Visiting the St. Pierre River

An article in the Montreal Gazette (Friday, 19 November 2021), "City to Bury St-Pierre River on court order", got me to finally visit what is left of the St. Pierre River, and I am glad that I did. I've been interested in the St. Pierre River for several years, but as for visiting this last surviving section of the river, it never happened until the other day. My only experience of the river was when walking through the underpass on Westminister Avenue just above Cote St-Luc Road, you can hear the sound of the river as it runs through underground pipes. Today, located in Meadowbrook Golf Course, you can see the only part of the St. Pierre River still above ground, and this will soon be buried. The Gazette article says that the river is polluted, so surrounding trees should be cut down, and the river should be buried, not exactly an approach that fits into our present age of conservation and climate change. In fact, the more I think about it the more ridiculous it becomes, what ever happened to cleaning up the source of the pollution. 

Other cities have buried their at-the-time inconveniently located rivers and some of these cities are working at recovering--better to say, "uncovering"--these rivers. Here we are making sure whatever is left of the river is buried. Sometimes I think of how different Montreal would be had the St. Pierre River not have been buried. Imagine owning a house in the city with a creek running by in the back yard; okay, maybe you wouldn't like this but this is something some of us would love to have. A friend in Baltimore grew up with the Herring Run River across the street from where he lived and where lived later in life. Birds, wild life, even deer could be seen going to the river, it's a green space for animals and people, a sign that some little bit of nature still exists. But it is not to be here. 

Personally, I think this court order only suits developers who have big plans to build on the site, no doubt just what we need, more condos. I am told that the site is protected but, as with most things, I am a skeptic. Here are photographs I took of the St. Pierre River the other day.

Just above the culvert pipe in this photo is the Toe Blake Park; the culvert pipe is for water from the buried
St. Pierre River but it also contains contaminants from local residences. This contamination is the reason given
for burying the river after the area has been decontaminated. The extent of this pollution is unknown to me.

Hi Bob, Yes, I am back out walking

Yes, I am back out walking, I aim for a daily walk, it is my favourite exercise. Here we are again at the corner of Cote St. Luc Road and Robert Burns Avenue, a property that continues to deteriorate. I suppose whoever owns this property is waiting for a buyer, or demolition and building permits, or architectural plans. In the meantime we have a building in which the electricity has been cut off and with the changing seasons the whole thing is in a state of decline and deterioration. Last week I saw a hawk sitting on one of the railings in the photograph below. Nature is returning to the Covid cities we inhabit. But nothing stands for long in the way of making money so these buildings must not only go, new buildings (condos, most likely) will be built here. 

 

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course at the end of August, 2021

It isn't a long walk to Meadowbrook Golf Course but it's still worth walking; however, it is a different walk than it was just a few years ago since they cut down the trees along the road. My motto is (and the motto of a lot of other people), "if it's not broken, don't fix it." But some people have to change things for the sake of changing them and they spoil it for the rest of us. I expect, one of these days, it will be announced that condos and townhouses will be built on the golf course, I hope not, but I am not optimistic. . . Consider the following, this is a huge tract of land owned by a corporation that isn't sentimental and is out to make money; the road to this land has been cleared of trees so heavy equipment can easily travel to the future work site; and, finally, new hydro power lines have been installed delivering the electricity necessary to service the possible new development. As I said, I am not optimistic but I do support this land being preserved as it is in perpetuity. Money, in selling houses and increased tax revenue, wins out over a poorly paved road and a second rate golf course, especially in a city where there is lots of money to be made from building and selling condos and houses; meanwhile, there is a group of dedicated people who may be able to stop the development of this last large green space in this part of the city and we need them to succeed. .

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course on 26 August 2021

The illusion of progress and Vincelli`s Garden Centre in late August 2021

Every time I drive passed the former Vincelli`s Garden Centre I expect to see the place leveled and construction of almost three hundred condos begun. When I was young I was always looking for some nature in the city, an empty lot, the lanes in our NDG neighbourhood, the Villa Maria orchards, or riding our bikes along Norman Street and the empty fields there and then continuing on to Dorval Shopping Centre. That is all finished, Norman Street is all construction-trucking-delivery firms, the highway to the shopping centre is now many lanes wide and people drive like devils on it, no place for some kid on his bicycle. This is change, it isn`t progress. Being in nature, even an empty lot in the city, is good for children; every empty lot having a new condo built on it isn`t progress, it`s become uncontrolled development. I think by now we have seen through the illusion of progress, except perhaps in medical science; most progress is change for its own sake. And usually there is the profit motive in this, not that there is anything wrong with people making money--improving their family`s fortune, owning a nice home, improving themselves--but there are always consequences to what people do, and making money for its own sake can become greed. An empty lot, some country-like environment, is good for children, they can escape the relentless presence of modern life which is getting relentlessly omnipresent, it is also bad for our children`s health, and diminishes any vision or spiritual inclination that children may have been born with. Seeing Canada geese flying overhead, Monarch butterflies in the garden, honey bees, earth worms, urban wild life, imagination and creativity, dreams and day dreams, solitude, playing with other children, this is a connection with nature and getting in touch with something greater than ourselves, even with the divine spark in each of us. But the current housing boom is upon us, houses that families could afford just five years ago are now double the price to buy them and are being bought up by banks, foreigners, and entrepreneurs out to renovate and flip the property for profit. So, some children are being deprived of both using their imagination and a decent and safe place in which to live. These condos that will be constructed on the old Vincelli`s Garden Centre site won`t be cheap and they won`t be four bedroom condos for families, they will be built to maximize profit, probably one or two bedrooms for old people who are downsizing from their family home. It is not a positive future ahead of us as we get deeper into this century, some of us see it as dystopian. 

These photographs of Vincelli's Garden Centre taken in late August 2021,

The Demise of Vincelli's Garden Center

I guess it was inevitable, more condos being built, now on the site of the former Vincelli's Garden Center. Vincelli's will be missed by many people, by regular customers who love gardening and others. News of the closure was in an issue of The Suburban last fall, it was a bit silly saying that the new 250plus unit building would act as a noise barrier for other residences in the area... well, do you want to live in a place beside acres of railway tracks that is advertised as a noise barrier for other people? I can hear trains at night all the way over here on Belmore Avenue between Chester and Cote St-Luc Road, steel wheels on steel tracks. Even I, who love railways, would not want to live a few feet from the source of this noise. And the new condo is out in the middle of proverbial nowhere, not a lot of parking, not many buses, a small strip mall and a daycare across the street, at the end of Westminster Avenue, beside an increasingly noisy rail yard, and now an influx of at least 500 people into the area. I would not be happy about this new condo if I were a resident of that area. 

To the Vincelli family, thank you for a hundred years of service to the community. You sold the best plants, including our ginkgo tree that is flourishing on our front lawn where you planted it about ten or eleven years ago. We love that tree. Most of my perennials were purchased from your garden center and they have brought me a lot of happiness to this very day. You don't know me, I was just an anonymous customer, but I loved your garden center. 

Photos from last week.

Return to the Village Shopping Plaza

I often walk by the Village Shopping Plaza on Cote St-Luc Road, it has grown more and more derelict; next door is the now closed Robert Burns Pub. Here are photos taken about a week ago.