City relaunches Parc de l’Espoir
Tuesday the city relaunched Parc de l’Espoir in the Village, dedicated to the memory of people lost to AIDS. If I remember right, this park was originally started when local folks claimed an empty lot as a memorial. Now it’s been spruced up. La Presse’s item is mostly photos and captions, and the Gazette has a video report. To be honest, it looks like a lot of paving stone and a minimal amount of greenery. CTV quotes a community member as saying “this is not a park, this is a cenotaph.”
DeWolf 09:33 on 2021-08-18 Permalink
I don’t think the cenotaph remark is a comment on the design. I passed by a few weeks before it was finished and it’s a big improvement over what was there before. The old plaza was a cramped given how many people were always sitting around, and it had a bit of a cloistered feel that made it uninviting to outsiders. This new design takes over the adjacent street and is more open to Ste-Catherine. For a high-traffic location like that, I think the amount of hard paving is appropriate. Looking at Street View images of the old plaza, it actually seems like quite a few new trees were added.
Kate 09:47 on 2021-08-18 Permalink
Nor did I – sorry that the order of my post implied the speaker was making a negative criticism. But the cited person does make the point that it’s more a memorial than a park.