At the crossroads of many, often contradictory trains of thought, jostled by the accelerated pace of change in modern society, the urban environment evolves along lines that are increasingly difficult to read. In this volatile context, a renewed interest in the ‘terrain vague’ has become apparent in the last fifteen years or so. Post-industrial urbanization [...]
“Pour savoir où l’on va, il faut savoir d’où l’on vient”… Alors, quel est donc l’histoire du terrain aujourd’hui occupé par le jardin, longtemps rattachée à celle du Canadian Pacific ?
It’s the story, the biography of the field beneath my feet…English settlers imposed their acres on a land that before they arrived had flowed from sea to sea, joyfully free of measurement. (…) The acre’s residents; plants, trees and animals are familiar miracles but while their story unfolds above ground, there is another running concurrently, [...]
No piece of land knows which flag it is flying or the nation that flag represents. Putting name flags on soil is a matter of convenience, so we can find one another, and state where we are from. Place names, sprayed on maps, street corners and garden gates, like graffiti, lets history know who has [...]
Les voisins du Roerich: le Carmel de Montréal. Son histoire, son avènement au Canada, à Montréal et ce qu’il est devenu aujourd’hui.
Le terrain vague est un espace offert aux appropriations créatives spontanées et aux pratiques informelles qui trouvent difficilement leur place dans des espaces publics de plus en plus assujettis à la logique du commerce, le terrain vague est ici le lieu propice à l’émergence d’une certaine résistance, un espace potentiellement ouvert à des modalités alternatives de vivre la ville.
This field hasn’t changed much in the nearly 150 years since it was hemmed in by the human activity surrounding it. It may have been razed to the ground repeatedly in that time – to store train cars or materials on it, to park cars on it, to gather wood for bonfires or stoves or [...]
The first railway in Canada opened in 1836 as a portage between the St Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers. By 1859, when the remarkable Victoria Bridge spanned the St Lawrence, the Grand Trunk Railway ran all the way from Portland, Maine on the Atlantic coast, through Sherbrooke to Montreal, and westward to Toronto, Sarnia, and Chicago. [...]
The fact that such a large uncultivated open field exists in the middle of the city is due to the presence of the railroad. The QMO&O Railway was built in 1876, on the same right of way that Canadian Pacific occupies today. The nearby Mile End train station was an important presence from 1878 up to the 1930s.
Représentantes par excellence des ordres contemplatifs féminins, les Carmélites incarnent pour Montréal une grande tradition occidentale, l’une des rares attaches faisant le lien entre les siècles du Moyen Âge et le nôtre.
Chapter: 3/ the ecology of place: histoire, esprit