Photos du Jour : Place au débat

Came upon this sign on St-Denis last Thursday and naturally it piqued my interest. Across the street, a bunch of on-strike profs and students had gotten together for an open-air discussion about public space.

The group had begun their debate on public space by taking their chairs out onto the street. Ironically, cops quickly pushed them back onto university property, citing that the way had to be kept free for emergency vehicles. The students discussed how the public places where we manifest are actually tightly controlled by various interests, a theme that is the focus of the upcoming issue of Spacing Magazine.

However, I was surprised that they did not bring up the contested legacy of Place Pasteur, where the debate was taking place. The land was donated to the city in 1823 by Louis-Joseph Papineau under the explicit request that it remain a public space. UQAM signed a 10-year lease on the park in 1999. The last time I was there was for the Festival d’Expression de la Rue, an annual festival that brings together homeless youth in Montreal.