Today, along with a few friends from the CACV in Verdun, we marched with numerous community housing groups from Cote des Neiges, Montreal, and across Quebec to the site of the former Blue Bonnets racetrack. The march was about raising awareness of the need for social housing, that it be considered an urgent priority locally, nationally and globally!
We got out at the Plamondon metro and noticed a crowd gathering in Parc Nelson Mandela across the street.
Not going to do a lot of commentary, let the pictures tell the tale.
And for perspective via landmarks, Saint Joseph’s Oratory in the background.
Lots of various groups and individual activists were present.
And we are off. Frapru ,as usual, was a key player in organizing this event.
Ironically we are going to march through some of the poorest parts of this city and some of the newest condo projects.
It was not a short walk, the energy was remarkable and I don’t think anyone was getting tired.
It’s always about getting the message out, most good causes and non profits do not have a McDonalds marketing budget.
Visions of Shleckmount.
Passing by one of those wonderful developments where they sell a whole load of condos, then aggressively block your view by sliding a new building in! My grandmother bought a house in suburbia where she was told there would be no commercial development around her and a year later her view included one of the first McDonalds in Canada (circa 1967).
And when we crossed Decarie Expressway at Jean Talon we passed this Montreal iconic landmark, The Orange Julep!
Drummers were awesome.
Heroes. These three people led the entire march!
I don’t think I could come up with a concept more pretentious, cynical, and unsustainable as a big box restaurant!
And here we are at our destination, the old Blue Bonnets racetrack. This space has been controversial for years because, well, developers would love to turn this into a total Shleckmount, big box restaurants – there is even a Walmart nearby…..and today we are marching for the rights of people here in Montreal and across Quebec and Canada and the World to have affordable housing.
It’s a much bigger space than you would think, than maybe you saw on TV, so any remote possible respect I may have had for horse racing died upon reviewing this space today, to think of horses being forced to race around this enormous oval under conditions such as our recent heat wave strikes me as being barbaric, end of story.
I hope we improved the world a little today.
