ALSFX Spring 2011 Newsletter

The cottage of tomorrow

I am coming back from my daily walk, in Montreal; direction the close by Villeray district. See again the family house, greet sometimes old as well rooted neighbours and relive the past.

Houses; yes, I always look at houses. They are beautiful? No, they are not; in no way; behind their cutting off of the metropolitan highway; and I do not let you get inside. Nevertheless, I imagine the magnificent picture at time of their building, in the twenties or thirties, with some more of the countryside all around. Of beautiful duplex or triplex, with a front pediment, Victorian stained glass windows, doors of the same style with a rich varnish. Balconies with well curved wooden columns and guardrails painted in beige or white; with proud forged iron fences and many other details. It was still not bad of the time of my youth.

The same houses today; but there is nothing left of their ornamentation … Front pediments gone away, stained glasses and everything else also. Doors and windows are «energy star» and fit in only in their frame... Other districts turned out better, much better fortunately. You want to see what looked like Villeray in olden days? Go to the small Molson Park at corner Beaubien and d’Iberville.

I have a wooden chalet of the fifties, on Mount "street"; those around me are of the same period and there are of the same age all around the lake, I think. Some often have a great difficulty in staying up on their piles or their uncertain foundation, seated astride on a steep slope; with the lake within reach dive. Without access road for the machinery and without sometimes the space of minimum building land, I can imagine them only to age more. And nevertheless they have, for me and others, certain charm, with a rural and old-fashioned side of the most pleasant. Their shape, their roof, their balconies in overhang, their windows, sometimes attic windows, their discreet color, please me and show off certain style.

And I imagine that one day my entire sector will be opened up; the price of lands will have exploded. Several old cottages will possibly be replaced by impressive villas which will not tolerate any more pitiful are placed next. I hope that I shall not be any more there to see mine thrown on the ground. Owners' new generation will deliver it the reflection of its opulence, its conception of the ideal house. And it will look like what? Shall we see appearing suburban houses, prototypes of the twenty-second century or even of beautiful cottages, but without any link with the overview there? Of course we live in the American continent; our personal freedom is absolute and often produces beautiful success, in this domain as in many others. And some of the castles of opposite bank are not without making me dream.

Do not think that I suggest giving up everything to a developer who will acquire us all at good price. He will transform the sector into a domain; he will take care of the road, the septic installations. He will tear down everything; he will take out a model of unique construction or in some versions and will strew our bank with it, for the benefit of fabulously rich buyers. Because it is certain that there will be buyer to the properties provided for such places.

But if the concern of the environment of our housing environment of tomorrow came to the agenda, to the size of the municipality maybe, we could promote the adoption of certain style, Wentworth-Nord style; why not? The town planning office of the municipality would have some criteria to be suggested in its drawers, would propose types of facade or roof suited. By incentive to be identified, we would invite vacationers and permanent residents to abandon the concept inherited from the suburb for something closer to the countryside house. Boards for wall covering and colors in accordance with the landscape could be privileged. One would laud the integration to the environment.

Indeed, it is not very probable that we take this way; but I hope that each will make better here than in my former district. To invest a part of one savings often, for a disappointing result in which one shall eventually become used to all the same is not commonplace; and as the beautiful, I do not know why, is often too much expensive … In fact, I know it; I lived it: the disappearance of front pediments, stained glasses, purely decorative attributes and in problem. That joined the logic of the slightest cost and the lack of vision.

All this is utopian? And if it was, on the contrary, topical; if all the development of the sector in which is at present interested the Committee on Orphan lands, for example, was the object of a certain planning? I do not speak of gobbling up millions to imagine everything and to reproduce it on a model which the unveiling would justify the visit of all the high ranked politicians. Could not we establish some rules, define a basic weft, an opened plan?

But with what resources, will you say to me? Let us take the example of our association; it has all the same several realizations in its asset and everything was made with few funds but long-term and with a lot of determination. Well, one will need maybe more here. Let us form another committee perhaps! 

Translation by Edna Schell?

Carl Chapdelaine