One of the great things about living in Centre-Sud, and there are many, is how old-time residents don’t have any qualms about walking up alongside you and starting to talk. On rare occasions they want cigarettes, of course, but the request is usually buried in niceties about how either the neighbourhood or the weather is going to hell.
One particular fellow called out to me from about ten paces behind. He was wondering, fairly loudly, whether spring had finally sprung, and if we could all look forward to warm weather and thawing dog shit, or if the pricks at the weather station (or Environment Canada, he didn’t say which) were conspiring to bring us more bad news by week’s end. "I watch the weather every night," he said proudly, his feet practically hitting the back of my groceries.
"Tomorrow it’s going to rain. The day after, grey. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, though we might catch that storm that hit Nova Scotia." He spat out Nova Scotia, like Nova Scotia was to blame. I didn’t dare ask his name, lest he derail this beautiful rant. "They never bring us any good news," he continued, his grey hair covered in sawdust and a pen-laden holster hanging from his belt. He then went into something about war for about half a block, and he brought his World Going to Hell speech to a triumphant crescendo when we came to the steel and concrete skeletons of a brewing condo development.
"See?" he said, pointing at the site like it embodied bad weather, war and everything else that sucked. "They build these things, condos, instead of housing. How the hell is anyone supposed to afford this? You have to make $45 an hour to live in a place like this. Christ! I hate it. Bye."
And around the corner he went, into the Korean grocery store that sits next to a needle exchange, which sits next to another condo development.
It’s the kind of exchange that’ll make you grin despite your bitter, cynical self. More than that, though, the guy pointed out something everyone around here has noticed. Gentrification, once the stuff of haughtier haunts like the Plateau and neighbouring Mile End, has officially arrived in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city.
Since 1998, this part of Montreal has put up some 2,064 new condo units, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. During the same time, the poster child for gentrification, Plateau Mont-Royal, has built less than half that. "It’s revitalizing like crazy," says CMHC analyst Paul Cardinal.
The effect has been at times marvellous, at times jarring, but always entertaining, in an area where old men have worn trucker caps, entirely without irony, long before Von Dutch. Transvestite hookers, staples in front of notorious Ontario Street tranny bar Le Fun Spot, now trawl for clients who may or may not have picked up a video at the Blockbuster across the street. The Pat et Robert smoke shop, a cramped, tobacco-infused testament to Quebec’s collective addiction, now has as a neighbour a trendy Portuguese chicken joint that wouldn’t look out of place on Laurier Street. There’s even an artisanal bakery.
The snazzy Pro Hardware store a few blocks east sells any number of yuppie-ish amenities (track lighting, chic paint), but still does brisk business in telltale lengths of quarter-inch pipe and pieces of wire mesh to fit on the end. It is a neighbourhood with its feet in two places: its history, and its radically gentrified future.
Nowhere is this more clear, oddly enough, than at Dollar Select, a dollar store that opened its doors last fall. For months the space was vacant, after the former grocery store racked up one too many health violations. In its time, the place was a down-market Provigo – cheap vegetables, lots of canned goods, meat of questionable origin and vintage.
For the growing condo set, many of which are already ill at ease living amongst the hookers and punks of Ontario Street, the vacant spot was a matter of debate among the new rich and old poor alike: What would go up there? A dollar store, or one of those quaint croissant-and-smoothie supermarkets, with outside parking for designer dogs?
Dollar Select finally opened, but with a twist. They have just about everything you’d expect in a dollar store: blank CDs, candles, a vast collection of porcelain gnomes, faux Tupperware, Kraft Dinner. But the place wants to cater to its newer neighbours as well, so on the one hand you have the people who buy ravioli by the case, and the ones that can afford… African art, woven carpets and wall hangings. In a shrewd bit of marketing, the owners of Dollar Select have set aside a piece of their dollar store in hopes of attracting a different clientele.
Is this a bad thing? Yes and no, by the looks of it. Progress is great, but one wonders if the well-entrenched residents of Centre-Sud can help hold on to this magnificent balance of new and old, the way old-school Plateau people couldn’t. Time will tell if we’ll be able to continue with a precarious mix of slick and sleaze, or if we all go to hell like the weather, in a well-lit Pharmaprix.
7 comments
Ok, what in the Hell was that?!
It’s all nice and well that Martin Patriquin felt the need to wax poetic about the Centre-Sud but in the end what was the point? I suppose the point was that this could be the tender tale of any ‘quartier’ (Westmount and Hamstead automatically get disqualified for obvious reasons) but I hardly see this as requiring an article. We’ve all got a soft spot for our respective neck of the woods and we could all argue their virtues till we’re blue in the face but is any of us right?
I live in NDG and unlike many areas in this city mine hasn’t undergone as extensive of a facelift as others. Sure, there’s a few more condos going up but not nearly as many as seem to choke and blight the ‘poorer’ parts of town. Sometimes progress is evolution, sometimes it’s anything but.
It seems that the example you’re talking about in your article tends to show what a healthy rejuvenating of a derelict neighbourhood should feel like. After industries have left a place, it is normal to see more affluent people leave to find jobs elsewhere. After a while, small shops will be forced to close down. Since there is no more jobs or services around, only the poorest people with no other choice will be left. That was the situation found in the Centre-Sud not so long ago.
Then, artists looking for cheap housing came back. Middle-class people then followed. Since these new consumers had special tastes and more financial means than the previous inhabitants, specialty shops came into existence. I believe this is the stage that the Centre-Sud is presently going through.
The Plateau Mont-Royal is a victim of the media hype surrounding its so-called cool. How many times have I heard people say that it has been dubbed “the new Greenwich Village” in an article in Utne Reader. Who cares ! Who really wants to move in a neighbourhood simply because an article in an upscale version of Reader’s Digest gave it a thumb up. In fact, the Plateau Mont-Royal, with its over-priced housing, has long entered the third stage of this whole process and has really become gentrified.
I wholly agree with the parallel you make between those two neighbourhoods. I simply wish that your beloved neighbourhood doesn’t fall victim to the same hype that the Plateau went through.
Sometimes, it is better to keep quiet about good things for fear of losing them.
I have lived in Centre-Sud for many years and i have been disturbed by drug dealers all that period. Pratically, all stores are closed or broken and there is a serious lack of trees especially near parkings. Schools are getting worse and worse (La petite-Bourgogne) and violence has increased according to the last census.
As meandering publicity pieces for your neighborhood go this wasn’t all that bad. I could feel Martin Patriquin’s love for his district but I’ve really got to wonder how this qualifies as actual journalism that’s worth our time. I used to write pieces like for school, some were quite good but I wouldn’t dare call them interesting to anyone but myself or to people from my area. Imagine that you’re an out of towner and that you fall upon this article of his, would you be touched or would you wonder why it even reached print form? I’ve been to the Centre-Sud, even lived there for a time, but would I write a puff piece on it for no particular reason? I’m no journalist but even I find this week’s article dubious at best.
Rich people living in the new condos, dressed in Armani, cross on sidewalks poor peoples
living in old cool appartements, dressed with special priced used clothes bought at the Village
des Valeurs Stores. Both the rich and the poor are ashamed, like two minorities living
the same square without exchanging a word, like:Have a nice Day! Strangers in the day and
at the sunset too, like all most all the people living East or West of St.Laurent street, in a
foreing way of life, with a curious watch each others and no communication at all. Well a
lot of countries act the same way, don’t they?
Along with the Crass arrives Suburbia. Watch them Flock to Loblaws on a Sunday as these Uber-Consumers search for the Cheese without the Rind. Impressed by things like paper lamps from Ikea, Starbucks and watermelon without seeds these tasteless fools will succeed in ruining the essence of an “in” urban district. Even worse is the second wave. Those that covet the condo but end up in the 4 and half. An apartment is not a bungalow and living downtown comes with noise, nightlife and traffic. In an attempt to emulate suburb life they will complain to the landlord about you walking in at 3 am, or the sex you just had.
I recently returned from Miami and noticed that Americans will gobble anything with their big bux as long as it is processed into something they can relate to in terms of volume or watered down enough to be familiar. As if their beer wasn’t watered down enough already they have come up with “low carb” beer. Their ordinary beer doesn’t taste hops and yeast imagine low carb? Terms like French vanilla, Cuban coffee, Swiss steak abound while you can’t even find a crust bread. In the name of the dollar producers remove substance to boost profits which can be sold to the Marketable Majority through lame adjectives.
This is exactly what the Uber-consumer Condo type loves. Whipped Butter, buckets of cola..the illusory emptiness of artificial volume. Diet beer.. Sangria in a bottle.
When they will succeed in ruining the urban setting with their lack of savoir-vivre that comes with working 9 to 5 at the telephone company they will search for another quaint area where the cool people have tried to escape to.
It was over due. I have been fortunate enought to find a pretty nice place here in september 1999 as I was going back to the University. The rent is still not that bad and apart from Ontario, it’s pretty calm. 5 years later, I finished law school and the Bar and I am now a young professionnal. I can not help to wonder how come it was not done sooner and yet I am glad it was not otherwise I could never have afforded a place like the one I live in now.
If you walk alongside Ste. Catherine street, you can see the differences. There is a big empty spot where progress can be make between St-Hubert and the Place-des-Arts. After Place Dupuis, you’ll be right into the Gay Village and it’s there too see that the place is living and breathing. The kind of life new money can provide. Still I am not affraid for Centre-Sud since I can not imagine the Village losing its edge.
I still wonder if that big emptyness will be renewed some day. Still if it is, probably that it will be a huge blow too those who are in dire need. It’s there too see for anyone. There his money and tragedy living side by side. What can be done? What will be done? I suppose I will see if I don’t move. Quite frankly, I would move for a job in my field, but if I can have it while living here. It will be the best of both world.