Élyse R.

Fer et Titane (French for Iron and Titanium) is the title of a song by Gilles Vigneault*, who has also written many more songs then the well known refrain of Gens du pays. It is also the original name of a major industrial polluter that operates a vast metallurgical complex in Sorel, one of the «Heavy Metal» cities in Quebec.

Élyse is a native of that city. What she actually knows is that she was born in the Notre-Dame de Sorel hospital, but was adopted by a Verdun family when she was only a few days’ old. This is quite paradoxical for a lady who is now executive director of Ville en vert, an organization in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, which realizes projects in urban agriculture and biodiversity, healthy eating, sustainable mobility and waste management!

People I've introduced to you so far were generally unknown to me before I met them over the course of the summer, but Élyse’s case is a little different. We first met last year in the backyard of mutual friends who held a big summer BBQ meant to become an annual ritual. As we live in the same neighborhood, I also see her sometimes in the morning with her children on their way to school on foot or by bike. She attaches, by the way, great importance to their education.

It was during the inauguration of the Environmental Showcase in Cartierville, on 28 September, that we reconnected. The group photo with her Ville en vert colleagues was taken on this occasion.

Élyse lived in different Montreal neighborhoods before settling in Ahuntsic. She and her family even stayed a few years in Laval. Even though they lived near an orange line metro station, these Montrealers at heart felt somewhat out of place.

Because her father died when she was young, her mother’s resources were modest. Élyse thus managed to pursue her studies by working twenty hours a week. She has worked at the well-known Ice cream shop in Outremont, Le Bilboquet, while studying in college and at the beginning of her university studies at UQAM in Business Administration (marketing). Like many people today, she held several jobs before reaching her early thirties. While completing an MBA in Strategic Planning and Management at UQAM, she worked as a junior analyst in financial companies, as lecture and as assistant coordinator for operations and marketing in technology firms. Having an entrepreneurial spirit, she also worked as consultant to retailers.

It was while she was studying for her Masters in Environment at Sherbrooke University that she started working in this sector in our borough. From a small Éco-quartier office in Cartierville and an initial budget hardly sufficient for a salary and a half, she has gradually assembled an organization that now employs fifteen permanent employees and a dozen other people on temporary basis. Showing strong will and initiative, this small team of highly educated young people oversees many projects with an environmental and social impact. Passionate about their projects, these people are, however, working in precarious conditions depending on the financing they obtain. Their efforts to ensure the stability of this non-profit organization are always to start over. When I see their status and that of people working in the community organizations, I cannot help but think that there is something wrong in our collective priorities!

You can get an idea of heir qualifications and of the diversity of their projects by visiting the Ville en vert website whose link appears at the end of the article. You can also purchase eco-friendly products at one of their two eco-boutiques either at 10416 Lajeunesse Street or at 5765 West, Gouin Boulevard.

Concurrently, Élyse continues to be interested in other health issues related to the environment. She participated in the "Sabotage hormonal project" of the Réseau des femmes en environnement and continues to raise awareness about the different impacts of endocrine disrupters on human health and reproduction. She also said that with everything she has seen and learned in environment, she would give much more room to science in her studies should she be a teenager today.

A citizen involved in her community, Élyse has also been vice-president and treasurer of the Regional Council of Montreal environment. After our meeting in the Ville en vert offices, she was getting ready to attend a meeting of the Board of the Collège Ahuntsic, where she serves as administrator.

Élyse in the eco-boutique L'Escale verte, 10416 Lajeunesse street

Élyse in the eco-boutique L'Escale verte, 10416 Lajeunesse street

Michael B.

On a rainy October Friday, I went back to Blume, a flower shop on the Promenade Fleury, hoping that the florist would agree to resume the conversation we had started the day before when I bought flowers for my wife on the day of our anniversary.

At the door, I came across a small note "back in five minutes." So I strolled around.

It was the day after the opening of the hockey season. It was raining. Curiously, in the autumnal gloom, the flag of the Montreal’s Canadien hockey club at the storefront of Le Tablier Rouge was standing out more strongly than on sunny days. In good weather, it looks a bit lost in the shadow inside of the porch. So I pulled out my camera to take a picture of circumstance.

As I pointed the lens towards the front window of the business, a gentleman in his white cook outfit was walking in. Seconds after he entered, a young man came out to ask me why I was taking a photo. I started to explain that I did not have any more specific purpose than to capture the light of the moment. But, since we had started a conversation, I asked him if he would be willing to have his picture taken and answer some questions. This is how chance encounters often happen.

This young man, featured in the photo with his red apron (tablier rouge in French), is Michael B. At his side is Renato P., Chef at La Molisana, a restaurant across the street. Michael has practically grown up in this restaurant opened by an uncle over thirty years ago and now headed by his father.

In his youth, he attended Our Lady of Pompei school on St-Michel Boulevard north of Sauvé. He played a lot of soccer in leagues in the north of the city. With a family background like his, it was natural that he studied at the Institut de Tourisme et Hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ), where he graduated from the Advanced Culinary Arts program. Subsequently, he traveled to Europe. He studied at the Codignat Château in France with a Michelin two-starred chef, and in Puglia, Italy.

Le Tablier Rouge opened in the spring of 2014. There was previously a butcher’s shop at the same address. Today, the shop is still preparing meat. Its sausages are homemade. But as the store operates, it develops its personality quietly. Now, it offers other specialties made on the premises with fresh local ingredients: sauces, pesto, soups, etc.

Michael seems particularly comfortable behind the counter. One imagines him easily as a barkeeper involved in his customer’s conversations. I had entered a little before the noon rush, and had settled at the counter to take a tight espresso. I was quickly joined by other clients and chatted a little with them. As my appetite was whetted by the plate in front of my bar neighbor, I ended up enjoying a De Luxe burger with fries.

TV screens broadcasted the second game of the Blue Jays post-season. We saw the Jays’ players begin the first half inning as if they wished to finish their baseball season as fast as possible! They eventually lost that game, but have since regrouped, and are preparing, as I publish this article, to play the second game of the final series of the American League Baseball. It is the last step before the World Series.

Hockey game nights are popular at Le Tablier Rouge, with microbrewery beers and burgers at special prices. I wish Michael an exciting season hockey from our Canadiens (locally known as the Glorious). They’re off to a great start with five straight wins!

After all that, I didn’t see the florist that day.

Michael in his shop

Charles G.

People who regularly play tennis on the courts of Nicolas-Viel Park may already have seen Charles going around hidden corners to pick up the lost tennis balls he gives to schools which will install them under the legs of chairs and desks. It is there that I met him. Many may be surprised to learn that, at over 80 years of age, he is still working, as much as his health allows him to.

He was born in a Fransaskoise* family of 14 children in the hamlet of St-Isidore-de-Belleville, near Batoche, the village where the Métis rebellion led by Louis Riel was defeated. He still goes back there to see relatives. Charles and six of his brothers and sisters are still alive. Three of his sisters were nuns. One of his brothers, who married a woman also from a large family, has left nealy thirty grandchildren.

His arrival in Quebec took place in St-Bruno in 1948. There he did, with the St. Gabriel Brothers, his juniorate, a period of study and training after the novitiate, that prepares for professorship. This institution still had cultivated land in the late 40s when he was studying there. He remembers having played tennis and other sports. After becoming a brother, he taught in Deschaillons, then in St-Bruno, village. Being bilingual, he taught in English at the Lajoie School in Outremont. At the time, in the mid-fifties, the school included an Anglophone sector.

In the sixties, the community asked him to move to the Chicago area. He first was assistant in the high-school and later administrator of the Merryville Academy. It is a former orphanage that was then in the process of becoming an institution for abused and mistreated children. At the same time, he continued his training at the De Paul University, the largest Catholic university in the USA.

In 1969, he left for Papua, New Guinea. Two days after his arrival, he was already teaching. From the early seventies, he was director of an institution of Monfort Catholic Missions until 1993. He worked there in the towns of Daru and Kiunga. This mission was originally held by religious communities from Québec. It was subsequently taken over by communities from Singapore and India.

Upon his return from the missions, he was commissioned to help his cousin, parish priest of North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

Back in Montreal, he now works at L’Escale Notre-Dame, an organization that hosts men between 18 and 35 with addiction problems, to drugs or alcohol. These people are undergoing a 14 week therapy. Initially, he was working as a doorman. Since this function left him a lot of free time, he turned his small office into a rosary workshop. To date, he has crafted over 3 500 rosaries.

L’Escale Notre-Dame is located in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, just like one of the schools for which he is collecting tennis balls. Since 2004, he has been responsible of the organization’s bookkeeping. Until recently, Charles was still working there full time.

When I saw him again a few days later, he showed me some pictures of him at different times of his life. You can see them as well by following the link below.

*Francophones of Saskatchewan

Charles at Nicolas-Viel Park

Mario M.

I met Mario for the first time at the opening of his exhibition "Des années cinquante à nos jours" at the Maison de la Culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville. We crossed paths there again the following week, which allowed me to take some pictures of him and his works, along with the staff of the Maison de la culture.

Mario is a visual artist who is actively pursuing, at over 80 years of age, a long and successful career. Son of an Italian father and a Québécois mother, he was born in Villeray, but grew up on De Lille Street in the Sault-au-Récollet. He has been living for over 40 years in a beautiful house in Ahuntsic whose wood facing recalls some of his relief paintings, such as "Arabesque," which appears to the left in the photo below.

It is interesting to hear him tell us, in the video that accompanies the exhibition, how the artwork and ornamentation of the Church of the Visitation influenced his early creative evolution. In the video, he also describes a now gone landscape. Until the forties, around De Lille Street there were agricultural lands with small hills and streams to the south of Fleury Street.  This area has since been filled and leveled to become a residential area crossed by Sauriol and Sauvé streets.

Son of musicians, he initially tried to juggle studies in music and fine arts. He finally chose l’École des Beaux-Arts. He then worked in the set design workshops of Radio-Canada, which was then in its early years.

It is however a national competition that really launched his career. He was the laureate designated to make a large mural for the Canadian Pavilion at the Brussels World Exhibition in 1957. The work was conceived in the former studio of Alfred Laliberté, on Ste-Famille Street.

With the fame achieved by this accomplishment, he toured the architectural firms that were busy designing large public and corporate buildings. He personally offered his services for the realization of art works integrated to the architecture. His contribution in this respect during the sixties and seventies is important. His achievements go from monochrome reliefs to colorful ceramics, including large illuminated glass walls in a subway station. They are all beautifully integrated and adapted to their destination buildings. According to the character of the place, they sometimes combine standard building materials to more noble materials.

At the end of this period, Mario turned more actively to sculpture. He took part in symposiums and biennials abroad. He was even invited to participate to the exhibition "Padiglione d'Italia nel mondo" which presented a selection of works by artists of the Italian diaspora in the context of the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Alongside his production, he led a teaching career, including at UQAM. There, he regularly taught drawing, which he regards as the foundation of all his works.

For the past twenty years, he has been devoting himself mainly to painting. His recent pictorial works occupy a large part of the current exhibition. To know more about his achievements, I invite you to visit this exhibition ending October 17th and take the time to watch the video. You can also click on the link under the photo.

Mario standing between Arabesque, to the left and Sable, to the right