Walking through Montreal’s heritage

By Anthony Bonaparte

Heritage Montreal’s new season of Architectours are already under way. The popular guided walks through Montreal neighbourhoods began August 7 and run every weekend until October 3.

For 35 years, the private non-profit organization has worked to promote and protect the city’s architectural, historic and cultural heritage. The tours, which began in 1988, are meant to get Montrealers to look at their own city. To help celebrate its anniversary, some old neighbourhoods will be revisited. “There’s always something that’s changing and there’s always a different idea that we want to tackle,” says Nancy Dunton, a member of Heritage Montreal’s board of directors and a long-time volunteer guide.

“It gives us a chance to go to neighbourhoods that we might have been walking through many years ago and go back and look at them as they were, and also to look at some of the significant issues within those neighbourhoods.”

There are eight, two-hour tours this season — Griffintown, Centre-Sud, Rosemont/Mile End, the Latin Quarter, the St. Gabriel Locks, Maisonneuve, the Square Mile, and Milton Park.

Milton Park: from student ghetto to community has a special significance. During the 1970s, community activists were concerned that the vast La Cité complex — intended to house apartments, offices, a mall, and a hotel (now McGill’s New Residence) — would destroy the area’s character. They started a campaign, led by a residents’ coalition and the newly formed Heritage Montreal, to stop further redevelopment. “That is, after all, the site of one of the most interesting and significant movements in Montreal in the 1970s,” says Dunton.

Another tour, Maisonneuve: its cathedral and its boulevards, looks more to the present. In a city where hundreds of old church buildings will soon sit empty, the issue is extremely relevant. “Part of the reason for going to Maisonneuve is not to deal with an issue of the past, but for a very present issue, and that is the whole question behind religious heritage and how some of the massive ensemble of religious buildings can be reused,” says Dunton.

“Here’s a neighbourhood where the church was such a significant and dominant part of a really interesting neighbourhood that it merits going back.”

With Griffintown: Industrial past, an urban canvas, Dunton says aspects of the ongoing discussion about what the Bonaventure expressway and future development will mean to the area can be applied to other parts of the city as well.

“The idea is to use these walking tours as a way to get Montrealers to know about their city and to understand it. I mean, nothing beats standing in front of the building. But it’s also to get them to think about how the city has evolved, how it is evolving, and what is going on now that affects those different neighbourhoods” she says.

“You want somebody to go and stand on the sidewalk on their own street and start looking at the buildings across from their house, and start looking at the colours of the brick, or the way the windows are positioned within the façade of the building and go, ‘Oh!’”

Dunton speaks with passion about the city’s architectural heritage — and for good reason. The author of A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Montreal, Dunton also works as a consultant for projects about architecture and teaches a course in architecture at both McGill University and the Université de Montréal.

In her 17 years of giving tours, she says one reaction stands out. “You will often find people saying ‘I never knew that,” says Dunton.
“There is so much to discover in Montreal that it’s a very common remark and perhaps the most rewarding in many ways.”

Tours are offered every Sat. and Sun., rain or shine, in English and French. Reservations are not necessary. Tickets are available at each departure point 15 minutes before start time, $10 for Heritage Montreal members, $12 for students and seniors and $14 for adults. For more information, call Heritage Montreal at 514-286-2662 or visit www.heritagemontreal.org
— anthony@thesuburban.com