![]() Builders, to maximize their profits, strove to cram as many residential units as possible onto a single building lot – and as many rooms as possible into a single residential unit. Not only was the tide of immigration from Europe in full flood, but in addition, rural Quebecers were abandoning life on the farm in favour of the big city.Ī housing boom developed, yet it was concentrated in what are now the older parts of the city close to where the jobs were, rather than in outlying areas where more space was available. Montreal’s spiral staircases have their origins in the unprecedented population growth the city experienced in the late Victorian period and into the early part of the 20th century. Try finding a coffee-table book devoted to what the city looks like that doesn’t include a photo of one of David’s horrors ”circling up like a corkscrew.” Try going through a rack of postcards in Old Montreal or somewhere else where tourists gather that ignores those ”shameful steps.” If there is one part of the city’s streetscapes that has Montreal written all over it, it is our spiral staircases. It’s safe to say that if city councillors had set aside the money needed to dismantle them (and David was silent on how people would then get into their second-and third-storey apartments), they would be regarded today not as visionaries but as vandals. David went on to urge his audience to consider how Montrealers 50 years hence, in 1977, would regard them if they failed to prepare the city of tomorrow – specifically by doing something about those outside spiral staircases. But that was pro forma stuff, what any cabinet minister might have said what really seemed to engage David’s interest was Montreal’s appearance.ĭavid deplored the fact that civic leaders 50 years earlier had not had the courage to spend $10 million, or even $5 million, to create beautiful, Paris-style boulevards ”crossing the city in all directions.” Such extravagance might have led Montrealers to start stringing up councillors from the lampposts, he allowed, ”but today we would call them men of vision.”Ī high price for vision, surely, but never mind. ![]() taxes drain away people and business from this country, for example – echo today. Much of his speech was devoted to Canada’s economic prospects, and some points he made – how lower U.S. ![]() David, whose seat at the cabinet table made him a kind of minister for the arts, was speaking to the weekly luncheon of the Lions Club in the Mount Royal Hotel. ![]()
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