montreal phonographe
montreal | topographies by daniel canty
5 Allan’s Hill Park 11 Hydro Corridor 12 Parc-nature Cap-St-Jacques
Cities are not just built on ideas. I like work well done and I’ll never content myself with following an island’s contours on a map. Maps don’t lie; they gracefully distort the truth. We once believed the world was flat. What did we know of islands then? Did we imagine them afloat on water, unmoored from any subsoil anchors, like the Earth itself, planted in the void, holding the sun and firmament at arm’s length? Who could reasonably consider such ideas when faced with the reality of islands? At the foot of the mountain, its silent heart, the city shields the island. The highest towers reflect one another in their numerous windows. They speak amongst themselves in a language that ignores us, and which we will not learn. The river’s odours dissipate in the effluvia of traffic, the haze of modern living, long before they reach us. Here is the core of the illusion. Take a deep breath. Go back to the beginning of the story. Once upon a time, the masters of the port, the grain barons, traded the evidence of our insularity for a promise of prosperity. They built a city that became ours by hiding the island’s reality. The immoveable ramparts of the grain silos, solid pyramids at the end of the avenue leading to the port, the brick facades of the ancient factories, conceal the way to the river. Let’s not fool ourselves: if we blast away this stony decor, we would only find another hiding behind. Beyond the concrete and the brick, an iron curtain: the suture of rails, the metal of containers, the moving armature of the port’s ships, evident as stones, slow as icebergs as they start to sail again, wailing like antediluvian beasts. Long ago, the labourers and warehouse workers, perched high along
meredith carruthers
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