Who hasn't heard of Michel Tremblay's Plateau-Mont-Royal or Mordecai Richler's Mile End? For a long time now, our literature has been full of inspiring works that tell us about Montreal, its neighborhoods, and its landmarks. These works, tributes to the city and its landscapes, are carriers of memory and vectors of identity in the same way as our streets and buildings. At Héritage Montréal, we wanted to celebrate this literature rooted in the territory by sharing our literary favorites, works that successfully showcase the city and its heritage.
For this first literary post, what could be more appropriate than to introduce you to the new book by our policy director Dinu Bumbaru? Notebook of a walker in Montreal, published by Éditions la Presse and available in stores today, is a collection of 200 pencil-drawn sketches of Montreal, accompanied by short reflexive texts that dress the drawn places with small and big stories.
Strollability and moving landscapes
No matter what its author and "croquiste " tells us, this notebook is much more than a pretty coffee-table book that you leaf through to avoid boredom. It's a tribute to Montreal, to drawing and to walking, three passions that Dinu Bumbaru shares with us. For him, a stroll is "a civic act by people who make their city their own, who look at it and watch over its shape and condition". The walk is thus both a poetic and political experience of everyday life. And that, in a way, is the experience to which this book invites us: we take a walk, hop on a bus, stop in front of a never-before-seen viewpoint, feel ecstatic and indignant. And all the while, Mr. Bumbaru, this great storyteller of the metropolis, tells us his stories, his memories, his imagination of the city. It's a story in pieces, in which architectural details and ensembles, views and lights, are humbly interwoven. And for all the ardor he's known for when it comes to defending the neglected of the urban landscape, the man we like to call Mr. Patrimoine offers us here a very intimate notebook, in which he shares with us his long-standing friendship with Montreal. So, while the book can be read in a single sitting, it's best to soak it up slowly, taking it with you when you leave the house to accompany your wanderings or bus journeys...
The bus is, moreover, a central figure in this notebook, and this is not insignificant. From the very beginning of the book, Mr. Bumbaru tells us that it was in the bus that he began to draw Montreal: "so the bus routes 80, 161, 24, 55, 165 or 107 gave birth to those in my notebooks. For the author, the bus is obviously not just a vulgar means of transportation; if the streets and alleys are the waterways of the 20th century, the bus becomes here the vessel of the explorer who discovers his island from one end to the other.
"Bus routes such as routes 24, 55 or 80, river shuttles between the Old Port and Pointe-aux-Trembles or between Lachine and Île Saint-Bernard in Châteauguay are wonderful opportunities to learn about geography, history and our society. They must be recognized and supported as cultural infrastructures and metropolitan landmarks. "» (p. 173)
The sketches that illustrate the work also pay tribute to this urban wandering. While some of them are formidably detailed, baroque landscapes of a palimpsest history, others are more furtive, like an amalgam of leaky lines, sketched on the spot between two bus stops.
Montreal: in contrasts and perspectives
To dwell on it, one could argue that Mr. Bumbaru's pencil stroke is in symbiosis with the metropolis. Like Montreal, the sketches in this notebook are at times clean and refined, at times muffled and chaotic, at once anchored in history and turned towards the future, dark and bright. The author tells us right away, Montreal is a city of contrasts and if it does not have the reputation of being beautiful, it is no less complex, profound and authentic:
"Because it is not uniform, design or grandiose, Montreal has the reputation, for many, of not being beautiful. Is Rome uniform? Montreal may not be uniform, but despite its sometimes discordant contrasts, the fruit of lust or indifference, it has a real personality. ...] This vibrant metropolis has a magical landscape of monuments, alleyways and grey stone, drawn, carved and laid by hand. Vive Montréal! "» (p. 135)
Dinu Bumbaru highlights these contrasts and puts them into perspective in an almost amorous way. The exercise is particularly conclusive in the cases of the Bovril building (see pages 87 to 89), the Angel of Mount Royal (p. 142 to 145) or the Van Horne warehouse (p. 101 to 103), which the author literally goes around, showing us all the angles and seams.
Montreal: a city and its people
Some may be surprised that Mr. Bumbaru's sketches are empty of city dwellers. Some of the images may remind us of the empty streets of the pandemic. And yet, this notebook is full of characters. In particular, the author mentions several individuals who have marked, built or written Montreal's history. But what is even more remarkable is that it is the buildings and places that are characters; the mountain is outraged at the downtown skyscrapers, the river and the mountain speak to us and tell us about themselves. These characters are staged in a larger-than-life setting by an author who is extraordinarily successful in honouring the ordinary beauty of everyday life.
Finally, although it is never a partisan exercise, Mr. Bumbaru does not forget his allegiances. He reminds us in no uncertain terms of some lost streets and forgotten buildings. He also takes us back to the heritage struggles of the Montreal community, raising issues that have been of constant concern to us over the years and that are still relevant today. We can only hope that he will continue to do so... perhaps with his watercolours?
BOOKLET FROM A SELLER IN MONTREAL by Dinu Bumbaru, 200 pages, Price: $29.95
Find the book today in bookstores and on bookshops.ca.
We thank Éditions La Presse for the images that illustrate this article.
