Cornices of Mile End by zadcat on Flickr.
a cute photo-essay of Montréal’s various cornices (this set taken in Mile End)
lol somehow I’m not surprised that at one point Montréal was so proud of the Turcot Interchange that they put it on a fucking postcard
Montréal does a lot of stupid shit (but not as much stupid shit as Toronto!). So I was excited when I learned last year that they were planning on redeveloping the riverfront. It strikes me as a bit ridiculous that Montréal is an island, and the downtown was formed due to its proximity to a major river, yet you can live here permanently with basically no indication that you’re anywhere near water.
Unfortunately, the video of this plan sort of indicates that this project is still pretty stupid. Rather than just convert all of the abandoned industrial buildings and wasted space into grass and public space, they’re erecting MORE buildings to further obstruct the river, and also making a fake beach. I have no problem with the design of the beach itself, but it’s such a ridiculously small space that there’s really no purpose for it (not to mention the parking lot built for all the suburbanites to access the beach is bigger than the actual beach).
Spring comes into Québec from the west. It is the warm Japan Current that brings the change of season to the east coast of Canada, and then the West Wind picks it up. It comes across the prairies in the breath of the Chinook, waking up the grain and caves of bears. It flows over Ontario like a dream of legislation, and it sneaks into Québec, into our villages, between our birch trees. In Montréal the cafés, like a bed of tulip bulbs, sprout from their cellars in a display of awnings and chairs. In Montréal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, “The winter has not killed us again!
