The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
How fun-loving Montreal proved sustainability needn’t be a snore
A Circus Quarter? Comedy festivals? Sci-fi domes? Sarah Baxter celebrates a green city that doesn’t take itself too seriously
Frédéric-Back Park was once a dump; a quarry and landfill pit almost the size of Monaco, infested with rats, roaring with waste trucks, belching potent gas, foul with 40 million tonnes of trash. So foul that, in the 1970s, the residents of surrounding Saint-Michel – Montreal’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhood – took to the streets in protest.
But looking around the park today, all is green and serene; the Herculean regeneration project is almost complete. Butterflies sup on meadows of milkweed and echinacea, sunflowers nod in the midsummer heat, new trees push forth, cyclists pedal along neat gravel paths. And, err, a fleet of alien spaceships dot the grass…
Olivier Lapierre, who is showing me around, notes my confusion. “The white spheres? They are wells to capture biogas.”
All that rubbish, now rotting beneath the park, releases methane, a key cause of climate change. These wells pump it to a power plant, where it is used to create electricity. “They are phosphorescent and glow at dusk,” Lapierre says. “They make it feel a bit sci-fi. Functional and fun.” Much like Montreal itself.
According to the Global Destination Sustainability Index, Montreal is North America’s most sustainable city. But while the Quebec province metropolis has a strong eco bent, it is seldom without a playful edge. And Frédéric-Back quite literally has a playful edge.
The new park sits by the city’s Circus Arts Quarter: the legendary Cirque du Soleil moved its HQ to Saint-Michel in 1988, and later founded the National School of Circus and the Tohu circus and community complex here. It is all part of reviving the area and bringing culture and entertainment to people for less; Tohu offers free bike and snowshoe hire for exploring the park, as well as running lower-cost events. Guide Stephanie (also a juggler and unicyclist, of course) shows me into Tohu’s large, circular, sustainably designed auditorium. “The doors at the back are tall enough for a giraffe, wide enough for an elephant,” she tells me. “That said, we have never tried.”
Montreal is a city of festivals: jazz, comedy, snow, beer – there will inevitably be something on, whenever you visit. For me, it was Tohu’s Complètement Cirque Festival (held in July), which Lapierre helps run. And its bravura centrepiece is the Giant: a free, twice-nightly spectacular that sees a daredevil troupe leap and dangle off a 50ft-high metal man. I join the crowds beneath the skyscrapers in Place Ville-Marie. As the sun sets, the music starts, the lights spin and the show begins. Incroyable! So far so fun.
I was staying at nearby Humanti, a sleek hotel-apartment complex – it calls itself a “vertical village” – designed to connect city, visitors and local community. It is a past Best Futura Project finalist, an accolade that recognises buildings whose architecture and environmental ethos offer a glimpse of what the future could hold. I especially liked the abundance of both natural light and Canadian art, and – a nice detail – the gym’s wooden eco-machines, which use water resistance, not electricity.
Lapierre says Montreal is a city that “rewards the wanderer”; a place where the joy is in making your own discoveries, sauntering through neighbourhoods, not ticking off sights.
Perhaps it is not surprising that a city whose official language is French rewards the lifestyle of the flâneur. So that’s what I do.