Is Montreal Ready to Dream Anew?

The 2009 municipal elections in Montreal have the potential to become the most transformative of any mayoral race in recent memory, an outcome for which Richard Bergeron, the leader of Projet Montréal, can claim the credit. It was not long ago that the November elections promised nothing but a staid stumble to the finish line for the incumbent Gérard Tremblay, drifting back to power on the backs of an apathetic citizenry, following a soul-crushing campaign centred on competing vows of more repaired pipes and fewer potholes.

No longer. Granted, it was the steady accumulation of scandals hanging over city hall which initially pried open the race and cleared the way for the dramatic arrival of former PQ minister Louise Harel onto the scene. But it is Bergeron's bold and innovative discourse which has infused the campaign with a burst of fresh energy and new ideas, and has finally offered Montrealers a definitive choice between the shopworn debates and divisions of yesteryear, and those fit for the 21st century.

Of the former, Tremblay and Harel - one federalist Liberal, one sovereignist Péquiste, and both career politicians - both offer only the most cosmetic of changes. With Tremblay we maintain the status quo, and a form of managerial incrementalism bereft of vision or coherence, to say nothing of the endemic corruption allowed to flourish under his watch. With Harel and her signature thrust to recentralize Montreal's governing apparatus, we arrive instead at the status quo ante, so to speak. We obtain (at least) four more years of interminable bureaucratic wrangling of the same merger-demerger variety which paralyzed Montreal for years, and which pitted the largely anglophone suburbs of Montreal against the francophone majority on the island.

In truth, what emerges most clearly from a look at the two main contenders is a gnawing sense that we're mired in old battles. We seem unable to rise anew, to regain a global perspective, to view our beloved Montreal not for what is but what it can and must become among the pantheon of great world cities; in essence, to dream.

Enter Bergeron, and the unabashedly idealistic vision of Projet Montreal: an economic revival founded on a green urban revolution, replete with an island-wide tramway network made right here by Bombardier; the wholesale transformation and humanization of Montreal's riverfront, restoring the tattered links between the city and its river; the democratization of Montreal's governance structures; and so on. What Bergeron represents is nothing less than a paradigmatic break with old mentalities. In his world, sustainable development is not a supplemental consideration, included to increase a project's appeal or "negate" the building of an autoroute next door. For Bergeron, it is the project, indeed the project of the 21st century, and the revolution whose time has long since come.

Of course, Bergeron remains open to charges of naive idealism or, worse, of being a simple dreamer. But with his support polling at an unprecedented 20 percent and climbing, maybe's he's not the only one.