“Mile End est mort…”
For the more than three decades I’ve lived in Montreal, I’ve lived in the quarter known generally as The Plateau and more specifically and recently (to my ears, anyway) Mile End, most notably at “Grand Gnostic Central” on the corner of Rachel and St. Urbain (scenes from the cinematic version of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz were filmed just up the block), a couple of locations on Hutchison and Parc Avenue south of Bernard, and, since 1996 (for the time being) on the corner of St Joseph and Parc in what our landlady calls her Chateau du Parc.

Credit: Mary Shelley
Montreal, like any number of cities on earth, is suffering a process of gentrification. In my area, it’s been underway for years, but it’s picked up since a number of software companies (Ubisoft and Softimage) have moved in. When it all began, I reflected that more affordable if less “desirable” neighborhoods attract those who can afford to live in them, which will often include creatives, writers, painters, artists, and so forth. Their creative energies, by a cruel dialectic, make the neighborhood more beautiful, pleasant and lively, attracting more residents and businesses, beginning a process of, well, gentrification. The creatives and others who made the place attractive in the first place are forced to move out, to some other quarter, sometimes in some other city, where the process can begin all over again.
A poem in Ladonian Magnitudes, “The Intersection” remarks this process. I share it below as a manner of memorial.
The Intersection
where l’Esplanade
meets Villeneuve
that spring dusk
the air’s first
breathable classic
sunlit redbrick
the unique quaint
three-storey walkups
characteristic of
the quarter’s charm
are almost all
so made up
like new the one
run down white tshirt
underarm stain yellow
building with muddy
white frames peeling
around cracked panes
stands out like
never among
those other fronts
kept up for years
without a thought
of what they’d go for
[…] “The Intersection” (from Ladonian Magnitudes) […]
The road to no-vacancies, metropolitan-priced CondoHades is paved with artistic intentions.
How long until even Laval becomes yuppie central? Less than a generation I’d say….
Only urban areas susceptible to “amelioration” (investment) are subject to gentrification, sunshine. The ‘burbs tend not to be included in such…
Obviously exaggerating a bit there, but as you so poignantly point out, the improvable areas start out as affordable “slums”, whose mystical boho area unexpectedly turns out to be a marketable commodity.
Put a microbrewery-cum-vegan-bakery next to a start-up chipping away at the next Fortnite in the shit part of Trois Rivieres, and who knows, maybe you’ll have the next Plateau, or maybe you’ll have fuck all but unpaid bills. “Susceptible” isn’t quite so predictable as you would have it.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. In my post, which was much more casual than some, I was simply remarking a pattern I had observed in the area…
[…] (You can read another poem about the changes in Mile End, here.) […]