Montreal City Weblog

Kate 11:00 on 2023-08-17 Permalink Reply  

• DeWolf 11:16 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  Quiet in a good way. It’s always busy with people, but never mobbed like Mont-Royal.

  This is really a street that should be pedestrianized year-round. There are hardly any parking spots on the street anyway and no good reason for anyone to drive there unless they’re making a delivery. At the very least, add a deviator at Laval to prevent through traffic.

• Kate 11:25 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  As I recall, the reason why Duluth is paved with those stones was a plan to make it a pedestrian mall all the way from Jeanne-Mance park to Lafontaine park. That plan was abandoned long before this blog began, and I don’t recall why. Somebody decided it was better to make Prince Arthur pedestrian, I think. (Why not both?)

• Joey 13:32 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  That idea has been revived with the latest plan directeur for Jeanne-Mance Park. I suppose it has a certain conceptual appeal, but it strikes me as a very odd thing to focus on. Nothing against making one of the east-west Plateau streets fully pedestrian for its own sake, but the logic that the two parks need to be ‘linked’ somehow, as if the connecting bit were virgin forest, is just silly. Better to figure out how to safely link JMP to Mount-Royal first, no? Or to keep the bass-heavy bluetooth speakers out of the park all weekend.

  Walking downtown this weekend on a nice sunny day, I noted that the temporary furniture installations on Duluth adjacent to JMP were hardly used – it’s not a very interesting place to sit, given all the other very nearby options. Seems to me that stretch of road could have made for a temporary (or permanent!) dog park, but the Plateau Projet leadership has adopted this knee-jerk attitude of never giving any group of constituents what they politely and legitimately ask for (i.e., not a lecture). Time for a new slogan – Project Montreal: Eat Your F’n Vegetables.

• David S 15:04 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  Duluth was always my favourite street in the city and I was lucky enough to have lived on Laval St. just to the north. I remember in 2001 overhearing Nantha (of Kitchen fame) who was late to a meeting he had with another restaurateur at the brew pub on the corner of St. Laurent. I remember it vividly because he bowed his head in shame and said softly that he was late because he had been doing blow off a stripper’s ass. What a scene we had back then!

• richard 15:33 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  @Joey From what I remember a fenced in dog park is part of the Jeanne-Mance makeover. It will be where the volleyball courts are right now and they will shift up.

• Joey 15:46 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  @richard I couldn’t remember if the plan was there or further south (which was my impression). In either case, it’s not happening anytime soon, hence the idea of a temporary park on Duluth for this summer. There were rumours of a temporary fenced-in park along Parc this summer (the dogs seem to be sort of permitted off-leash on the baseball diamond in the winter), but that obviously hasn’t materialized.

  I think the dog park should be a lot closer to the “Plateau” end of the park than the “downtown” end… I would imagine the vast majority of users would be coming from St Denis, as far north as the limits of Mile End and chunks of Outremont. Basically anywhere that’s closer than the dog parks in Laurier and Outremont. Choosing to place the dog park on the southern end of the park is probably the most inconvenient choice, though it does preserve the views of the mountain for the homeowners on Esplanade, which has always been priority number one for this gang of decision-makers. The area of badly maintained grass facing the playground would be ideal for a dog park, but I guess the borough leadership is unwilling to add more fencing to that part of the park.

• DeWolf 16:01 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  @Joey I walked past the Duluth picnic benches on Tuesday and they were all full.

  Also, a dog park is coming, but you have to understand why nobody but dog owners would been keen on having one. Even many dog owners don’t like them because they aren’t good places for a lot of dogs.

  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/smarter-living/the-dog-park-is-bad-actually.html

• Joey 16:10 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  @DeWolf all fair points (though I don’t really think that ‘take an obedience course’ is a realistic alternative to taking your dog to the dog park). I do think having a dog park accessible to this part of the city would help reduce the number of off-leash dogs in the park, though I by no means expect that behaviour to ever disappear. The Plateau is super dense and enclosed outdoor spaces are either tiny or non-existent for most residents. Having the option of an additional enclosed park where dogs can run around off-leash seems like it would do more good than harm for all involved.

• Kate 17:00 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  David S: good and entirely credible story.

• DeWolf 17:21 on 2023-08-17 Permalink

  I’m definitely not disputing the need for a dog park or equivalent off-leash area, just saying why I can understand why it hasn’t been a priority. From what I understand the closure of Duluth and its incorporation into the park will make up for the loss of publicly accessible space to a dog park. (And yeah, I know dog parks are publicly accessible, but nobody without a dog wants to hang out in one.) And I don’t think the long-standing PM objection to more fenced-off spaces in the park is unreasonable. One of the worst things about parks in many big cities in Europe and Asia is that every last inch of space is fenced off for some prescribed use.

  Personally I would love to see dogs welcome in more ordinary spaces. Every time I go to Italy I’m reminded of how dogs are seen as an ordinary part of life there, but they’re also extremely well behaved. I’m not sure if that’s compatible with North American dog culture.