I’m sure that, to some people in Westmount, these kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen here. I think that Westmount is still really a symbol of anglophone privilege.
Stephen Bryce, on the indignity of Montreal’s richest neighbourhood having a boil- water advisory.
The reputation of Westmount precedes it. Nestled around one of the summits of Mount Royal, it is an enclave with acres of flower beds, lawn bowling grounds and homes with turrets. It has gone out of its way to remain, by altitude and affluence, apart from the surrounding Montreal.
“Westmount was where the truly rich lived in stone mansions,” wrote Mordecai Richler in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. “The higher you climbed up the splendid tree- lined streets the thicker the ivy, the more massive the mansion, and the more important the men inside.”
Despite its status, this week, Westmount dealt with the bother of a boil water advisory. For nine days ending June 5, nearly 150 households in Westmount had to boil their water before consuming it. The city shares its water network with Montreal, and one part of its weekly water tests came back abnormal in late May, triggering provincial
regulations that mandated a boil water advisory, says Westmount Mayor Christina Smith.
Short- term boil water advisories are commonplace in Canadian cities, and 58 Indigenous communities have advisories long- term. The difference with Westmount is that it prides itself on having superior services. It is the second- wealthiest municipality in Canada, according to data published by Maclean’s magazine in 2017, with an average household net worth of $3.3 million that placed it second only to West Vancouver. It has been home to the Mulroneys and the Bronfmans.
This advisory hit the highest part of the mountain, including Summit Circle, a street where a seven- bedroom home is currently for sale for $ 12 million and a four- bedroom home is listed at $ 3.8 million. The boil water advisory is a humbling moment for a district so choice.
“It’s a major inconvenience for people because they have to boil their water for one minute before drinking it,” says Smith. As mayor, she says the advisory in Westmount, despite its wealth, is no different from an advisory elsewhere. “I think everybody across Canada has an expectation that they’ll have safe drinking water,” she says. “We don’t give better quality water to different areas of the city.”
Westmount often avoids the problems of other areas. With 20,000 residents, it controls its own snow-clearing service, garbage removal and a power provider distinct from Hydro Québec, Hydro Westmount. A boil water advisory does not fit the narrative of the oasis on the mountain.
“I’m sure that, to some people in Westmount, these kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen here,” says Stephen Bryce, a CEGEP geography teacher who wrote his master’s thesis in 1990 on the landscape and community construction of Westmount. “I think that Westmount is still really a symbol of anglophone privilege.”
He notes that Westmount is no longer strictly anglophone, but before the First World War, Westmount emerged as a refuge for the English business elite to avoid the vices of Montreal, including epidemic diseases and overpopulation, as described by the editor of the Westmount News in 1910.
“The reputation of Montreal is rotten, a disgrace to all those who live within her borders,” wrote the editor, Hubert Groves, whom Bryce quoted in his thesis. “Westmount is to my mind one of the best governed and best managed cities in North America, a model city in every sense of the word,” the editor wrote.
Westmount became this “model city” in part by becoming insular. Residents petitioned against the construction of a children’s hospital in 1908, and two years later, prevented the construction of a Salvation Army in its boundaries, Bryce found.
He also found that the city refined its esthetic as it introduced strict nuisance bylaws and prohibited homes from being built with exterior staircases, as is common in Montreal. Encouraging residents to observe a day of rest, it banned the sale of candy in the park on Sundays.
Today, Westmounters say the city is diversifying. Bruce St. Louis, president of the local lawn bowling and croquet club, says its members come from myriad backgrounds, and the average age is lowering from 70 to 60 years old. He says the city supports not only tennis and lawn bowling but also every type of house league sport — “that’s how small towns are, and here it is in the centre of a metropolis.”
St. Louis was not affected by the boil water advisory, and beyond Westmount, some observers say the advisory could raise awareness of unsafe drinking water in other parts of Canada.
“We don’t see it, but people who live up on reserves have to live that all the time," says Wilf Stefan, chief operating officer of Clearford Water Systems, a water management company based in Ottawa. “Maybe this highlights the problem when it happens in a wealthy city in the southern part of the country.”