Lisée on Montreal
J-F Lisée writes a paean to Montreal and doesn’t use the word anglais even once. Has Lisée made a late discovery of E?
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DeWolf 11:28 on 2022-07-09 Permalink
Well that was certainly nice. Thoughtful and observant, pretty much the opposite of the rote anti-Montreal screeds the QMI hacks churn out on a regular basis.
He makes a point of noting how much greener, more human and more liveable the city has become since he moved here in the 70s. When I look at old photos of Montreal in those Facebook groups, I see a place that was culturally very interesting but also a real dump. The Plateau in the 70s looked sad, unloved and run down.
// Je ne comprends pas, chère métropole, l’aveuglement de ceux qui n’ont d’yeux que pour telle ruelle délabrée, tel graffiti, tel amas de saletés accumulé en fin d’hiver. Ne voient-ils pas le nombre croissant de ruelles vertes ? La multiplication des espaces de jardins communautaires ? Les taxis qui nous disent désormais « Bonjour ! » ? //
Robert H 18:46 on 2022-07-10 Permalink
DeWolf, I completely agree. I first came to Montreal in the 1980s and it looks much better now than it did then. I think of that as an objective statement. As M. Lisée said:
«Je puis donc témoigner que vous vieillissez bien. Je viens du temps où vous ressembliez à une ville européenne au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre tant les stationnements et les terrains vagues en plein centre-ville donnaient l’impression que vous vous releviez d’une série de bombardements. J’ai pu constater combien, de décennie en décennie, vous avez colmaté ces brèches, étendu votre tissu urbain, pris votre place.»
I’ll also add it looked like so many North American cities that suffered the scorched-earth urban renewal of the 1950s and 60s. Canadian cities at least avoided the poisonous racial animosities that led in the United States to white flight and the abandonment of central cities by the middle class. Of course, one could always
get wistful about what a bargain The Plateau used to be, but that’s another matter. Montreal, orange cones, potholes and all has been on the aesthetic upgrade for the past few decades and I hope it continues. The question now is, can we have a beautiful city and a just city?