This post is a guest contribution by Daniel Rotsztain, a student in Urban Geography who is originally from Toronto.
My dad was born in the Mile End so I was extremely excited to show him the new life I had forged in the Plateau amongst our family roots shortly after I moved to Montreal. I imagined the joy we would share taking part in one of our favorite pastimes: conquering a city by foot. I was eager to show him the highlights of my beloved adopted neighbourhood, convinced that he’d be thoroughly impressed by the neighbourhoods’ street life and pleasant mix of peoples, parks, grocery stores, dépaneurs, homes, and cafés.
But as we walked around the Plateau and Mile End, my dad quietly announced his honest feelings: he found the neighbourhood somewhat tired and grey, treeless and barren. A neighbourhood that I and many others find to be the height of urbanity, a stimulating mix of density and community, my father simply isn’t passionate about.
I was amazed. My father too is a lover of cities, a natural born walker and appreciator of great urban spaces. But the Plateau and Mile End, through his eyes, is dramatically affected by his history and emotional connection to the neighbourhoods.Let me explain. My grandparents first arrived in Montreal from Poland after World War Two. They settled into the Jewish community already established along St Laurent Boulevard, populated by working class immigrants from Eastern Europe, a place that some considered urban slums. This is where my father was born, in an apartment on Parc Avenue just north of Bernard.
And that’s the context in which he understands the Plateau and Mile End: he does not forget that his family and immigrant community desperately wished to escape, and establish themselves in modern, newly-built quarters. His opinions were formed alongside my grandmother, who constantly expressed determination that her family move up in the world to leave behind the mess of poverty that was the Mile End in the 1950s.
Walking around the Plateau and Mile End with this in mind certainly changes the way I see the neighbourhoods. I can appreciate what my dad means when he comments on the lack of trees, dilapidation and jumbled density. With these photos, I’ve attempted to illustrate how, from a certain perspective, this is very much the case.
Grey is the dominant colour. Barren edifices face equally empty streets, power lines criss-cross the graffitied apartment buildings and tree-less sidewalks. Considering my father’s experiences, a part of the neighbourhood’s soul, its former characterization as a slum, can be easily read. But my instinct is to revert to my experience, and continue to admire the dense, eclectic mix of places and people that populate Mile End, the most positive characteristics of the neighbourhood today.
I hope my musings show how gentrification can be a somewhat tricky phenomenon. The same buildings that my grandparents and father perceive as rundown have since become extremely trendy and desirable within my father’s lifetime. We often see ‘before and after’ photos of particular places in Montreal on this blog. I hope this post has inspired a deeper consideration of those fascinating photo montages.
As time goes by and a city’s form changes, there is also a fundamental change in its character. Here we see the fluid nature of urban identity and its often fragile, always fluctuating relationship to physical form. The same city space can simultaneously evoke different reactions, connections and reverences from two people, especially when their points of reference are anchored in different histories. It is up to us to enrich our daily experiences of the city informed by the history of inevitably changing ways of urban life.
This post was inspired by Alanah Heffez’s post “How other folks see the city”
30 comments
Sadly, I agree with your father. Mile End is pretty bleak and industrial. It’s nice in summer time when the trees are in full foliage, but otherwise Mile End is a wasteland.
There is a small area of Mile End that is quite nice, but it may as well be called “Little Outremont” since it’s essentially a tiny lower-income area immediately adjacent to Outremont (Jeanne-Mance, Esplanade, Waverly).
If NDG wasn’t so far from McGill (and so close to people who creep me out) I’d move there instead since the apartments in NDG are much larger, the yards also larger, and the rent much lower.
The only reason Mile End is trendy is because it’s next to McGill and crawling with young, eager, out-of-town students.
In fact, one of the slumlords I used to rent from on the Plateau made of a point of only renting to McGill students because he knew they would pay whatever he asked for rent, wouldn’t fight his rent increases, and weren’t planning on staying in Montreal after they graduated, which ensured he could jack the rent between tenants. This landlord’s daughter actually bragged about refusing Francophone tenants because “they cause too much trouble” ie. they fight for their tenant rights.
Anyway. I like Mile End but can’t wait until I graduate and move to a city where the environment is taken seriously. I’m tired of living in such a polluted city.
I grew up in this area. I attented Bancroft school and the Baron Byng now Sun Youth. I have since moved and I come back periodically and I am shocked to see how dirty this area has become. Half of Park ave is boarded up or for rent. The gardens of many of these duplexes and triplexes are nothing short of weedsand no time and effort is given to grow beautiful flowers and keep gardens well kept as there very years ago. I too agree with your father and if it was not for Mount Royal mountain there is really not much there unless you like noise and dirt
I certainly understand your father… I moved from Vancouver and at first, with each visit back, I’d diss the whole city for being so unsophisticated and boring and its urban stock ugly with no history or even edge (aside from the downtown eastside, which was TOO edgy :). It took me a while to realize that there are nice and not-so-nice aspects in all places, and that the more I look at the nice, the more of it I see.
Some places definitely have more ugly than pretty — Guatemala City, anyone? — and most people prefer well-tended gardens to polluted industrial wasteland. But contrast makes life, and cities, more interesting, and it is for its contrasts that I particularly like Mile End.
Similarly, I also much preferred Savannah, with its faded glory and falling-apart aspect but interesting vibe and artistic student community, to Charleston, which is all pretty and tarted up and perfect and feels like a movie set.
I can see your father’s point, as living in an actual slum is most unpleasant, fond memories aside. I lived in the northeastern Plateau in the 1970s and the old municipal incinerator between the Plateau and Petite-Patrie belched black particles onto our laundry and fouled the air. That part of the Plateau was not at all trendy back then, but I had a flat that cost under $100 a month.
It is certainly understandable that with postwar prosperity, people wanted to live in more amenable neighbourhoods. Unfortunately this prosperity also bore the toxic seeds of suburban sprawl, though there were some voices even in the day who warned against car-centred development. Hence one sees more prosperous postwar areas such as TMR/VMR that do have more trees but would look just as desolate in photographs as the houses are too far apart and there are vast empty lawns. And since Daniel Rotsztain’s family are of Polish Jewish origin, one also thinks of the enclave of Côte-St-Luc, a mixture of suburban sprawl and more built-up areas, but woefully unserved by efficient public transport.
I certainly don’t like dirt or pollution but I’d die of boredom in such a place; moreover these sprawl areas may seem less polluted but are actually contributing far more to destroying the environment as households there require several cars, and other infrastructure made more expensive by the low population density.
Niomi, where are these less-polluted cities? I have lived in Toronto for a while, and they are afflicted with dreadful smog in the summertime now, moreover the GTA is more sprawling than our metropolitan area, making it harder to get about in environmentally-friendly ways. To say nothing of the car-centred disasters in Alberta and throughout the US Middle West.
I keep asking my friends this, have the boundaries of Mile End been redefined recently? Since when does it include Marie-Anne (as shown in the photos)? And how is it next to McGill (as Niomi insists)? I always figured it was between Fairmount and the train tracks…
Michelle, as far as i’ve been able to figure out, Mile End starts just north of Mount Royal ave, up til the tracks (although its technically part of the plateau borough).
https://spacing.ca/montreal/2009/05/01/patchwork-of-the-plateaus-past/
But I think Daniel’s article is about Plateau around Saint-Laurent and Parc Ave more generally, the area that many east-european settled in.
these responses seem to show exactly the point of the post – it is dirty and grey – but somehow, it’s an attractive place to live for many. One neigbourhood can mean lots of things for different people!
I guess you forgot that we’re basically in the “no weather” period of the year. It’s grey because there’s no snow or no vegetation. Those same pictures on December 28 or July 10 would be completely different.
Thanks for documenting and sharing this unique and important perspective!
True, though a good point–Marie-Anne is most certainly not in Mile End. And one of my favorite streets in the city particularly for its sense of urbanism.
Quick thought to Niomi: Polluted? Imagine how it feels to drive a gas guzzler on wide asphalt pavement lined by a natural landscape erased and replaced with sod. Where would you be happy?
This is a great post. Is this the same writer who posted about “desire lines”?
A positive aspect of gentrification is the beautifying of a run-down neighbourhood. I remember walking up and down Mile End streets in the early and mid 80s looking for an apartment – oh the dives and shady landlords. It was a slum. And as their kids grew up, each group dreamed of Brossard and Laval and Dollard, “forward-looking” neighbourhoods with trees and two-car garages. Now, as every second new condo-owner seems to be either a rich UbiSoft employee from France, or a rich academic from the US, I miss the old days.
Mile End is indeed dirty and its ghetto roots are still showing – and that’s why I love it.
I was lumping the Plateau and Mile End in together as being “next to McGill”, which they are. They, besides the McGill Ghetto (Milton-Parc) and the north-east section of the downtown core, are the closest neighbourhoods to the McGill campus.
I tend to compare Montreal to Vancouver when referring to Montreal’s polluted environment. Vancouver may have its share of socio-cultural problems, but it has great environmental policies. Montreal has a great social culture, but destructive environmental policies.
I also tend to be harsh regarding Montreal’s environmental policies because I have worked for a number of companies in the area who think nothing of polluting the natural environment, compared to the companies I’ve worked for in Vancouver who are hyper-sensitive to environmental pollution. HOWEVER, Montreal’s old economy is one based on the manufacturing and heavy industry sector, whereas Vancouver’s is based on the service sector. Vancouver has almost no heavy industry, hence less pollution.
But like John McClane stated above, March and April are the worst possible months to encapsulate Mile End. It is always dirty and bleak after 5 months of snow melt and leave behind silt. Also, this is when students migrate and leave behind piles of trash in their wake. From June to February, the area is much nicer.
I, too, wondered where Niomi wants to move to — I mean, Montréal is a city of 3.8 million, so of course it’s not pollution-free. But compared to most cities its size, we’re really not that bad at all. As Maria points out, we benefit signficantly from our dense urban core and extensive transit coverage, for example, and although hydro power is certainly not without problems, it does mean that even in the coldest of winter, we don’t produce more pollution.
Even Vancouver which is just bursting with nature has air quality problems, although believe it or not, most air pollutants are decreasing, not increasing, even as these cities grow. Similarly, the Saint Lawrence is in general getting cleaner, not dirtier — who knew?
The Plateau and Mile End are about as close to McGill as the borough of Côte-des-Neiges is.
The images I chose to include in the post were purposefully taken in this grey time of ‘no season’ – to emphasize the qualities of the neighbourhood that my father is most sensitive to. Yes, I admit, they are not representative of the entire year, but the important thing is that these streetscapes do in fact exist: we may choose to focus on them or not to form our experience of the place.
As for Vancouver, it’s supposed cleanliness too is an instance where people’s relationships to the physical form of a city are multiple, and don’t necessarily reflect the ‘true’ nature of urban form.
The Plateau and the McGill Campus actually merge with each other at McGill’s north-easternmost corner.
From McGill’s residence at approximately 3701 avenue du Parc it is about 1.2km to the southernmost edge of Mile End which, from what I’m aware of, starts as soon as you cross rue Mont Royal. If you count the McGill property on the south-east side of Mount Royal – which is part of the campus – it is only 850 metres from Mile End.
The north-westernern most edge of the McGill Campus is approximately 2.3km to the south-eastern edge of Cote-des-Neiges.
It is 3.5km from McGill to NDG.
I am excluding Mount Royal itself and the cemetery from calculations, which were done using Google Paps.
Just to recap:
Distance between the Plateau and McGill Campus: 0 metres
Distance between Mile End and McGill Campus: 850 metres
Distance between CDN and McGill Campus: 2,300 metres
Distance between NDG and McGill: 3,500 metres
Most average people are willing to walk about 20 minutes from one destination to the next, about 850 metres.
CDN and NDG are not within reasonable walking distance to McGill, especially when considering many students are a) stressed and overtired and b) are carrying heavy loads of textbooks, notes, supplies, and possibly laptops too. So between 10-30lbs on average.
I used to walk from Concordia to the Plateau when I went to school there and it took from 45 minutes to an hour each way, and with a full-time course load this was incredibly draining every day. I usually ended up taking the metro, especially in the winter. McGill by comparison is 20 minutes away and a nice stroll through the park. Hence, why there are so many McGill students on the Plateau (but not necessarily Mile End, which tends to cater to the 30-something crowd).
Google Maps, rather. My apologies.
Yes, Daniel, I thought your images were well-chosen to express your father’s feelings. It is already much greener – we certainly didn’t have five months of continuous ice and snow this winter, though that was far more common when your father was young.
Marie-Anne is a very narrow street by North American standards, but still, that picture – I think it is taken near the Portuguese restaurant Doval, a neighbourhood landmark – emphasises the need for more greenery somehow. And the need to get those damned telephone poles buried, but I guess that isn’t feasable until a major infrastructure overhaul is required.
Niomi, I was thinking you were referring to Vancouver – rather unique in that way – also utterly unaffordable for most of us, so many Vancouverites have to live in far less attractive places such as Surrey and commute. There is also a ghastly amount of suburban sprawl around Vancouver, though the city itself does have very forward-looking urbanistic and environmental policies we could live from, though I think its approach to green culture is probably “over-policed” for us. Really, I don’t want to have to dress in Lululemon and ride my bicycle fitted out in lycra kit – yecch.
As suburban areas densify and urbanize – and they must after peak oil – they’ll have to learn both from many positive aspects of an urban environment and the problems we must overcome. Now that Laval has the métro, we are seeing a lot of denser construction popping up nearby.
Thanks for the wonderful piece – it is fascinating how “points of reference are anchored in different histories”. My father in-law lived in a room in what is now Santropol when he arrived in Montreal. He could not fathom why on earth we would want to move “back to that neighbourhood”. Ironic how things come full-circle (I also immigrated here), but I have no intention of moving on to Snowdon or Ville St. Laurent or Cote St. Luc!
As Leila pointed out, one positive aspect of gentrification is the renewed effort spent on ‘beautification’, both of individual properties and in general attention to public spaces. Presumably property owners care more about the space they live in than do ‘transient’ tenants… but this ‘competition’ is certainly making it difficult for many long-term residents to remain in the area.
Maria, great post, I agree with pretty much all of it.
I tend to lump Surrey/Langley/Maple Ridge and so forth under the “Vancouver” title. They DO have horrible sprawl, and while they have great environmental policies the gap between rich and poor isn’t just a gap, it’s a canyon. I don’t quite agree that the environment is “over-policed” though, considering how safe Montreal is compared to Vancouver, if there was anything in Montreal that needs policing it is our natural environment.
As for the Plateau.. my uncle once told me that The Main was where men used to go when they wanted a prostitute. :D
I was struck by the dichotomy the viewpoints of you and your father represented, in observing the same phenomenon. I wonder why a neighbourhood can’t be at once “somewhat tired and grey, treeless and barren” and simultaneously, “the height of urbanity, a stimulating mix of density and community”, Why it can’t be a slum and still be a “dense, eclectic mix of places and people”.
The former characterisation implies a dead-end, soulless quality and an atmosphere of despair – the way people talk about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, for example, while the latter represents a teeming incubator for future success – the iconic Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century.
Why is the physical representation of the space so important to this discussion? And how does physical representation influence perception of the neighbourhood, both among visitors, and more importantly, residents.
As someone else pointed out, these aren’t photos of Mile End anyway.
My experience with the Plateau (Marie-Anne is a great example of a Plateau street) was that I always felt it was a great place to live but that its supposed charm could be hard for a visitor to see. The things that make it a lively neighbourhood for its residents aren’t necessarily flashy attractions for tourists – the fact you can get all your mundane errands done nearby while walking around and occasionally visiting with friends is a non-transferable benefit of living in a real, old, urban area.
Also the Plateau has some beautiful old bits but they’re not always the obvious ones – they’re unevenly distributed and shuffled among some really heinous eyesores here and there. I think you need to live there and walk around and really look at things for the richness of the texture to sink in.
Teeming incubator for future success? Oh, I wish… growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, I saw the neighbourhood only for its squalor, and that was even before Woodward’s and most of the other stores closed. I was so surprised when I went back to Vancouver (at a time I was pooh-poohing everything about it) that I actually liked the DTES a lot — it is indeed a beautiful neighbourhood if only it weren’t in such bad shape (both the buildings and its residents).
Alas, although I’m normally quite the positive person, I’m not so sure of how much it can be transformed. Unlike here, where extreme poverty is mixed in with a whole lot of other functions, the DTES really is only for down-and-outs. There are indeed some improvements on the periphery, with low-cost housing and the new flagship Woodward’s complex for example. But there’s such a huge stretch of really nothing but problems that the gentrification seems to be just concentrating the problems as the city reduces the limits. I suspect the Woodward’s new residents will be shopping downtown or in Chinatown and simply avoiding the harsher areas, thus making the line between good and bad even clearer, like American cities. Sigh.
Compare that to here, where our Latin Quarter, for example, has gotten better over the years, and yet it has kept its homeless and SROs and drug addicts and such even as it gentrifies.
Bravo Kate, what a great way to summarize the neighborhood.
I do wish the author would indicate that the photos are not actually of Mile End.
Throughout the article, the author refers to both the Plateau and Mile End. The title is somewhat misleading, but that should not detract from the message of the post. Jewish immigration in the early 20th century concetrated along St laurent, especially around Duluth (Warsaw, Schwartz’s). Marie Anne is a fine street for this post.
I grew up in in Snowdon, Notre-Dame-de-Grace and Outremont.
I can’t stand any of those places anymore.
I’ve lived in many places in the city before settling down in Saint-Henri, which I find a very nice neighbourhood because of it’s mixed-use nature (on my block there are a few bars, a garage, a plumbing-supply house and a movie studio), proximity to downtown and good transit connections.
Plus the people there have a village-like sense of community that you will never find in posher areas.
* * *
Immigrants usually come here to escape dreadful, crowded living conditions, and you usually do not find this in suburbia (the “epitome” of the american dream). And they also welcome the opportunity to own a big american car for the price of a subcompact elsewhere in the world.
* * *
My father came more than 55 years ago from Gaspesia, and we lived in the city (his brothers all got houses in the ‘burbs and eventually scattered all over the place) because my mother lived in Dorion, and experienced first-hand how hellish suburban life can be when you grow-up (even though she was lucky to have the commuter train!) and did not wish her children to experience that.
Amusingly, I came to Montreal from Hamilton, Ontario in the early 90’s, settling in the Plateau – and my first impression was how safe, clean, and well-kept it was compared to what I had left…
…And since I’ve been gone Hamilton has become much worse, and Montreal has steadily improved!
Historically speaking, it’s true that much of what we now think of as the most trendy parts of Montreal were slums a generation or two ago… but that was two generations ago.
As far as Vancouver goes, according to the Canadian Real Estate Assoc., the average home is 638k, up almost 19% in the last year. Is it really 3x nicer than Montreal, as the prices imply? In my experience, having also lived briefly in Vancouver, I’m going to have to say no.
In any case, I’ll take Mile-End over downtown Hamilton any day.
I have to disagree. I’ve lived along Marie-Anne, west of St-Denis, where those photographs were taken, and I’ve lived in Mile End (which does not overlap) — and I find Marie-Anne (between St-Laurent and St-Denis) to be dull and grey as described, but not so Mile End. Which makes me wonder if the author of the post knew what they were talking about…
The way I see it, if you come from a rich sterilized background, living in a clean city, you see the Plateau and Mile End as eclectic, interesting and unique!
But if you lived/grew up in a poor and dirty city/area, the Plateau and Mile End are the farthest from interesting… you would prefer the cleanliness of new areas/suburbs.