Posts from — December 2007

This hard-hitting documentary by Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie has been seen by over 12,000 people to date

Photography by the Competition Finalists

What impact do Montrealers have on their city? The National Film Board of Canada invited Montrealers to photograph their environment-both the toxic hotspots and the green oases. We asked them to show us the wastelands and hidden corners where industry, development or simple human neglect are taking their toll. Or, to show us where eco-initiatives and sound green principles reign. From the polluted waterways and the abandoned factories to the rooftop gardens and the dumpster divers, we wanted to discover how green Montreal really is.

The work of the finalists was exhibited at Dawson College to coincide with the screening of Manufactured Landscapes on October 24, 2007.

Winner for Toxic Hotspots
Tristan Verboven
Category: Toxic Hotspots

The Lachine Canal, once the busiest commercial waterway in Canada, now serves as a quiet oasis within the city for pleasure boats and cyclists. It is only during periodic drainings that the muddy shoals reveal the memory of its dark industrial past. I love how each tyre found an orderly place to rest, eventually becoming part of nature.

Runner Up
Faisal Lutchmedial
Category: Toxic Hotspots

This once magnificent tree on de Lorimier Avenue had been cut down and then hollowed out by time. People had taken to using it as a garbage, even though a municipal trash can sat a few paces away. I walked by it, week by week, and saw the same pieces of somewhat toxic waste sitting in it: a plastic container of antifreeze, an empty packet of cigarettes, and a Mc Donald’s cup, all carelessly thrown inside this garbage tree beside the road. I took a few photographs only a few days before the city put the stump out of its misery and uprooted it from the ground.

Runner Up
Edith Rey
Category: Toxic Hotspots

Winner for Green Oases
Xing Dai
Category: Green Oases

Angrignon Park, Verdun, October 7, 2007

Runner Up
Ryan Young
Category: Green Oases

I took this photo of a Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria) on Montreal’s last remaining inland river, the Riviere a l’Orme in Pierrefonds. The river is very polluted and as you can see in the photo this bird is adapting to its partially "manufactured" landscape by perching on an old tire. When I took the photo I was participating with SOS Planete for the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. We were astounded by how much garbage we found everywhere in and around the river: old car parts, tires, a washing machine, lots of plastic, ceramic pieces from telephone wires, etc. During a whole day with over 50 volunteers we were only able to clean up one small section of the river. However at least there is an inland river left on the Montreal island and it supports a whole host of different plant and animal species, some of them quite rare. The land around the river is part of the riviere a l’orme ecoterritory but Pierrefonds is planning in the future to turn it into a 6000 house residential development! Hopefully we can stop that manufactured landscape from ever coming to pass and continue to clean up this area and restore its natural beauty.

Runner Up
Nancy Beaton
Category: Green Oases

There’s no a better place than Parc LaFontaine in the summertime. Here, a jogger takes advantage of the cooler late-afternoon while dogs play, seeds float, and the sun beams in the background. A true green oasis.

Finalists
Justine Israel
Category: Toxic Hotspots

It is a simple depiction of a typical Montreal urban landscape, with graffiti and an empty building, both of which have become an omnipresent sight in many downtown areas of Montreal. Though not a full-blown wasteland yet, I chose this location to demonstrate that the lack of attention we pay these types of places means many of these Montreal sidestreets and alleys are destined to become dingier, eventually resulting in desolate locations beyond repair. I chose to show what can perhaps still be improved, rather than what is beyond our control.

Alla Sorokin
Category: Green Oases

Montreal is a multicultural city that provides appropriate nutrition to vegans as well as those who like encouraging local food production. Slowly but surely, recycle options make their way next to garbage cans on streets. Words of "recycle" are beautifully integrated in the European looks of downtown. It is not unlikely to find amongst buildings a tree that endlessly emits oxygen for the vast blue sky. Almost on the roof of Concordia University, students of Sustainable Concordia work in the greenhouse in the intention of spreading word about composting and recycling in daily life. Everyday, Montrealers risk their life at choosing biking instead of driving. In this city, people walk and run, whether it is after buses or to get to night classes. Us, Montrealers, we care!

Benoit Lavoie Fournier
Category : Green Oases

J’apprécie depuis longtemps les superbes photographies d’Edward Burtinsky, c’est donc avec enthousiasme que je participe à ce concour. J’ai toujours été sensible à la déterioration de notre environnement et à l’impact que nous avons dans notre course inconsciente au développement. Ce qui me fascine néamoins est de constater que peu importe la façon brutale et indiférente dont nous traitons la nature, elle finit presque toujours par reprendre sa place et à s’adapter et bourgeonner. Je considère que ces photos s’inscrivent dans la catégorie oasis, même si elle peuvent avoir un caractère plutôt sombre, il s’agit quand même de la résistance de la nature.

Thomas-Bernard Kenniff
Category: Toxic Hotspots

L’incinérateur des carrières, or Incinerator no. 3, is located by the train tracks that divide Rosemont/La Petite Patrie from the Plateau Mont-Royal. It stands prominently in what is now a predominantly residential neighbourhood. Although the incinerator has been closed since 1993 (it was inaugurated in 1970), the site still remains witness to what was then one of the most advanced, almost futuristic, garbage burning facility in the world. I believe the incinerator grounds have that sublime power that allows one to know beauty and horror
simultaneously…

Lorraine Carpenter
Category: Toxic Hotspots

I live in Cote-St-Paul, near various vacant dumping grounds like the Turcot Yards, just across the Lachine Canal from the rust- and graffiti-covered Canada Malting Factory. I find a certain majestic beauty in antique industrial structures, regardless of their condition, though the sour smell around this building’s northwest corner is a good reason to admire it from afar.

Less aesthetically alluring, to the eyes and nose, is the highway two blocks from my duplex; I don’t drive, but I find myself underneath suspect overpasses almost daily, either on buses or bicycle. It’s home, but it could be cleaner and greener.

Neil Scotten
Category: Green Oases

The photographs I have selected focus my own feelings about cities and how we create oases in them. My viewpoint, however, is cynical. I believe we ‘make do’ with the environment that the needs of the abstract city impose on us.

Whether it is a woman walking her dog on a green space by a silo or poutine eaten in front of a rusting tank, we are more often than not pushed to the side by big industry. These pictures also speak for the spirit of Montreal and its particular kind of admirable toughness

Carol Vautz
Category: Green Oases

"To greener heights" shows a Montreal balcony bursting with potted plants. I was inspired by the rustic beauty of this spot.

Alexi Hobbs
Category: Toxic Hotspots

I guess the photos I am submitting should be put in the "Toxic Hotspots" category seeing as they do show images of a place that has more of a run-down nature. However, I would argue that the old buildings in the images were probably more toxic in their heyday, when they were part of a fully functional factory.

In the end, it looks more like nature is now slowly having its way with the area and it gives one the idea that perhaps this could one day be considered a "Green Oasis". The graffiti on the walls seems to echo nature’s call here, almost leading the way up the walls.

Isabelle Catafard
Category: Toxic Hotspots

Pour que carbure l’industrie pétrolière, nous remplissons nos poumons d’air vicié, nous marchons sur des sols contaminés et nous nous abreuvons à même un fleuve dont les eaux sont un cocktail de rejets polluants. Les raffineries Shell Canada et Pétro-Canada émettent presque autant de GES que les 4,1 millions de déplacements d’automobiles recensés quotidiennement.

L’incidence des maladies pulmonaires est plus élevé dans l’est de Montréal que la moyenne montréalaise. L’enfouissement dans les lagunes de Mercier des hydrocarbures provenant des raffineries de Montréal dans les années 70 en a fait le deuxième cas de contamination souterraine en importance au Canada.

Maia Iotzova
Category: Toxic Hotspots

When I was in Montreal last winter what struck me was the plethora of abandoned bikes all over the streets.

They were interesting urban relics, in dire condition bordering on garbage. This photo series, which I will enter in the Toxic Hotspot category, actually creates a bridge between the categories of "Green Oases" and "Toxic Hotspots". To a lot of us the image of a bike symbolizes sustainable transportation, but in this case it has turned into unsustainable practice of neglect.

Meredith Lindsay
Category: Toxic Hotspots

I came across this cesspool located on St. Denis near Maisonneuve and was drawn to the extreme nature of this tortured urban landscape. The desire to capture the rusted heap of entwined and twisted metal, screaming from its foul lagoon of stagnant water, was impossible to ignore. Along with the marinating wires, the passer-by is also treated to pylons and refuse submerged eerily below the surface like horrid Ophelia’s. The three photos were taken with a wooden pinhole camera with a exposure time of 50 seconds to 1 minute each.

Claudia Gomez
Category: Green Oases

Montreal is blanketed with Dandelions in the spring, a flowery guardian which protects the liver and kidney and a snowy reminder of winter.

Geoffrey Anin
Category: Toxic Hotspots