After downtown Montreal with its money generating office towers and high rentals, the borough of NDG/CDN is the biggest contributor to the city tax pool. However, for the longest time it has had the lowest per capita budget of any borough in the city of Montreal and even this has been disproportionately spent in the Cote des Neiges sector in successful attempts to buy votes there. This column tells the story of how thousands of determined NDG residents turned things around and have finally forced reluctant and lazy local reps to provide some significant services for their community.
Back in September 2000 when I launched the campaign for an NDG sports and recreation complex, the chances looked pretty bleak but the vast Benny Farm site was up for sale and the necessary land was available. But even though NDG was the only significant area of the city without a sports and recreation complex, city hall wanted to keep it that way because this left more money to throw about in points east.
However, people got excited about finally getting something important done for NDG and seemed to sense that this could be the start of future change.
Literally thousands of NDGers responded to the campaign by affixing their own postage stamps and mailing back door-to-door petition postcards demanding that the centre go ahead - and then repeated the process on three or four more occasions across the ensuing years.
Public pressure first convinced Canada Lands to reserve a section of the Benny Farm housing site for the future centre and city hall was then forced and shamed into buying the land for the project. Soon, the tipping point arrived wherein the population became sufficiently involved and informed and came to expect the project rather than to merely want it. Expectation is the terror of politicians because, while failure to respond to wants is rather expected, political failure to fulfil genuine, deeply felt, expectations is usually rewarded with "throwing the rascals out."
Despite growing public pressure and support for the project, the borough mayor nonetheless tried to deflect the concerted public pressure by proposing to build in Benny Park across the road from the land already reserved for the project. The idea of building in the park was clearly intended to generate public opposition to the project since people do not like the loss of already limited green space.
If the neighbours could have been encouraged to sign up in sufficient numbers to call a local referendum and overturn the zoning change necessary for building in the park, they could then have been blamed for killing the project and the local reps could have gone back to sleep. Fortunately, the park-rezoning opponents failed to get enough signatures and the politicians had no way out left to them but to get on with it and forge ahead. Even NDG's MNA, who had previously opposed the sports and recreation centre project, was shamed into representation and helped to pry out provincial funding to help realise the project.
Now, thanks to unrelenting public pressure, it seems that NDG, which has until now been the uncared for cash cow of the city, is going to start getting some services comparable to those already provided for everyone else in the city.
A NEW LIBRARY FOR NDG
Parallel to the sports and recreation situation, NDG also remains the only significant area of the city that lacks a proper library (there are currently two tiny offerings that provide extremely limited services). Now, following last year's closure of the private and much-loved Fraser Hickson Library, there is no longer any excuse for withholding city library services from the community. With 60,000 people living in NDG there is a pressing need for a library at least up to half-sized Westmount's standards.
When I launched the sports and recreation complex campaign in 2000, the new city library was always part of the plan but it would have been unrealistic to press for too much at the beginning. Now that we have won the first phase of the program we can now launch the campaign for a new, first-class, city library on the Benny Farm land that is now available for it. With the ball now rolling I imagine that the population of NDG will once more come on board and succeed in making the west end an even better place to live. Nothing succeeds like success.
And, since this is a story about how committed people get things done it needs to be said that the 10,000 or so people who participated in the campaign over the years are the ones who have made the sports and recreation complex possible. Thank you all. In addition, while copies of the first petition postcards that you mailed back to me were presented to city hall, I preserved and laminated the thousands of colourful originals in a tableau four feet high and 60 feet long. When the sports and recreation complex is built it is my intention to ensure that they will be displayed there as a permanent reminder of what public participation and individuals' tenacity can achieve. The current local reps may not agree but, if you share my viewpoint, it will be your job to ensure that they do not survive the next election to have a further say in the matter.
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