an almost ideal evolution of the built environment at the corner of Pine and University.

But what of the Children’s?

If there was ever a hospital population to be segregated from the general population, it is undeniably children. Sick kids require a special environment, one ideally sealed from adult diseases, pain and suffering. A children’s hospital ought to foster the notion of recuperation, rehabilitation and optimism. I always thought the pediatric hospital and the birthing hospital should be in the same place – I can think of no other kind of hospital where the demand for a miracle be as high as in a children’s hospital, and can think of no better provider of miracles than a maternity ward. Our Children’s should be kept where it is – as it stands now it is an anchor of the Atwater/Shaughnessy Village area, and that area has already suffered the loss of the Reddy Women’s Hospital some years ago.

As for the General, it is unclear as to exactly what will happen here; since it will remain a level-1 trauma center and has a significant amount of space, it seems likely that it will be used to handle ‘overflow’, though how this will work is unclear to me. At the end of the day, the MUHC Superhospital is looking more and more like a highly specialized jack-of-all-trades teaching hospital. High specialization. Concentration. Education. Those are a lot of hats to wear simultaneously, and like anything else that tries to hard to be too many things to too many people, it will likely fail at its intended purpose. The Superhospital is probably going to be looked on as a super mistake, and the taxpayers will be left with a supersized bill. Once the project reaches the state of public derision and ridicule, much like the Olympic Stadium or Mirabel International, it will be seen pessimistically as little more than yet another recent failure of a once proud and successful people. Can we afford such malaise?

History and Culture, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, What were they thinking?

The Ghettoization of Franco-Québecois Culture

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Pauline doing her best Mussolini impression - clearly not the work of the author

If Pauline Marois truly believes she is protecting and promoting Franco-Québecois culture by proposing an initiative to force Francophone and Allophone students into French-language CEGEPs, than it necessarily implies that she also believes the future of Québec does not go further than our geographic borders, and that our youth need not be trained for the Global Village already in the works. In sum, through this proposed extension of Bill 101, Ms. Marois is setting us up to take a fall, one which will undoubtedly sever our people from fully participating in global initiatives, and will further result in a servile and dependent people. If this is her idea of increasing the individual sovereignty of the people of Québec, than we should prepare ourselves for the bondage-by-fear characteristic of the Duplessis Era. When it comes time for an election in this province, it will be a choice between an embattled neo-Liberal party and one who would have you believe that limiting the education choices of adults is a step towards national independence. That kind of thinking is reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s illogical gaffes and the Tea Party’s fear-based rhetoric than it is of cold, sober Canadian political philosophy. Let’s not go down that road of no return that has called like a Siren to so many befuddled Americans. Make no mistake – Pauline Marois is the bottom of the barrel, and no self-respecting, sovereign Québecois should ever want her to lead this province. It would be disastrous; here’s why.

Nationalism is dead. Pan-Nationalism is the future.

Nationalism has shown its dark side time and time again, a leading cause of world conflict for most of the twentieth century. Think of the Balkans in the 1990s; think of Italy’s mad dash for colonies in the 1930s; I hate to use this point as it’s cliché, but we can’t escape the reality that Nationalism drove the Nazi movement – indeed every fascist movement – and Nationalism can be found as a root cause of every genocide. So why do we, the sovereign people of Québec, pay any attention to a political party which uses Nationalism as its ideological foundation?

The people of Québec are part of a larger Franco-Canadian nation, but we are Pan-National by nature. Neither Québec nor Canada has ever been a homogeneous society – even as far back as our colonial period, French settlers, Canadiens and many Aboriginal nations shared our land, inter-married, learned each others ways, customs and languages. If the Voyageurs had not been accepted into Aboriginal nations and families, we never would have prospered, never would have survived. The ‘purest’ Pur-Laine Québecois has plenty of Aboriginal and Irish in them – our cultural reality is manifestly plural. The foundation of our current inter-cultural society can find its ideological base in the necessities of our people’s colonial experience. We became a new kind of people, one ideally suited for the centuries to come – a people in which adaptation, cosmopolitanism and multi-lingualism were necessary keys to survival.

The world is getting smaller every day. In order to survive and prosper in the decades to come, we, the people of Québec, will have to decide whether we have the collective will to participate in a global economy, a global network of governments, and all the global initiatives required to end war, hunger, disease and the destruction of our global environment. As communications and transportation networks develop, we find ourselves sharing the planet in a manner akin to a large village – and in the process, we are becoming more and more aware that we must collaborate and cooperate in order to achieve trans-national and trans-cultural goals. In essence, we are moving towards an increasingly inter-cultural world, and the future will belong to the people most capable of living a global existence

So when the leader of the Province’s once-respected sovereignist party proposes to limit the education opportunities of the people, of the youth in particular, this same leader is cutting us off from the world, and this will harm us gravely. Pauline Marois is proposing the ghettoization of Franco-Québecois culture, and by doing so seeks to reverse the trend set during the Quiet Revolution. Ms. Marois thinks the Quiet Revolution is over, passé. It isn’t, it is the heart and soul of Québec’s progressive movement. By attempting to extend Bill 101 into the CEGEPs, she is attempting to limit education opportunities for all communities, while further limiting the natural trend towards multi-lingualism in post-secondary education. What’s worse is the fact that Anglophone CEGEPs would have their funding cut in addition to restricted enrollment, while Francophone and Allophone students would go to unilingual CEGEPs and universities instead of the already multi-lingual ‘Anglophone’ institutions.

A better idea would be to ensure all the students of Québec are taught both English and French equally at the primary, secondary and CEGEP levels, so as to guarantee a fully bilingual workforce. This is not something from the pages of futurist science fiction; it could be accomplished easily within a couple generations, yet we lack the will to be daring, creative. This is manifest in the policies of Ms. Marois, who would rather own a little North American fiefdom, with the people of Québec as her dependent subjects, than realize our nation’s full potential. In her rhetoric, she prepares her followers not to lead, but to be held captive by fear – of the other, the Anglophone, of Canada, of the immigrant who learns both English and French. For all intents and purposes, she may as well sell you fear of the British Empire, of Loyalists or the Orange Order. She wants to induce a siege mentality in this province, despite the fact that there is no threat to the French language, culture or society. Each year there are more of us, and each year more immigrants learn French and adapt to our ways – more often of their own volition than through force and coercion.

If our dearly bewildered opposition leader is given carte-blanche, she will undeniably erase the progress made during the Quiet Revolution. She will provoke Québecois of all language and cultural groups to leave the province for better opportunities elsewhere, force a referendum no one wants, and jeopardize our economic stability. But what is worse is that she will turn this province into a ghetto, and our people will suffer the indignity of a ghetto mentality. Such an indignity will leave an indelible mark, and we will perish as a community, as a society, because of it.

Political commentary, Québec sovereignty

Revisiting a dark past

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Soldiers stand guard in front of the Hotel-de-Ville de Montréal, October 1970

Forty years ago Montrealers were still reeling from the October Crisis, an unfortunate event in our city’s history. A terrorist organization, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) wrapped up a seven year bombing and armed-robbery spree with two kidnappings and a murder. The response was swift and exacting – partial martial law was declared in Montréal, Ottawa and Québec City, the operations of the Government of Québec were moved to a ‘bunker’ of sorts in downtown Montréal, and thousands of federal troops were deployed to guard important buildings, set up checkpoints, and assist the Montréal Police (SPVM) and the Sureté du Québec (SQ). The murder of Québec cabinet-minister Pierre Laporte would spell the end for the FLQ, as the military and security forces cracked down on the terrorist organization and its suspected sympathizers. Hundreds were arrested and detained for (on the most part) a few days. The right to freedom of assembly was never denied, even though thousands of FLQ sympathizers applauded the news that Laporte had been killed. Makes me think that those who were arrested probably had more than a fleeting sense of sympathy for the FLQ.

Regardless, on the 16th of October, the Québecois nationalist organization, the Societé-St-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB) unveiled a new monument dedicated to those who were temporarily imprisoned during the Crisis for alleged terrorist sympathies. None of these people were incarcerated for very long, they were not treated as typical prisoners, and certainly, none of them were tortured or abused in any real sense. While unfortunate, it was a necessary evil to wipe out our very own home-grown terrorist network. For a list of FLQ activities during the 1963-1970 period, check out this link and judge for yourself whether you think the actions of the federal and provincial governments were out of line.

Political commentary, Québec sovereignty

Je me souviens, I’ll always remember quite well…

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Former Québec Premier Jacques Parizeau

On October 29th, our enlightened former Premier, Jacques Parizeau, indicated he now regrets having stepped down as leader of the Parti Québecois on the night of October 30th 1995, moments after the separatist defeat during the 1995 Referendum. Parizeau will forever be remembered for his mind-boggling assertion that money and ethnic votes somehow won the No side a victory, that fateful day some fifteen years ago.

Personally, I wished he would have stayed on. In much the same way as an anarchist voting Republican to ‘get the ball rolling’. Parizeau is one of those excellent examples of a politician who will gladly make an ass of himself to appeal to those who would view him as bumbling, but ultimately good-natured. Think proto-Sarah Palin.

Parizeau is concerned with the seeming lack of interest at the top of the current PQ – Pauline Marois seems to be falling in-line with PQ policy to wait for ‘winning conditions’, a policy developed by former Premier and now disgruntled sovereignist Lucien Bouchard, who succeeded Parizeau in 1996. Since then, other PQ leaders (you’ll notice they don’t stick around too long) have played the rhetoric card when advantageous, but have ultimately stayed away from the issue. In effect, this closely followed the policy of René Lévesque, who lost considerable public support in the 5 years after the 1980 Referendum for not pursuing Québec independence. Nowadays, with a very unpopular Prime Minister running the country, pro-Independence rhetoric has begun to show its ugly head once more, and an old man is making it known he thinks we’d be in better shape if only he hadn’t acted so hastily and removed himself from office.

Handy hindsight, always 20-20 and generally self-serving.

Personally, I’ll always remember this train-wreck of a politician for his infamous, and possibly alcohol-fueled accusation that independence had been snatched away by fat-cat bankers and fast-tracked immigrants. If Lenin was a separatist, I’m certain he’d have made the same argument, its so convenient.