Ensemble Montréal slams closure of Jeanne-Mance baseball field

Opposition councillors slammed the city Monday for deciding to eliminate a popular softball field in Jeanne-Mance Park rather than finding a way to make it safer.

After promising last year that the field at the north end of JeanneMance Park would be reopened by the end of May, the city administration announced two weeks ago that the risk of passersby getting injured by a stray ball was too great, so it would be grassed over.

“It’s ridiculous! You don’t take a more than 50-year-old field away from citizens by demolishing it without having first done everything possible to make it safer,” Ensemble Montréal Leader Lionel Perez said in a press release.

Perez said by bulldozing the field without consulting citizens, the city was showing “a lack of respect toward the neighbourhood and the users.”

The opposition leader also slammed Plateau-Mont-Royal Mayor Luc Ferrandez for attacking the diverse community that has gathered around the softball games for years. “This is our vision of what Montreal is — is it Mr. Ferrandez’s?” he asked.

Ferrandez offended many in an interview on Paul Arcand’s radio show on 98.5 FM when he described the softball players as older anglophones who liked to toast hotdogs in the park.

Several habitués of the pickup games said they felt insulted and marginalized by Ferrandez’s comments.

Alex Norris, the city councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district, said the city will hold consultations during the next year on whether it’s possible to resurrect the field. The problem is that it was originally for children and is not regulation size, and there is not enough room to fence both it and the south field used by baseball leagues, he said.

Norris said the city commissioned a study on the risk of people being hit by softballs after a woman picnicking in the park was hit by a stray ball from the field that punctured her eardrum and caused a concussion. He said he also knows of a second resident whose ankle was broken by a ball as she was walking near the park.

The study, obtained last week by the Montreal Gazette and citizens in response to an access-toinformation request, suggests that a higher backdrop and fences could have resolved the issue.