Monuments (a poem)

Last Thursday, I took part in a panel discussion about art and community action, along with Emily Rose Michaud, the artist behind the Roerich Garden in the abandoned CP rail lot in Mile End and Felix Rebolledo a member of the Committee for the Sustianable Redevelopment of Griffintown.

For this artsy occasion, I dug out a poem that I wrote a few years back, one of my first attempts to put my thoughts about the city into words. This was right around the time when Warsaw’s was replaced by Pharmaprix, and everyone was freaking out that Montreal was forsaking its history, and forgetting that the city – especially vibrant parts like the Main – has always been in a state of constant flux. (I think the City and many of its citizens are still trying hard to strike a balance between preserving our sense of Place without wallowing in the past.)

Anyways, if you are into a bit of poetic musing, read on…

Photo: graffiti along the Lachine canal presents a different point of view: “There is no use looking back.”

Monuments

You know what I really miss?  Movies for $2.50 at the Palace

I spent 8 months on the road last year but I wasn’t homesick til I got back to Montreal. I came home to Saint-Laurent bars, renamed, and repainted; to army-surplus turned American Apparel. And now pharmacies and condos are tearin’ up this town like rich kids from Boston getting wasted at 18.

This city I swear, I said, it just ain’t what it used to be…

It turns out that I’m a conservative after-all. And I realize that this argument has a fundamental flaw – I’m hardly the authority on Montreal authenticity – I’m nostalgic for what? For 1999?  I mean, you can’t change, and you certainly can’t fight progress. For all I know, this stuff is just catering to the masses.

So I need to ask you guys, seriously, am I the only one who misses movies at the Palace?
Do any of you feel comforted by the Pharmaprix sign glowing on The Main like a two-ton neon night-light?

Every day it seems throws up another concrete storey. On Sherbrooke street and Simpson (which is 1 block east of Guy) there is a church that burnt down in the early ’80s. There’ll be 13 floors of condos going up there this spring, so if you’ve got a chance, if you’re down that way, you could crawl in through the window and check out the old stone frame. You see, I try to do my sightseeing while it’s still technically trespassing, before they can nail me with a B ‘n E, because one day soon that corner will be très exclusif.

The best first date I ever had was in an abandoned warehouse in Pointe-St-Charles. But at this rate the only place left to explore will be the recently re-branded local hipster bar. And I think there’s something to be said for the cracks between the buildings, a space within the city to tempt imagination.

Where you grew up was there a sliver of forest down by the train tracks where you used to build a fortress?
When we lose our no-man’s land, I fear we’re losing common ground. Because what’s branded “public space” rarely inspires or empowers.

And I’ve got a soft spot for the clapboard duplex in Saint-Henri, tangled in the tentacles of the Turcot interchange, caught the glow of a billboard for Le Vieux Port de Montreal.  “On y retourne toujours,” the advertising says.

Which is funny, ‘cause when I was a little girl, my father took me to the Flea Market on pier 16, for used books, and china dolls and those tacky bracelets that glow in the dark. I went back with my high school friends but found only a labyrinth. And we were drawn instead like delinquent moths to the neon Molson brewery sign, and clambered through a piss-and-concrete park, just south of Viger street this must’ve been…Needless to say, I never found the place again.

Certain landmarks I thought I’d just misplaced are gone and certain memories are homeless now.
Like wooden jungle gyms and tire swings – Has your childhood playground been spared?
And speaking of jungle gyms, do you miss the Parc-Pine interchange?

Nah, I guess not everything should be immortalized. But still, you’ve got to recognize these unofficial monuments of Montreal:

The roof-top milk bottle in Little Burgundy,
the tiny violin shop on Saint-Urbain street
The fake airplane beacon on Place Ville Marie
Cosmos, Five Roses, and Serveuses Très, Très sexy

Tams, of course, and that one dumb night at Peel Pub
The conversations sharpied in the bathroom stalls at Cock n Bulls
The 80 bus and the wind tunnel in the metro door
Jacques Cartier’s iron lace, Mount Royal’s slumping shoulder

There’s gotta be others and some day there’ll be more –
if you’ve got one in mind, you could take me there…
Because I’m realizing that what breaks my heart
Is when I take it for granted that I know Montreal
And then find myself forlorn on familiar streets
Searching, nostalgic for the missing monuments.

Rather than letting myself be swept away
by the intrigue in the flux
But maybe that’s the mistake we always make
with the ones we truly love.

– Alanah Heffez, 2006