Search the Community

Go to the website http://www.ccc.umontreal.ca/fiche_projet.php?lang=en&pId=1670&etape=1 which features all contest entries...spend a while looking at all kinds of proposals!! Repenser et redéfinir le logement social au centre-ville de Montréal / Rethinking and Redefining Social Housing in Montreal’s City Centre Competitions : 2007 Project : (Rami Abou khalil, Lia Ruccolo, Lawrence Siu, Luciano Stella) Competitions : 2007 Project : Scott Waugh, Kelly Doran, Christian Joakim Competitions : 2007 Project : (Khuyen Khuong, Ji-Young Soulliere, Roy Kuo, Gabriel Garcia) Competitions : 2007 Project : (Elisa-Jane Boucher, Renée Mailhot, Yannick Laurin, Caroline Noël ) Competitions : 2007 Project : (Dominique Côté, Simon Sauvé, Martin Belzile)

Un astronaute américain a fait rayonner Montréal partout dans le monde ce matin. Scott Kelly a en effet publié sur Twitter une photo de Montréal prise de la Station spatiale internationale (SSI). Âgé de 54 ans, Scott Kelly est au coeur d'une mission d'un an dans la SSI. Parti le 27 mars dernier, il documente son séjour à travers une série documentaire en collaboration avec Time Magazine. http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/08/18/un-astronaute-publie-une-photo-de-montreal-prise-de-lespace

Publié le 26 novembre 2008 à 15h35 | Mis à jour à 15h38 Les Red Wings n'échappent pas à la récession «C'est un secret de polichinelle que le Michigan est un des états que la récession touche le plus durement», a souligné le vétéran défenseur Chris Chelios Robert Laflamme La Presse Canadienne Detroit Les temps sont durs aux Etats-Unis. La crise financière qui secoue le pays de l'Oncle Sam éprouve particulièrement la ville de l'automobile, Detroit. Les Red Wings le constatent amèrement. Sur la glace, tout baigne dans l'huile pour les champions de la coupe Stanley, qui ont clôturé le premier quart de la saison avec une récolte de 14 victoires et de 32 points. A l'extérieur de la patinoire, «Hockeytown» a du plomb dans l'aile. Les déboires des géants de l'automobile, General Motors et Ford, affectent grandement l'économie de la région. Les propriétaires des Red Wings, la famille Illitch, doit user d'ingéniosité afin de remplir le Joe Louis Arena. «C'est un secret de polichinelle que le Michigan est un des états que la récession touche le plus durement», a souligné le vétéran défenseur Chris Chelios, mercredi. «On remarque que les assistances sont à la baisse, et ce n'est pas surprenant, a-t-il repris. On sait que ça n'a rien à voir avec l'intérêt ou la fidélité de nos partisans. Ils veulent nous soutenir, mais ils n'en ont pas les moyens.» Son coéquipier Kris Draper a fait le même constat. «Les gens sont emballés par nos performances, ils nous le laissent savoir partout où on va en ville, a-t-il affirmé. Ils n'ont rien perdu de la passion qui les anime. Financièrement toutefois, ils sont incapables de venir à l'aréna. Les familles doivent composer avec une situation économique difficile.» Billets trop dispendieux Chelios, activiste ces dernières années au sein de l'Association des joueurs de la LNH, a identifié le coût trop onéreux des billets à travers la LNH comme un problème auquel on doit s'attaquer. «C'était (le coût des billets) une de nos préoccupations avant le lock-out, a-t-il relevé. On croyait que le conflit servirait à alléger le fardeau des amateurs, ça n'a pas été le cas. On adorerait voir plus d'amateurs dans les amphithéâtres, mais les billets sont trop dispendieux, surtout dans le contexte actuel.» C'est d'ailleurs avec comme toile de fond la crise financière en Amérique que les dirigeants de l'Association des joueurs vont se réunir, au début de décembre, afin d'établir la pertinence de rouvrir le contrat de travail, à la conclusion de la saison. Le directeur exécutif de l'association, Paul Kelly, est en voie de compléter la tournée des 30 équipes. «J'ai confiance en Paul et en l'équipe qui l'entoure, Glenn Healy et Steve Larmer, qui est de retour. Le nouveau comité me rappelle l'arrivée de Bob Goodenow à la tête de l'association, il y a plusieurs années», a souligné Chelios, qui a joué un rôle important dans le renvoi du prédécesseur de Kelly, Ted Saskin. Chelios ne sait pas quelle approche le syndicat va adopter, mais il estime que la LNH ne peut pas se permettre un autre conflit de travail après celui qui a provoqué l'annulation de la saison 2004-05. «La montée en flèche du dollar canadien, la saison dernière, a été une merveilleuse chose pour la ligue qui a vu ses revenus augmenter considérablement. La baisse du dollar dernièrement va modifier le portrait. On va voir ce qui va arriver. Si on peut trouver une façon que les amateurs payent leurs billets moins cher, tout le monde serait heureux.»

Ooh La La Kelly Ripa finds romance in Montreal. By Joseph Guinto. Photograph by Robert Ascroft. Kelly Ripa has talked to every single living celebrity in America. Twice. Maybe even more. I have not verified this fact, per se, but she’s served alongside TV legend Regis Philbin for almost seven years as cohost of Live with Regis and Kelly, so it must be true. Or close to it. And yet, Ripa — plenty famous in her own right, known for acting on All My Children and in sitcoms as well as for playing the role of TV talker — is still genuinely interested in the vaporing of the vainglorious, the gabbing of the glitterati. You know, the stuff that famous people talk about. She Said… Here’s where Kelly Ripa parle français in Montreal. LODGING Hôtel le St-James, very expensive, (514) 841-3111, http://www.hotellestjames.com Hotel St-Paul, expensive, (514) 380-2222, http://www.hotelstpaul.com DINING Eggspectation, inexpensive, (514) 282-0119, http://www.eggspectation.ca Ferreira Café, moderate to expensive, (514) 848-0988, http://www.ferreiracafe.com Olive & Gourmando, inexpensive to moderate, (514) 350-1083, http://www.oliveetgourmando.com NIGHTLIFE Vauvert, expensive, (514) 876-2823, http://www.restaurantvauvert.com THINGS TO SEE AND TO DO IN *MONTREAL Formula One Grand Prix du Canada, http://www.formula1.com Just for Laughs Comedy Tour, (514) 845-2322, http://www.justforlaughs.ca Montreal International Jazz Festival, (514) 871-1881, http://www.montrealjazzfest.com Old Montreal, http://www.vieux.montreal.qc.ca Spa Diva, (514) 985-9859, http://www.spadiva.ca SHOPPING Les Cours Mont-Royal, (514) 842-7777, http://www.lcmr.ca “I’m a pop-culture junkie,” she says from her office inside ABC’s Manhattan headquarters, where Live is produced. “I never get tired of it. There’s always something they haven’t revealed, something that you’ve never heard anywhere else. I really find it fascinating.” Then again, not everything the famous and rich say and do is fascinating. And, to be sure, some things are simply better left unrevealed. To wit, do you really want to know that Britney Spears had a number-three value meal with a Coke at McDonald’s last night? Probably not. But many of us — or at least I — still manage to obtain this type of knowledge on a daily basis. It would be wrong to blame Ripa for that. She’s certainly never grabbed a camera and followed a pop star to a fast-food restaurant. (I have not verified this fact, per se, though surely it is true.) But Ripa, 37, does regularly open her own life to the other pop-culture junkies in the world, right down to discussing what she had for dinner last night. Each weekday morning on Live, she and Philbin, 76, engage in 20 minutes of remarkably unscripted banter that touches on everything from their noshing habits to the day’s news (well, celebrity news, anyway) to where babies come from — specifically, where Ripa’s babies come from, in at least one case. I had somehow forgotten about this when Ripa and I recently chatted. We were talking about Montreal, her favorite romantic getaway and a place that she and her husband, fellow All My Children alum Mark Consuelos, visit nearly every year sans the kids (Michael, 10; Lola, 6; and Joaquin, 4). But then, exactly 10 minutes and 34 seconds into our conversation, Ripa reminds me that she keeps few secrets from the public. “One of our children was conceived in Montreal, actually,” she says, quite unprompted. “Mark and I went for our anniversary one year, and Joaquin was our souvenir.” This is one of those things that we — okay, maybe it’s just me — actually don’t want to know. Or maybe it’s just something that we — or again, maybe it’s just me — don’t know how to react to. Regis would likely come up with something witty or wacky to say in reply. The best I can do is, “Oh, so Joaquin came right out speaking French, eh?” I am no Regis. Thankfully, since Ripa talks for a living, she bails me out. “That’s why we gave Joaquin the exotic name,” she says. “I was going to name him Jean Pierre. But I thought that was too much. Jean Pierre Consuelos doesn’t really go together.” Jean Pierre. It’s probably just a joke. But still, I hadn’t heard that before. It’s funny — and, sure, fascinating. You know what else is fascinating? Montreal. Especially Kelly Ripa’s Montreal. Here are the things you do want to know about. We Said… Here’s where we allons in Montreal. LODGING Novotel Montréal Centre, moderate, (514) 861-6000, http://www.novotelmontreal.com. The Canadian dollar is no longer a bargain, but the Novotel still is. Its budget-friendly digs are comfortable and convenient, and it’s near the intersection of Rue Sainte-Catherine and Rue Crescent, where clubs, restaurants, and shops abound. Opus Hotel Montreal, moderate to expensive, (514) 843-6000, http://www.opushotel.com. If you were a touring rocker with a touch of fame, you’d probably stay at this slick, modern downtown hotel. It would be a smart move. The Opus offers its style at a discount, compared with prices at Montreal’s other sleek digs. DINING Au Pied de Cochon, moderate to expensive, (514) 281-1114, http://www.restaurantaupieddecochon.ca. You will be fighting for a reservation with foodies from around the world at this simply decorated eatery, where pork and foie gras are the main attractions. Yes, they cook them together. Banquise, inexpensive, (514) 525-2415. Located in the Plateau neighborhood, largely a French-speaking area of town, this diner-style restaurant serves more than a dozen different kinds of poutine. That’s a Quebec specialty featuring, when at its most basic, french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. C’est magnifique! Le Réservoir, inexpensive to moderate, (514) 849-7779. This neighborhood joint is just off what Montrealers call the Main — Boulevard Saint-Laurent, the old dividing line between the French- and English-speaking sides of town. Celebrate the détente with international snacks, and drink house-brewed beers until the last call, at three a.m. NIGHTLIFE Casa del Popolo, (514) 284-0122, http://www.casadelpopolo.com. Maybe you’ll get lucky and catch the next Arcade Fire performance at this venue, which is popular with the indie-rock set. Les Deux Pierrots, (514) 861-1270, http://www.lespierrots.com. Does sitting in a brick-walled bar in Montreal’s oldest neighborhood while singing along to French and English cabaret songs sound silly? Well, then, it’s time to get silly. SHOPPING Marché Bonsecours, (514) 872-7730, http://www.marchebonsecours.qc.ca. Unfortunately, they’re no longer selling fresh vegetables at this European-style marketplace. But they are selling locally made crafts, so that’s nice. ATTRACTIONS La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal, (514) 842-2925, http://www.basilique nddm.org. Is the interior of this scaled-down, nineteenth-century replica of Paris’s Notre-Dame more dramatic than the original’s? That depends on how you feel about the stunning use of the color blue. Le Mont Royal, (514) 843-8240, http://www.lemontroyal.qc.ca. Frederick Law Olmsted, who laid out New York’s Central Park, also designed this sprawling space. It’s filled with hiking and biking trails and is capped by a 98-foot-high cross, which honors Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, the city’s founder. About Montreal: There are more than 3.6 million people in Montreal and its immediate urban area. That’s nearly half the population of the province of Quebec. Some 70 percent of those people are native French speakers, making Montreal the second-largest francophone city in the world, after Paris. Plus, Montreal is in Canada. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “My husband has friends who live in Montreal,” Ripa says, “and he’d been raving about it for years, telling me how wonderful it is and that we just had to go and that I would love it. The first time I went, I think, was for our fourth or fifth wedding anniversary. When we landed, everyone at the airport was speaking French. So I turned to Mark, and I said quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life. I said, ‘You’re right; it’s so romantic and wonderful. It’s just like being in another country.’ He said, ‘I hate to burst your bubble, but we are in another country.’ ” About Montreal: The city has seen a boom in swank boutique hotels in recent years, especially in Old Montreal, a neighborhood with narrow, cobblestoned streets that dates back to the founding of the city, in 1642. Plus, Montreal smells nice. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “The St-James in Old Montreal is a wonderful hotel,” Ripa says. “It is simply luxurious. Also, the St-Paul Hotel is very boutiquey and kind of rock and roll. They give you these wonderful colognes that you can take with you when you leave. I sometimes call the hotel and ask them to send me some because they smell so good.” About Montreal: The city claims to have more restaurants per resident than any other city in North America. It is famous for café au lait, smoked meats, and game-based Quebecois cuisine. Plus, some of the restaurants serve breakfast even at lunchtime. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “Mark and I go there without our kids,” Ripa explains. “It’s the only place we go without our kids. I mean, I know it’s wonderful for children, but it’s just been our romantic-getaway place. So we usually get up and have breakfast at lunchtime — which, you have to *understand, with three kids, that’s such a luxury for us to not have to get up early. So we usually go to Eggspectation. It’s a very good sort of diner-breakfast place. There’s also a specialty place called Olive & Gourmando in Old Montreal. It has café au lait and croissants and beautiful breads. Unfortunately, I don’t know the street it’s on. Mark and I just sort of wander around there.” About Montreal: The city has thriving live jazz and rock scenes — the noted indie act Arcade Fire is just one rock band to emerge from Montreal. And the city is packed with watering holes. There are, on average, 9.5 bars per square kilometer. Plus, there are lots of restaurants and music venues (which can also be called watering holes). About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “If you [can], go to Old Montreal. There are these little cobblestone streets, and every place is a jamming supper club or an amazing jazz bar,” Ripa says. “I just think it’s magic. “You have dinner very late there. It’s very European in that way. Then a lot of these restaurants that start out serving food will turn into nightclubs. All of a sudden, the tables vanish and a DJ comes out. “They have this place called Vauvert in the St. Paul. You can have dinner, and then right after dinner, the DJ comes in. They call it diabolique when the DJ is there on Saturday nights. It’s like a big party. So you eat dinner, and then you dance. It’s one-stop shopping. Plus, the people are gorgeous, and the waitresses have designer uniforms. It’s all very sleek and very elegant.” About Montreal: More than half the Canadian fashion industry’s workers are employed in Montreal. It’s no surprise, then, that the city is home to numerous fashion designers and boutiques. Plus, there are spas. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “For shopping, I like to go to the Cours Mont-Royal,” Ripa says. “It’s kind of like a mall, but there are a lot of small boutiques in there. I mean, you have to buy something when you travel. You have to at least get the kids something. You’re leaving them. ‘Bye! We’ll be back in two days. Have fun with Grandma and Papa!’ Also, I really love Spa Diva, which is in the Cours Mont-Royal. It’s very relaxing.” About Montreal: Despite the fact that Montreal is known for its French speakers and French heritage, one in four Montrealers is an immigrant, and the city is surprisingly diverse, supporting its own Chinatown and Little Italy. There’s also a slice of Portugal. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “There’s a wonderful place called Ferreira Café, which Mark took me to for my birthday one year,” Ripa says. “It’s Portuguese food and is just fabulous. Mark kidnapped me. I’m not kidding. He flew me blindfolded to Montreal and took me to Ferreira. Well, I was allowed to take the blindfold off when we landed. I didn’t have to eat blindfolded. He had me home in time for the show the next day.” About Montreal: Winters are long and can be stingingly cold, which explains why the city loves its warm-weather festivals. It hosts international mega-gatherings to celebrate jazz, comedy, and film. It also has really fast car races. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “Mark loves the Formula One race,” Ripa says. “He goes every year if he can. That’s in June. They also have the jazz festival. That’s great; it’s in July. But the comedy festival, for me, is the most special. You see the most amazing performers. You just know that any day now, a sitcom is going to come out of one of the great performances you just saw on the stage.” About Montreal: The city is the site of a semi-risqué routine performed at the aforementioned Just for Laughs comedy festival by a certain American star named Kelly Ripa. It included some, ah, other performers. About Kelly Ripa’s Montreal: “Yeah, thanks for noticing that I did that,” Ripa says. “It was amazing fun. The joke was that we hired all these drag queens to do a burlesque striptease with me. I had just had a baby, and they all looked much more like women than I did. So people were like, ‘Oh, look at these beautiful women … and Kelly.’ Then the audience figured out that they were all men … and Kelly.” Career Questions Kelly Ripa explains what she does when she’s not relaxing in Montreal. Did you set out to be an actor/talk-show host? No. My whole career has been a series of accidents. I accidentally got into acting because my friends were doing it. They were doing extra work, and they were making good money. So I was like, Hey, why not? That led to the soap [All My Children], which led to the talk show, which led to the sitcom, which led to the production company. What production company? Mark and I have a TV production company together now. We sold a scripted show that did not get picked up this past fall, and we just sold a pilot to the History Channel for an interesting show called Wild Gourmet. It’s about a man who is a trained chef and an anthropology major. He takes you through a culture’s hunting and eating of a specific animal. Why production? You can’t be on camera forever. Very few people can. So I’m one of those people who would eventually like to work behind the camera. Wait — hasn’t Regis been on camera forever? He’s the one in a million. He’s always relevant. He’s always charming. He’s always gorgeous. [Laughs] I don’t see it turning out that way for me. Speaking of Regis, I’ve heard people say he’s quitting when his contract is up. True? I don’t believe that. I’ve been hearing that since I got here. He loves it. I love it. It’s a great place to work. It’s a fun, sort of easy schedule for people like us, who really just want to be on vacation all the time. You did voice work for two animated movies that are coming out soon. What was that like? I don’t even remember. You do these things, and then for, like, the next seven years or something, they animate the film. It’s all that computer animation. I had almost forgotten that I did them. One of them, Fly Me to the Moon, my son is also in. I play a fly, and my son plays the friend of one of my maggots. It’s very cute. http://www.americanwaymag.com/tabid/2855/tabidext/3465/default.aspx

When heritage is a rebuke By MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette November 6, 2010 Yvon Lamothe, former maintenance foreman at St. Julien Hospital, says the vast building where many Duplessis orphans lived and suffered is a landmark that should be saved. Yvon Lamothe cho kes up with emotion when he talks about the vast mental hospital that has loomed over this lakeside village for 138 years. "We had certificates for being the cleanest hospital in Quebec. The hallways shone like a mirror," says Lamothe, 69, a former maintenance foreman at St. Julien Hospital, 200 kilometres east of Montreal, near Thetford Mines. In its heyday from 1940-1970, as many as 1,500 mental patients lived in the red brick asylum that stretches the length of three football fields along the main street. Now, the village of 2,000 is facing a future without the landmark, which closed in 2003. In the next few weeks, the Quebec government will issue a call for tenders to strip out asbestos and demolish the sprawling complex, including a 500-seat auditorium and chapel featuring multi-coloured interior brickwork, hand-forged copper medallions and soaring stained-glass windows. "You can't tear down this building," says Lamothe, who knows every inch of the sprawling complex built between 1917 and 1953 by the Sisters of Charity of Quebec. A previous structure dating to 1872 burned down in 1916. "This is a source of pride in a small place like here," he says. "You could have housing in this building. You could have a university." But Alice Quinton, 72, a patient at St. Julien Hospital from age seven to 23, welcomes the prospect of seeing it demolished. Quinton, who entered the hospital in 1945, was one of thousands of normal children falsely diagnosed as mentally retarded and confined to mental institutions under the reign of Premier Maurice Duplessis from 1936 to 1939 and 1944 to 1959. Advocates for the Duplessis orphans say doctors and religious orders helped perpetrate the fraud to collect federal subsidies for their care. Quinton endured beatings, being tied to metal bedsprings for weeks at a time and given anti-psychotic medications in the hospital for mentally-retarded women. "We were marked for life," says Quinton, now a 72-year-old grandmother in Longueuil whose ordeal is chronicled in a 1991 book by Pauline Gill that brought the orphans' plight to public attention, Les enfants de Duplessis (Editions Libre Expression). In 2004, Quinton received $27,575 under a $58.7-million program to compensate 3,191 Duplessis orphans who endured abuse in mental hospitals and orphanages. But nothing can make up for stolen childhoods in institutions where electroshock, beatings and solitary confinement were routinely meted out as punishment, says Quinton. "That hospital was a curse," she says. But Rod Vienneau of Joliette, a tireless advocate for the Duplessis orphans, suggested that tearing down the hospital will not help their cause. "Once it is torn down and they build apartment blocks, nobody will remember," says Vienneau, who would rather see the building remain as a monument to the orphans. The debate over St. Julien Hospital illustrates how, half a century after Duplessis's death, Quebecers remain conflicted over the legacy of an era when Roman Catholic orders took charge of education, health care and social services. For some, the nuns and brothers who founded schools, orphanages, hospitals and other institutions in every corner of the province were unpaid heroes who succoured society's rejects: the poor, homeless, sick and disabled. For others, they were the foot soldiers of a politico-religious hierarchy that jealously guarded its privileges and punished those who strayed -notably, unwed mothers and their babies. Wherever one stands on that controversy, many people would just as soon erasethememoryof placeslikeSt. Julien Hospital. "I'm very attached to heritage," says Andre Garant, 64, a retired history teacher and prolific author on the history of the neighbouring Beauce region. "But personally, if a building like St. Ferdinand disappears from the map, it wouldn't bother me. It's a black page in the history of Quebec." In 1872, six nuns from the Sisters of Charity of Quebec arrivedinthehamletof St. Ferdinand at the invitation of the local cure, Julien Bernier. They founded a hospice and girls' school, and within a year, 20 patients with intellectual disabilities -then considered an illness -were on their way from the overcrowded provincial asylum in Beauport. By the 1940s, nearly 1,000 patients filled St. Julien's 84-bed dormitories, each overseen by one or two nuns. J.P. Lamontagne, a tall, stern family doctor who practised in St. Ferdinand for 60 years, was medical director at the hospital, which had no psychiatrist. On June 6, 1937, a school bus deposited eight-year-old Albertine Allard at St. Julien. She would not see the outside world again until she was nearly 40. "When I got there, I cried and cried. I shed a lot of tears. After that, I got used to it," says Allard, 82, who now lives with two other former patients in a pleasant foster home overlooking Lake William. Allard believes she was born in Quebec City but doesn't know who her parents were or where they came from. "It was tough at the beginning. If you were bad, they put you in a cell to calm your nerves. I'll tell you the truth, Madame. I was very naughty. You can write that down." Allard's brown eyes dance as she recalls how she and some other children shut a hospital worker in a cupboard. But they become sombre when she remembers the punishments for misbehaving. "There are things we don't like to talk about," says Allard. "I was tied to some springs. No mattress. And then they put a bucket under the springs." Tied on their backs on coil bedsprings, their arms wrapped in a straitjacket, inmates urinated and defecated on the bed. Meals consisted of gruel administered by spoon. The punishment lasted a week or more. "When you get out of there, you have no more courage to play tricks," Allard says. Despite such horrors, she is not bitter. "Sometimes the nuns had to be strict because we were pretty rough," she says. "But I appreciated the nuns because they taught us to work. If we learned to work, it was thanks to them." Those inmates who were able to work scrubbed and waxed floors, darned garments, knit slippers and fed and washed other patients who were unable to care for themselves. Allard sewed mattresses from recycled felt hats, helped out in the electroshock room by helping to hold down subjects and bathed dead bodies. "I told myself, a dead person is less mean than one who's alive," says Allard, demonstrating how she was taught to glue corpses' eyes shut by inserting a folded piece of newspaper under the eyelid. But Myriam Kelly, 77, remains bitter over the abuse she suffered at St. Julien, including electroshock, injections of anti-psychotic drugs, beatings with chains, solitary confinement and ice-water baths followed by beatings with a scrubbing brush. Born to an anglophone family in Quebec City, Kelly lost most of her English after her mother placed her in an orphanage at age three. At six, she was transferred to St. Ferdinand until she was released at age 21 in 1954. "My mother was Protestant, so I came from the devil," says Kelly, the youngest of 12 children whose father died when she was two. Once, she heard a nun batter a small child to death for crying. "I was really martyred," said Kelly, now a Drummondville resident who recounts her sufferings in a book, Memoire desertee (deserted memory), written with Ginette Girard (Feuille-T-on, 2003). In his 2002 memoir Docteur et citoyen (Boreale), late Quebec cabinet minister Denis Lazure, who died in 2008, recalled his days as a young psychiatrist in Quebec asylums where generous use of tranquillizers, straitjackets, isolation cells and electroshock without medication were routine. Doctors injected patients with insulin to induce diabetic comas, from which some never awoke, Lazure wrote. During the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, lay staff replaced nuns in key positions and employment boomed. When Luc Allaire became a cook at the hospital in 1960, about 150 employees, including 60 nuns, cared for more than 1,400 patients. Within 20 years, the ration of workers to patients had risen to nearly one-on-one. High-functioning patients, like Allard, moved out to rooms in the village but returned to the hospital every day to work and take part in activities. "We were like savages when we left the hospital," says Allard. "People didn't accept us, because they knew we came from St. Julien Hospital. We were the crazies." A 1984 wildcat strike by 717 orderlies caused bitter tensions and a successful class-action suit against the strikers on behalf of patients. The re-drawing of administrative regions in 1993 amputated most of the territory the hospital had formerly served, says Jacques Faucher, 66, a retired social worker who was in charge of deinstitutionalization at the hospital from 1973-1993. "Circumstances worked against us," he says. Patients were transferred to foster homes and other facilities in Thetford Mines and Victoriaville, and the hospital emptied. "When the ministry said the hospital no longer has a health-care vocation, I think they signed the death warrant for the hospital," says Faucher. Behind its low stone wall topped by a wrought iron fence, St. Julien Hospital looks as if it could spring to life at a moment's notice. "You could move in tomorrow," says Annmarie Adams, William C. Macdonald professor of architecture at McGill University. The hospital's monumental facade reads like an inventory of Quebec architecture, Adams notes, from the 1917 convent with its silver cupola at one end to the streamlined 1953 hospital wing at the other. "I think it's a fabulous illustration of the changing history of hospital design in the 20th century. You can almost read it as a timeline from the '20s through to the '50s," Adams says. Razing St. Julien Hospital would be a wasteful blunder, says Adams, who notes that many former asylums elsewhere in North America and in Europe have been recycled as condos, colleges, seniors' complexes and hotels. St. Julien Hospital is in near-perfect condition, Adams notes, in contrast to many of those structures, such as Buffalo's Richardson Olmsted Complex, a former state asylum. "It's like yanking the heart out of the town," Adams said of the demolition plan. But Danielle Dussault, a spokesperson for the Corporation d'hebergement du Quebec (CHQ), the real-estate arm of the province's health and social services ministry, said the agency was unable to find a qualified buyer when it advertised the building in 2008. The government was prepared to give the building away for a dollar if the buyer assumed all costs related to upkeep and was entirely self-financing, she says. "Just the cost of heating and maintaining it is $1.2 million a year -and it's empty," says Dussault. She would not provide estimates on the cost of the multimillion-dollar demolition, which will be spread over three years. Filmmaker Serge Gagne wasamongagroupof St. Ferdinand residents who submitted a bid to acquire the former hospital in 2008. The Cooperative de developpement local de St. Ferdinand (COSODE-LO) proposed to convert the property for housing, cultural activities, a rural research centre and greenhouses. "This is a jewel for the village," says Gagne, who bemoaned that municipal and provincial politicians did little to save the building. "The COSODELO was a social project that would have benefitted people here." The CHQ rejected the proposal from because the project would have required government subsidies. In the rear of the hospital, row after row of grim, caged balconies and a prison-like catwalk stare out over a fenced pool and playground with rusting swings. A peeling summer pavilion strikes a mournful note under a lowering sky. "All is sadness. The vibrations are very powerful," says Andre Bourassa, president of the Quebec Order of Architects and a longtime advocate for saving the hospital. "It is a major social point of reference, a (former) local industry and an architectural landmark," says Bourassa. Negative associations with the Duplessis era are one reason buildings like St. Julien Hospital are underappreciated, says Tania Martin, a Canada Research Chair in Built Religious Heritage and associate professor at of architecture at Universite Laval. "It's the backlash of the Quiet Revolution," she says. Martin says it is senseless to sacrifice the hospital, which is ideal for a large institution like a university or for other purposes like housing or a hotel. "Can't we be more imaginative? Is there a need that this building can respond to?" she asks. "If we're going to look at it from the point of view of sustainable development, the greenest building is the one that is already built," Martin adds. Gagne continues to hope for an 11th-hour reprieve. "Here in Quebec, we say, 'Je me souviens,' but we demolish everything. "This is a witness to our history. To destroy it would be to eliminate part of our history and we don't have the right." [email protected] © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/When+heritage+rebuke/3786992/story.html#ixzz14XcJ84E3