Profile: Dinu Bumbaru, Policy Director

For almost 39 years at Héritage Montréal, Dinu Bumbaru has known Montreal like few others - its streets, its history and, of course, its heritage. Our Director of Policy also works for heritage beyond our borders, from Europe to Argentina, via Japan, Senegal, Dubrovnik, Seoul and South Africa. His involvement with ICOMOS and UNESCO, on committees or in disaster zones, has given him an international vision of the defense and challenges of built and landscape heritage. 

Dinu also draws, and perhaps you have seen him sitting on the 80 bus along Park Avenue in the early hours of the morning, sketching a city scene from the window. He is also an avid walker and a fervent advocate of strollability. Moreover, Dinu Bumbaru is a well-known figure in the media as the spokesperson for Heritage Montreal. 

Here is an opportunity for you to discover this fascinating man through the following portrait that is faithful to the person we know. 

You and Montreal 

1. Can you quickly introduce yourself (your studies, your background...)? 

My path is quite simple. I obtained my degree in architecture from the Université de Montréal in 1982 after having done pure and applied sciences in college. In 1988, I completed a certificate in architectural conservation at ICCROM in Rome, following a suggestion by Réjean Legault, now at UQAM, and the late Herb Stovel who was working at Heritage Canada at the time. This led me to a master's degree in conservation from the British University of York in 1994, following a thesis exploring the idea of forming a Heritage Red Cross to provide assistance to endangered buildings, ensembles and sites rather than simply expressing indignation at their plight or talking about them in colloquiums on the conditional. In addition to my diploma studies, I was especially fortunate to work in Montreal and to become involved as a volunteer at the national and international levels, withICOMOS in particular.  

2. What does your job involve? A typical day at Héritage Montréal ? 

A typical day before 2020! It would start with a ride on the 80 bus in the early hours of the morning with workers setting out to get downtown up and running every day; on dark winter mornings, the cross on Mount Royal would be burning bright along with the city lights; then, gradually, as the days grew longer, finely sculptured shadows would be cast from the trees and Hôtel-Dieu as dawn broke. In other words, a day more true to the song by Jacques Dutronc, Il est cinq heures ..., than to Jacques Normand's Nuits de Montréal . Getting to the office early meant that I had time to read the papers, get things in order a little and prepare for the day before the phones started ringing, the meetings, the letters, and the whole daily routine, not to mention the committees, consultations, and other public meetings in the evenings.     

3. What inspired you to join Heritage Montreal?  

Inspiration is a big and solemn word. Instead, let's talk about a path marked by my interest in Montreal and its architecture, a path that has intersected with serendipity and propitious circumstances. I joined theHéritage Montréal team in November 1982, after learning of the organization's existence in 1981 and visiting its urban center, which had just opened under the coordination of Cécile Grenier of Sauvons Montréal, as part of my final workshop of my bachelor's degree in architecture. This workshop - Urban Architecture with Melvin Charney- focused on De La Gauchetière Street and, more specifically, Chinatown, a pre-petonization neighborhood that, despite demolitions and the collision of major government real estate projects, had retained much of its authenticity, including the more modest buildings, signs and community institutions that reflected the tension between Beijing and Taipei China. I was eligible for an employment voucher from gouvernement du Québec , so I applied for a 20-week assignment to write technical guides for maintenance and restoration, a project by Mark London, an architect and urban planner who was running Héritage Montréal at the time under the presidency of Phyllis Lambert, who had founded it in 1975. He developed the project with the help of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, as it was then known. The 20 weeks became a year, then two, then three, and soon 39. More than a momentary inspiration that led me to join the team, it was being a member that constantly inspired me to stay and grow with it and its mission.  

4. What's your favourite ArchitecTours circuit? 

The ArchitecTours are full of circuits, and the library is constantly being enriched with new ideas. That means I know less and less, and that's fine. However, of those I've had the pleasure of leading over the years, I like these long walks, including the one in 2017-the original paths between Pointe à Callière and the river ... in Verdun. There was also theArchitecTour presenting these invisible but authorized constructions at zonage  - for example, the towers that have sprung up and are making Windsor Station disappear today, or the downtown lobbyists' lobby (those of the buildings, of course!).    

5. What activities or content would you like to create at Héritage Montréal ? 

In connection with my position as policy director, I would find it useful and stimulating to participate in the production of a manifesto and charter forHéritage Montréal for the protection, enhancement, reallocation and enrichment of our metropolis' heritage in the 21st century. Based on our history (yet to be written) and our reflections, this would be a wonderful gift for the ^50th anniversary of our founding in 2025, and a step towards Montreal's ^400th anniversary in 2042. While promising practices such as concerted action and transitional use are becoming more widespread, we are also seeing a lack of overall long-term vision, as well as a resurgence of façadism. Such a statement of principles could only help Montreal to grow without losing its soul.      

I’d really like to help develop activities that highlight the different facets of the metropolis’s geography. Its physical geography, with ArchitecTours of the founding roads of the metropolitan area, as we did so successfully years ago, or of the St. Lawrence River and other bodies of water; for example, with water taxis to Pointe-aux-Trembles or Châteauguay—both terrific routes. Its social geography, with ArchitecTours exploring more marginalized neighbourhoods and the issues they are confronting. Its human geography, with the heritage of known and lesser known cultural communities, and activities in a wider range of languages, alphabets and accents (why not in Yiddish, Italian, Creole, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Romanian, Russian and so on?). Its intellectual and cultural geography, with activities on the heritage of ideas, sciences and the arts.    

"It’s high time that Montreal endow itself a genuine Heritage House."

Dinu Bumbaru

Lastly, I’d like to develop activities around the ideas of a Ligue des cent dessins, Crayons Montréal or Patrimoine qui a bonne mine. In short, in the wake of the battle cry “Élevons le regard!” trumpeting Heritage Montreal’s mission during the memorable Sauvons la Pinte campaign in 2009, I’d like us to imagine activities, on our own or in partnership with other organizations, such as urban sketching enthusiasts— Urban Sketchers  in particular—photography clubs, schools, multimedia folks, architects, including landscape architects, that would call on them to capture images that define Montreal, its neighbourhoods and its heritage.     

What's more, it's time for Montreal to acquire a genuine Maison du patrimoine worthy of the name and, above all, of the inhabited cultural metropolis that we are. Héritage Montréal had examined the idea of making this an exemplary project for the safeguarding and repurposing of a heritage building, following the example of the Notman house, but had to direct its energies elsewhere. Safeguarding built heritage doesn't stop at preventing demolition, often at the last minute, or expressing indignation when it's too late. Bringing such a project to fruition requires resources and time. At a time when Montreal is updating its urban plan, adopting an ambitious ecological transition strategy and drawing up a new action plan for its development as a cultural metropolis, we could put this project back on the drawing board by ensuring that substantial resources are allocated to Héritage Montréal to turn ideas into action. If the unfortunate disappearance of the former Berson monument studio on Saint-Laurent, a site of rare evocative power for our metropolis, replaced by a compliant residential project, has deprived us of a location highly conducive to this project, other opportunities will present themselves, I'm sure.  

You and Montreal 

6. What is your favorite building in your neighborhood? 

In my quartier ? There is the Van Horne warehouse, a sort of brick acropolis surmounted by a water tower, and its neighbour, the old wooden enclosure Villeneuve or the Querbes academy and the pavilion of the Saint-Viateur park if not the park itself, or a little further the Jean-Talon train station, the Marc-Favreau library or the Saint-Albert le Grand monastery or, a little further still, the Lasalle metro station. Because " mon " is not confined to what you can reach on foot in 15 minutes around your home. It includes Mount Royal and its scenic cemeteries as well as Old Montreal, which is the founding district without which my neighbourhood would not exist and where you will find - among many other places - autres ! the Old Seminary, the former HECs and the marvellous Caverhill Learmont baroque grey stone hardware store on Saint-Pierre Street. It also includes the downtown area with its North-South axis and the beautiful Central Station, inside and outside.  

7. What was your last crush on a building/landscape in Montreal? 

The intact interior of the Ravenscrag tower, the Forges de Montréal during the 2020 Nuit blanche, the flour-mill that boasts the Farine Five Roses sign and the churches designed by architect Roger D’Astous, namely Saint-Maurice de Duvernay,  Saint-René Goupil in Saint-Léonard, Notre-Dame du Bel-Amour in Cartierville and Saint-Jean-Vianney in Rosemont.     

8. Which building or landscape best represents Montreal for you? 

The panoramic view from Pont Jacques-Cartier is pretty unbeatable with the river, the former Molson Brewery, Old Montreal, Mount Royal, downtown and the Stadium. The view from Silo 5 is also spectacular, but less accessible.   

There are also various circuits, like the Lachine Canal, the 80, 55, 24 and 107 bus routes and the river taxi that takes you east.    

On the other hand, it is difficult for me to see Montreal through a single building, except perhaps the Grand Séminaire and Hôtel-Dieu with their sites and crypts full of history, the typical triplex, the National Monument, the Grand Chalet on Mount Royal or Habitat 67.   

The cityand elsewhere. 

9. What do you see as the current challenges facing the city? 

In addition to the digital revolution now underway, it seems to me that we will have to deal with three major upheavals that will change the relationship between human societies, their national governments and their territories, and even the recognition and preservation of their heritage. These are the climate crisis, the rise of urbanization and metropolises, and the words of the forgotten, including indigenous peoples and certain social or cultural groups. 

As issues, I would see habitability, including affordability for all, the primacy of urbanity as a collective value over the economy and individual interests, be they financial, political or community, food as well as physical security, and the question of city centres, especially after the rise of virtual commerce and the pandemic.  

I also think it’s critical that there be a better framing of valid concepts, which—when they are elevated to the extent that they become dogma because they’re quantifiable but stripped of any qualitative or human consideration—can be as disastrous as some of the “good ideas” in the name of progress we saw in the ‘50s or ‘70s, for example, densification or mobility infrastructure.  

Lastly, we’ll need talent to meet the challenges of reclassifying and reusing existing sites, in particular heritage institutional ensembles and commercial arteries, to avoid the pitfall of lazy façadism. Not everything can be converted into condos—with or without affordable housing—or demolished to create parking lots and green spaces.    

10. How do you see the city of the future? The ideal city? 

The major risk we’re facing is imagining the city of the future as a collage of good ideas or infrastructure centred on current needs, be that social housing, bike paths or public transit, without a global vision that lives up to the territory, the society and the times. An amalgam of studies, projects, policies and regulatory and administrative documents does not a vision make.   

In our time, we saw Vancouver and Copenhagen become, after Barcelona, star cities, and even verbs—“to copenhagenize” Montreal. With this, we’re running the risk of repeating, albeit with more current intentions and objectives, the mistakes of the past or making ones that we once had the wisdom to avoid, like the raised expressway along Rue de la Commune.   

My ideal future city would distinguish between data, trendy projects and its unique soul based on its territory, its citizenship and its living memory. This city would be a space of convivial humanity in its day-to-day goings on, an authentic metropolitan urbanity connected to the nations of the world. This affordable city would draw people from the world over to settle there and to offer its citizenship to future generations. 

11. What is your top 3 cities to visit (outside of Montreal)? Do you have any particular recommendations? 

1. Chicago with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, whose exploration and urban tour programs inspired Sauvons Montréal to hold mobile workshops in 1974, the precursor to our ArchitecTours. Chicago is also a city that understands winter and the cold.   

2. Chicago, with the Chicago Architecture FoundationDakar and Saint-Louis in Senegal, another city duo like Montreal and Quebec City. 

3. Buenos Aires. 

Recommendation: Choose public transit.  

12. If you had to live in a city other than Montreal, which one would it be and why? 

Rome, because it's Rome.  

Istanbul or Johannesburg because they are metropolises whose geography and history have left great golden glories but also deep physical or social fractures that they are working to transcend.  

New York because it's not far from Montreal ????  

Heritage and you 

13. What is your first memory related to architecture or heritage?  

In the 1970s, the house and barn on the family farm in Sainte-Sophie in the Laurentians and, in Romania, the village museum in Bucharest, and the house of my forebears in Craiova, with its beautiful woodwork of interlacing patterns, representative of popular styles at the time.      

The Bosquets villa in Grande-Rivière, close to the Robin store, with its big trees and Victorian-style sitting room full of souvenirs from families from Jersey that had settled in Gaspésie.    

In Montreal, the old Villeneuve lumberyard and the large nave in its hangar.  

From our family trip to Europe, the Trocadero and St. Peter's in Rome, places impressive for their architecture and the crowds that animate them.  

Above all, the balcony of my childhood, in an apartment building on Bloomfield Avenue that we moved away from right before the Olympics. It served as our lookout onto our neighbours, the street and the world. One day, the owner replaced the ornate solid wood balustrade with new, generic, flimsy metal bars.     

14. If you were an architect, who would you be? 

Architect? Why not a gardener?  

Long ignored with a certain indifference, the names of architects are increasingly finding public recognition in our society, especially those of contemporary practitioners, while those of older buildings are still largely forgotten. This is a good thing because a society cannot be built without talented architects, engineers, town planners, gardeners and craftsmen. Quality architecture, architecture that is well designed, well built and well used, architecture that we like to frequent and that we want to see last rather than resignedly endure while waiting for something better, is not something that comes from ciel ! 

With this public recognition also comes a responsibility. Through the architecture that defines everyone's space as much if not more than the pleasant place enjoyed by its users, the architect serves society even when it is ungrateful to him.    

Who were the architects of the first mud hut, the first igloo, the first Montreal triplex, the Roman Pantheon, the magnificent St. Sophia in Constantinople or the masterful carpentry and joinery of Japan? Research would surely answer some of these questions.  

"What interests me much more than the individual (or team) behind the design of a building is what makes it worthy of and useful to the site and what makes it pleasing in terms of form and material."

Dinu Bumbaru

There are, of course, architects whose career, thinking and production I find remarkable and inspiring - Victor Bourgeau, John Ostell, Percy Nobbs, Ernest Cormier, Roger D'Astous or Ray Affleck who have left their mark on Montreal, or Frank Lloyd Wright, Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier who have resonated around the world. But these names, long gone like those of so many other anonymous architects, and their clients, these essential actors, continue to live on through these constructions or this art of building that surrounds us and moves us.  

While I’ll likely never hold the title of architect, I would’ve liked to have been the architect of a building worthy of the territory it was built on, that can elegantly withstand the test of time and that future societies, both in the near and distant future, will love, even if time and use have reduced it to a beautiful ruin.    

15. Do you have a book on architecture, history, town planning or heritage to recommend? 

Architecture - Description and Methodical Vocabulary by Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, is a vast illustrated glossary first published in 1972 and then reissued several times, enriched since then by Éditions du Patrimoine, in France. Even if the work and its language are a bit arid and above all, very French - it was originally a government document - walking through this garden of words is always a great pleasure. It reminds us that our heritage and our architecture also have their words and deserve their illustrated dictionary. In French, of course, first of all, but also in Aboriginal languages or in the languages of other people who built Montreal, such as those English, American or Eastern European architects, Scottish or Italian masons and craftspeople of many origins.      

Architecture for Beginners by Louis Hellman, published in 1988, offers an ironically serious panorama of architecture and architects from ancient times to the modern era (post-modern to be precise). Along with Machiavelli’s The Prince, I was armed with this book during the battle to save Hôtel-Dieu in 1992.   

The Seven Lamps of Architectureby John Ruskin, published in 1849. Despite the antiquated language, this book offers some very current ideas, such as architecture’s responsibility toward future generations, a basic precept of sustainable development. “Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for….” It’s important to read Ruskin, this art historian and writer, and think about a period that, today, is less appreciated because we tend to focus more on post-1940 modernity. Marked by industrialization and triumphant colonialism, both indifferent to the destruction they wrought, this period—the 19th century—saw the emergence of debates on heritage, its safeguarding and restoration, and on the development of cities with healthy housing and neighbourhoods, reliable water and sewage systems, public transit, and parks to be enjoyed by all classes of society. It should be read while keeping in mind some of his contemporaries, such as Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the French architect of major sites including Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and Victor Hugo, who penned Guerre aux démolisseurs in 1832, and produced some magnificent drawings. Then there’s Frederick Law Olsmted and his remarkable Mount Royal, self-published in 1881, that explains the raison d’être and usages of the park he designed for us.   

And then there are comic strips, like Tintin, Cités obscures, and Paul by Michel Rabagliati,as well as certain issues of Spirou and Fantasio and Valérian and Laureline, that feature architecture as a character in its own right that we all too often overlook; the same applies to several novels and films, including the writings of Michel Tremblay and the show
Sol et Gobelet.    

16. Do you have a film on architecture, history, town planning or heritage to recommend? 

Only one? Hard to choose.  

At the outset, I would suggest the very American... Mr Blandings builds his Deam House (1948) and The Fountainhead (1949), the French classic Playtime by Jacques Tati (1967), the Anglo-Roman The belly of an architect by Peter Greenaway (1987), the Franco-Futurist 5th Element (1997), the very wonderfully Montreal NFB films The memory of the angels by Luc Bourdon (2008). But I would start with the edifying documentary City Dreamers by Joseph Hillel, which presents four women architects, including Phyllis Lambert and Blanche Lemco Van Ginkel, to whom Montreal and its heritage owe so much.   

17. And finally, tell us something about yourself that your colleagues at HM don't know ????  

Despite the insistent recommendation of an architect who came to introduce us to his profession at the career fair at the end of our college years, I never learned to play golf. ????