About those 375th ‘legacy’ projects …
Côte-des-Neiges panels are late, unilingual and obscure, viewers say
If you’ve seen red panels displaying white shapes on lampposts high above Côte-des-Neiges Rd. in recent weeks and wondered what they are, stop and look down. Way down.
The lampposts, which have been painted black, feature a second panel in grey at eye level that offers a brief history of a landmark on that spot or a feature of the centuries-old street.
The lamppost signs are another of the city’s “legacy” projects for its 375th anniversary.
The commemoration of Côtedes-Neiges, which city council declared a “founding route” in 2013, cost nearly $1 million. And, like the Fleuve-Montagne walkway, the project is being delivered late.
The project is 95 per cent completed as of this week, city spokesperson Marie-Ève Courchesne said. A civil service report concerning the $993,754 contract that was awarded for the project last year says the work was to be finished by May 19.
However, the installation of the remaining signs is held up by a delay on another $11.3 million city contract to Sade Canada Inc. for road, sidewalk, water main and sewer work on a section of Côtedes-Neiges at Cedar Ave.
The latter project, which has choked traffic in both directions on Côte-des-Neiges, between Cedar and The Boulevard, since April of last year, was supposed to be finished last October.
The city then reported on its Info-Travaux website that it would be finished in December.
Now, the city says there’s no delay and that the project is “respecting the deadline that had to be readjusted last year,” Courchesne said.
The deadline was “adjusted” in part because of the weather and because of the presence of large concrete blocks with wires that weren’t foreseen.
What’s more, the Info-Travaux website now claims the work on that section of Côte-des-Neiges began in mid-May of this year.
The remaining lamppost panels will be installed on that part of Côte-des-Neiges once the roadwork is finished in the coming weeks, Courchesne said.
Meanwhile, the panels that are installed elsewhere on Côte-desNeiges are provoking mixed reactions.
One of the criticisms is that the text on the grey panels is only in French.
The city councillor for the Côtedes-Neiges electoral district calls it a surprising oversight.
“A number of people, including francophones, have complained to me that it’s in French only,” Projet Montréal party councillor Magda Popeanu said.
The road, which stretches from Sherbrooke St. W. to Jean-Talon St., runs through one of the most multicultural neighbourhoods of the city, she added.
In fact, the opposite side of each sign that’s wrapped around a lamppost is blank. It could have had text in English, she said. Popeanu said interpretive panels are a good idea. But the signs are hard to notice and the text is more academic than mainstream, she said, so a lot of people will simply walk past them.
“I love the idea of remembering the history of Côte-des-Neiges,” Popeanu said.
“But I don’t think this is the concept. It’s not accessible.”
On Tuesday, accompanied by a reporter, Popeanu stopped random people on Côte-des-Neiges near Queen Mary Rd. to ask them what they think of the signs as well as five bus stop shelters that have been decorated with temporary vinyl window “wallpaper” along Côte-des-Neiges. The bus stop wallpaper is a separate 375th anniversary project that cost $206,999.
An employee of a patisserie near Queen Mary said she knew the red lamppost signs were for the city’s 375th. But three of her colleagues said they didn’t know what they were for. Two of them said they hadn’t even noticed the grey signs with text at eye level.
It was a similar story with the bus shelter “wallpaper.”
The translucent, self-adhering decoration for the five bus shelters, each of which features one of five themes relating to the history of Montreal, is to stay up for eight months. These too have a panel with an explanation in French only.
That project was delivered on time, the city’s Courchesne said.
“The problem is there’s no English,” Zeinab Slim said as she waited for a bus at a decorated bus shelter across the street from Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery. “It didn’t really attract my attention. Now that I know it’s for the 375th anniversary, I would read it. But it’s only in French.”
Alain Tremblay, the executive director of Fédération Écomusée de l’Au-delà, a cemetery heritage group, agrees that the lamppost signs are hard to see and the red signs with the white shapes are “obscure.” But the different panels explaining the history of Côte-desNeiges have exceeded his expectations, he said.
“The signs are discreet but well done,” Tremblay said. “I had trouble seeing them, too. The signs are almost the same colour as the poles. But the research is extraordinary. They’re well written.”
Popeanu said the Coderre administration should have consulted the public on how best to mark the 375th anniversary.
“I offered to organize a consultation with the merchants’ association and residents,” she said. “And (the administration) refused.”