Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:17 on 2021-06-13 Permalink Reply  

• Raymond Lutz 09:04 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  Je me rappelle cette douce soirée d’été où j’ai tranquillement traversé le boisé au pied de la montagne avec Ariane et Charles-Antoine pour aller leur présenter leur nouveau petit frère Gabriel (l’arrière du Royal Vic donnant directement sur le parc). C’était un moment magique, surréaliste. La cohue du boulevard, le calme de la forêt, la singularité de l’instant ont forgé un des plus forts souvenirs des mes années à Montréal.

• Uatu 09:21 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  @raymond: seriuesement. I really miss working at the old Vic. It truly was an oasis in the middle of town. The only other place that compares is the old marianopolis site. At least the public will still access the Vic site afterwards

• Kate 12:10 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  That’s a nice vignette, Raymond Lutz.

  I never worked at the Vic, but for a time I was a test subject at their Vision Lab. I discovered the back gate described in the article, where you could cross one of the parking lots and slip through into Mount Royal park. It was a nice walk after a couple of hours doing visual testing in a dark lab.

• Jack 14:06 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  PQ not happy !
  https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-06-10/reamenagement-du-royal-victoria/les-pequistes-accusent-la-caq-de-faire-de-mcgill-une-universite-hegemonique.php

• Kate 14:28 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  Jack, PQ never happy! But thanks for the link, I’d missed that.

• Raymond Lutz 14:59 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  Merci pour le compliment, Kate. Speaking of Marianopolis site, I remember mourning the destruction of a magnificent small woodland Messieurs de Saint-Sulpice ignominiously sold for profit to residential developers. Such beautiful mature trees… (for a few sport classes I played soccer at their foot while attending Collège de Montréal). Religious real estate should the facto become public spaces when unused by their community. It was behind the Atwater Club, when Atwater turns right going uphill. MAISON D’ÉTUDE? Seriously?

• Dhomas 15:03 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  I’m pretty sure the CAQ don’t really WANT to give part of the Vic to McGill. But they also don’t want to lose these kinds of heritage buildings/sites. Not to mention there might be legal ramifications if the buildings are used for something other than the public good (healing in particular): “Stephen and Smith attached one caveat to their generous contribution to the City of Montreal: the hospital’s land and its buildings must only ever be used for healing”. Isn’t the land used as part of some emphyteutic lease (might need to fact check that).
  That said, no other party came forward to refurbish/reuse the buildings, IIRC. They were too old and too difficult to be repurposed, so the only other option would have been demolition. Hopefully, McGill will be able to do something good with it.

• Uatu 18:01 on 2021-06-13 Permalink

  I really hope it stays within McGill and is used for medical reasons and I don’t know why the pq is pissed. The building is already flanked by the neuro on the eastern side and the Allen on the west. It only makes sense to keep it as an extension of the university in some sort of medical capacity

• david100 01:33 on 2021-06-14 Permalink

  Bérubé holds up a piece of paper for all to see, it’s all folded and beat up, lol.

  We all know that he’s wrong about everything he said, but just to underline some especially stupid things there:

  (1) this is not a gift, let alone a gift of $1 billion;
  (2) this land would not be worth $1 billion if you cleared it and sold it with the right to build wall-to-wall towers, and it’s not worth $1 billion in with these buildings in their dilapidated state;
  (3) no other entity even proposed any other use for the area, no other entity afford to keep it used as intended, no other entity is willing to take on the role of caretaker of these patrimonial structures, no other entity would do it so well;
  (4) McGill is not the richest university in Canada (U of T’s endowment if 2x greater, and real estate is 10x more valuable; and
  (5) the return on investment to the people of Quebec will be higher with these structures in McGill’s hands than in any other hands.

  Most people (including most McGill students) thought those buildings were McGill buildings anyway.

• GC 08:27 on 2021-06-14 Permalink

  “c’est McGill, l’université la plus riche au Canada” seems like something La Presse should fact check, if they want me to take them seriously.

• Joey 09:19 on 2021-06-14 Permalink

  While UofT and UBC, IIRC, have larger endowments, if you control for size, the picture changes somewhat. McGill has considerably fewer students, meaning its endowment-per-full-time-equivalent figure is highest in Canada. Anyway, it’s probably incorrect to say it’s the “richest university in Canada,” but you could at least make an argument in its favour. Remember that the currency of academia is prestige, and McGill has that in spades… of course comparing intangibles is a fool’s errand…

  McGill is probably the best instituion in the province to make good use of these buildings, but my memory from my time there was that the school community’s interest in Vic site was kind of lukewarm. I think a lot of professors weren’t keen on walking up the hill, to be honest. At least McGill has a vision for the site and it does apparently have a “space deficit,” so why not? If “bulldoze all the buildings and plant trees” is off the table (imagine the reaction from the heritage crowd), “expand our world-class university” seems OK to me. Of course McGill will need considerably more recurring funding to operate the buildings, so the devil will be in the details. I don’t think anyone should expect McGill to expand its enrolment to occupy the new site, meaning additional funding will have to come outside the “per-student” model that Quebec uses to fund university teaching.

• Robert H 16:44 on 2021-06-14 Permalink

  ‘selon Taïka Baillargeon, «parce qu’il y avait de grands jardins, c’était très vert, il n’y avait pas tous ces stationnements qu’on voit aujourd’hui. C’était très dans le style écossais de l’époque, c’était les grands châteaux en montagne, très romantiques, avec beaucoup d’arbres. Donc il y avait ce visuel-là, puis on retourne un peu à ça.»

  Ça devrait être le but, de rétablir la verdure et la mise en valeur du bâtiment. Dans les années quatre-vingt, j’ai passe un semestre d’été à vivre dans un des dortoirs adjacent. Je me rappelle encore la marche sur la pente dessous l’arche de pierre en allant à ma chambre. J’ai toujours pensé que le “Royal Vic” etait l’un des plus beaux immeubles de la ville et que l’endroit au flanc de la montagne etait magique.