Caring by not car-ing (car-free week in Montreal) -- by Elise Favis

This article is republished from Concordia University student paper The Link of 26 Sep 2011.

Protesters in bloody bandages enacted an accident en masse on the corner of Ste. Catherine St. and University St. on Sept. 22. Photo Nicolas Martel

From Sept. 19 to 23, the Agence métropolitaine de transport, in partnership with the Société de Transport de Montréal and POP Montreal, presented In Town Without My Car All Week Long, an event that showcased eco-friendly events, concerts and conferences to educate citizens on the effects of car-use and alternative transportation.

“Whether by train, subway, bus, walking or cycling, planned activities this week will be easily accessible and will allow the public to examine the impact of public transportation from all angles,” said AMT CEO Joël Gauthier in a press release prior to the events.

Events were also held outside the city, in Trois-Rivières, Blainville, Longueuil, and Lachine, among the places promoting a car-free culture. 
Closer to home, workshops, student-oriented discussions, guest-speaker conferences and information booths were set up at Philips Square all week, free of charge.

Thousands of Montrealers and tourists attended the festivities in the square each day, with around 50,000 people strolling through the park on Sept. 22, the only day traffic was closed through much of the downtown area. Cross streets, however, remained open to reduce congestion.

“I love the fact that [the street] is closed to cars,” a Westmount citizen said while walking down Greene Ave., which was exclusive to pedestrian use last Saturday. “It’s wonderful to see families and people enjoying the area. People are too attached to their cars. Most cities in Europe have pedestrian zones all year ‘round.”

“The primary aim of the event is to raise awareness, educate citizens and let them know about the many alternatives to driving in a car alone,” explained Charles Durivage of Morin Public Relations. “The AMT works in collaboration with other public transportation organizations and experts to do so.”
On the first day of events, several Radio-Canada and La Presse journalists spoke to the crowd about the status of public transportation and its future use in the city, while on Wednesday, AMT members discussed their plans for the train system and what they will be implementing to make it more relevant in citizens’ lifestyles.

Other events included a ‘Die-In,’ a bicycle spin on the traditional ‘lie-in,’ which took place on Ste. Catherine St. on Sept. 20. Participants dressed as wounded cyclists, lying on the pavement, surrounded by ketchup blood and bent bicycles. The event was held to raise awareness for automobile-related cyclist accidents. According to Statistics Canada, 14,135 people were killed in road accidents in Canada between 2000 and 2004, and 263 of them were cyclists. In 2007, 65 cyclists died, which made up for 2.3 per cent of deaths caused by road accidents.

In the evening, Place des Festivals was closed off for a free concert by local Montreal band Arcade Fire. The event was part of POP Montreal, and sponsored by the AMT, to mark the end of the no-car festival. There were approximately 101,000 spectators.

“We can definitely say ‘mission accomplished,’” concluded Gauthier. “We are elated with the success of our awareness-raising activities. I’m confident that they stimulated a lot of worthwhile discussion and enabled the general public to see the brilliant future that public transit and active transport have in our city.”

If developers ruled the world -- NFB Citizenshift

Cartoon by Anthony Piraino, Greensboro NC - see his blog
click on cartoon for clearer view


Sprawl (13m 42 s, NFB 2009)
by Montreal actress, journalist and videographer Tamar Kozlov
Two views of Montreal: Dr. David Suzuki at a 2009 youth conference held by C-Vert, an environmental program for youths founded by Stephen Bronfman. They speak about urban sprawl, the dangers of meddling with natural systems (e.g. GMOs) and the state of the planet. David Côté and his chef Chris Eschleman launch Crudessence, a raw / living food restaurant, and speak of a younger generation's hopes of greening the city.
*****
See previous post on results of urban sprawl in Duncan BC.
Other Citizenshift videos and podcasts at http://citizenshift.ca/categories/environment
En français http://parolecitoyenne.org/categories/environnement

The breathing of the earth

I've been very busy keeping track of current climate negotiations at the UN this week. So it was a relief to go outside and notice the changes in the air: wind, rain, sun, warm wet earth. Yesterday in Montreal the leaf buds broke. This morning I ran across this wonderful photo-filled post with photos in DailyKos. It begins with the first shoots of a Norway maple...
and goes on to discuss the annual cycle, with a rather complex diagram by NOAA's CMDL. I went looking for something simpler and found a Global View CO2 GIF movie, where you can actually see the earth breathing -- and a 5 year graph and the 50 year Mauna Loa curve.

This is what the annual cycle of photosynthesis looks like in my corner of the northern hemisphere.
Without its capture of the sun's energy (aka primary productivity) we would not exist. Nor the web of life, that everyday miracle.
.
The old stone tower, now part of the Grand Séminaire, was built in the 1680s by the priests of the Order of St Sulpice, the seigneurs of Montreal, to guard their farm against Iroquois attack. Those First Nations knew the area as Tiohtiake, now the name of the Eco-Montreal green map.

See also Wikipedia on the human history of Montreal, Côte-des-neiges au fil du temps, and other history links.

Laughing, crying, living, dying: two poems

from the conference Sense and Sustainability, U de Montréal, March 2009.

The Art of Walking - by Michael Mirolla. Published in Penumbra, Vol. 15 (2005).

The roadkill rises, eyes rimmed in red.
The racoons, the rabbits, the rats. And you.
We dwell on the edge of somewhere. Like angels perhaps
flirting between possibilities. Like angels maybe
licking each other’s wounds.
A gaunt cow stands knee deep
in a sub-divided field. Stares out in the fervent hope
of slaughterhouse. That quick clean cut to the jugular.
Here, the signs come fast and furious.
Oops! You’ve just missed Camelot.
An exclusive enclave. For the millionaire. In each of us.
Sheep manure for sale. By appointment only.
Call Art.
The highway leans hard into the wind, its dull roar
like a grinding machine for the future. It spits out
godliness
detached housing
luminosity
evergreen rugs.
One-legged flamingos stalking the elusive fast-food wrapper.
Cars snapping at the heels of brittle corn stalks.
The highway leans hard into the wind. Behind it,
civilization’s stubborn convoy.
Impressions of faces against taut plastic.
Crucifixes around the necks of mourning doves.
Vacuum-sealed.
In the distance,
The hills continue to ovulate.
The trees strain against their leashes.
The windmills ride off half-cocked.
The snakes, the skunks, the squirrels are rising. And you.
We live on the edge of nowhere.
In a quiet cul de sac.
We reside on the edge of nowhere.
In a quiet cul de sac.
The sign at the end of the street:
Roadkill ahead.

Michael Mirolla is a Montreal-Toronto corridor poet novelist, and playwright. He has published two novels, Berlin and The Boarder, collected short stories, The Formal Logic of Emotion (an Italian translation is forthcoming) and Hothouse Loves & Other Tales, and poetry, Light And Time; bilingual English-Italian poems Interstellar Distances/Distanze Interstellari are forthcoming. His short story, “A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,” was selected for The Journey Prize Anthology; another short story, “The Sand Flea,” won first prize in the Arkansas College Media Association Convention and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short fiction and poetry has been published in numerous journals in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, including several anthologies such as Event’s Peace & War Anthology, Telling Differences: New English Fiction from Quebec, Tesseracts 2: Canadian Science Fiction, the Collection of Italian-Canadian Fiction, and New Wave of Speculative Fiction Book 1.

A Funeral Song for Magda July 3, 1922 - February 16, 2005
- by Ilona Martonfi

On a bitter February day
a light snow falling,
mother is the blue sky.
Bare catalpa tree:
seed pods rattle in the wind
in my blind sister’s backyard.

Mother is the water
washing her daughters’ hair.
Laughing and crying,
in my blind sister’s kitchen.

Mother is the body I carry,
twelve white roses and baby’s breath.

Silver grey hearse.
Cars and lorries pull over:
a small-town tradition.
Cornstalks and funeral flags.

Mother is the railway crossing:
a cemetery on the right.
Six pallbearers and requiem choir.
Purple glass bead rosary.
A Hail Mary full of grace,
in my blind sister’s voice.

Mother is the empty room
we didn’t enter for ten days,
in my blind sister’s house.

This poem by Ilona Martonfi first appeared in Vallum Spirit 5:2, (2007), forthcoming in poetry book, Blue Poppy, (Montreal : Coracle Press, 2009). Her publications include a Coracle Press chapbook, Visiting the Ridge (2004), poems in Fiddlehead, Vallum, Carte Blanche, Carve, Bibliosofia (Italy), Accenti, Arcade, Headlight Anthology, Soliloquies, Helios, Montreal Serai, Fire With Water, Poets Against The War, Fruits Of The Branch: A Montreal Branch CAA Anthology, and Sun Through the Blinds: Haiku Today. Finalist in 2007 Quebec Writing Competition. Published story, “My Daughter, Marisa,” in CBC Story Anthology III, In Other Words: New English Writing from Quebec (Véhicule Press, 2008). Poet, editor, creative writing teacher. Founder, producer/host of The Yellow Door and Visual Arts Centre Poetry and Prose Readings. Co-founder, producer/host of the annual "Lovers & Others".