The Mirror lists local events for Women’s Day coming this Monday.
Updates from March, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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It’s a little outside this blog’s remit, but it’s worth reading Paul Wells skewering the new federal budget.
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The Mirror ponders the troubles of the Villanueva family with one son dead and another on the verge of being deported.
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Coolopolis has three recent entries showing how tramlines were instrumental in settling Snowdon. I especially like the photo shown above of Queen Mary and Decarie before the highway trench was dug.The extension of the city’s tramways was also the key to extending urbanization along routes like the 17 and 55 north to the back river, and also into Rosemont. There are lots of early 20th century photos showing a tramline running through a field, maybe with one or two houses in view.
Question: was this the suburban sprawl of the era? Was it universally welcome or did anyone think it was unwise? Is there a parallel to modern-day sprawl, or is the fact that it wasn’t based on the car (and hydrocarbon fuels) a fundamental distinction? I’m turning commenting on for anyone who has any thoughts (posting in English and French are both welcome).
(Afterthought: how was electricity generated back then? Hydro power? Or coal-burning plants?)
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MG
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sam i
Asking whether something is “sprawl” or not means tainting the question before it’s asked; asking early-20th century people to have the same values as late-20th century people do. The forces that they felt are very different than the ones that we do.
If population is growing, and land is relatively cheap on the outskirts of town, it is relatively natural that that land is going to be turned over to development. If the land becomes more desirable — and Snowdon did, since the increasing concentration of transport routes would have made the area more accessible and therefore more valuable — density would increase. Today, with the knowledge that unlimited suburban sprawl is a pattern that can’t be sustained, we have cast density as “good.” But at the time, the whole process was probably basically amoral. It would be interesting to compare Snowdon’s development with that of Cote-des-Neiges.
N.B: I do remember once hearing an anecdote that in the 1920s, developers of tracts of real estate sold houses on the basis of having beautiful, landscaped, wide streets: hence N.D.G. Avenue and Cote-St-Antoine in NDG…
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MG
>>how was electricity generated back then? Hydro power? Or coal-burning plants?
Much of it was hydroelectric. The Beauharnois dam was built in 1936. A smaller dam at nearby Les Cedres goes back to 1912 and there’s also a very old dam at RDP. The Lachine Rapids were also used.
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Montrealistik.com
Love the picture you can see the snowdon theater in the back. During that era Décarie was a happening street.
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Demonstrators showed up yesterday at Julie Boulet’s office and made a demand that no expropriations accompany the Turcot reconstruction. The Turcot website has a lot of material about alternatives (and is beautifully designed, too). It’s not a weird fringe movement: even the city is asking the federal government for help in extending and sustaining public transit.
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Some more bits on the impending festival of festivals. So far the news is just the press release stuff, but I can’t help wondering which other summer events will have their toes stepped on by this new initiative.
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Metro has a dossier on Fashion Week, as does the Gazette; Le Devoir deigns to notice it; the collection of Marie-Saint-Pierre has made a splash; enthusiasm for clothes made in Canada comes at an opportune moment.
>>was this the suburban sprawl of the era?
Yes, I think so. When transportation is available to a given area, it gets settled.