#offcamp

Registration for Community Engagement Day has begun!

  Community Engagement Day is a new project from the SEDE Office that aims to celebrate and promote existing initiatives that connect McGill with the Montreal community, while building new relationships.  

  On Friday October 5th, about 20 group activities will take place on campus and around the city to give McGill students, staff, faculty and alumni the opportunity to contribute their time and learn about the social issues that community organizations address. Activities include public discussions, community walking tours, urban gardening, youth mentorship, and more.

  For more information, please see our website at CEDMcGill.com, where you can read about and register for activities taking place on October 5th, watch fun and informative videos, and find links to other community engagement-related resources.

  You can also follow us on Twitter @CEDMcGill or find us on Facebook at facebook.com/McGillCED.

  Find more information at http://www.cedmcgill.com/home.php. Check out

their video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JpKCURUEAIw 

Saturday, September 1:

Having picked up the keys to our new place, me and my roommates head on over to determine whether our apartment needs a good cleaning before move-in.  While inspecting the fire escape, H discovers we can access the roofs of all the buildings on our block.  Can't see downtown, but the cross and the stadium both come off loud and clear!

In the afternoon, H is busy at my old place loading my furniture into the behemoth of a U-Haul we rented (he's driving).  Meanwhile, I'm hauling his antique writing desk up the s-bend staircase of our third-storey walk-up.  The truck arrives around 7pm.  It's packed full, and it takes us almost until midnight to get every piece but one up the stairs.  My box-spring isn't pliable enough to clear the overhang in the inside stairwell.  Embarrassing.

Sunday, September 2:

Normally I'd have set up my apartment today.  But the landlord is having contractors punch a skylight through my bedroom on Tuesday and therefore our place remains a cascade of boxes and furniture piles.  My stuff is in the living room, and the living room is in the den, and the kitchen is unusable until, again, around midnight.

Monday, September 3:

Spent the day around the house, cleaning and unpacking still.  Tried to get internet, but Labour Day meant we couldn't complete any errands.  Sat on the balcony for a bit...  A girl was stoned and pacing up and down the block, talking with the few older men who sit on the stoops.  I made friends with the neighbourhood cat (incidentally named Oreo, just like my cat last year).  When it tried to follow me into the place, I brought it down a small dish with some tuna.  But the girls on the second floor had already fed it, so the cat sat around disinterestedly.

Tuesday, September 4:

Surprise: the contractors didn't show up.  Another night on the couch.

Thursday, September 6:

The contractors show up at 7am and storm through the house.  My roof is taken off by 11am, and capped again by 1 o'clock.  The light that comes into my room is practically baroque.  Here's to never sleeping-in again.  (A good thing, no less!)

Friday, September 7:

I'm adjusting well to being a campus commuter.  My bike, however, squeals for a good greasing.  Determined to float above the thick of it this semester, I bought a book for pleasure at the university bookstore.  The pleasure, however, is pending.

While arriving home tonight, a party was getting started in the basement.  The tenant who lives down there saw me locking up my bike and came out to say hello.  And surprise - we both came to McGill from the same town about 5000 km away.  Now I would consider that a pretty good welcome to the neighbourhood!

Get excited for our Off-Campus Fellow 'fest à la carte' - it'll be our first opportunity to meet each other and explore our awesome 'hood! We've put together a loose schedule so come hang out with us for as long (or as little) as you want :) No fear... we don't bite and are really looking forward to meeting you all!  You can connect here on Facebook. Sunday, 26 August 2012. 2:00pm – TAM TAMS

Parc Mont-Royal, at the George-Cartier statue. Cost: free. Affectionately known as “Tams”, Montreal’s famous drum circle DOES NOT STOP between 10am and sundown. Funny how everyone nearby looks so relaxed. Join us and the Milton-Parc OCF crew for some picnic-ing, dancing, sun-bathing, LARP-ing, jamming... you name it :P (check out the milton parc FALC) Monday, 27 August 11.30am – BAGEL BRUNCH. Parc Jeanne-Mance, near the Ave. Rachel entrance. Cost: free. Jaya and Matthew will supply Montreal’s own St-Viateur and Fairmount creations – we’ll make a taste test and perhaps settle once and for all this city’s most important dispute. (You’re wrong if you thought it was all about language rights!) Then we’ll hang out in the park, catch some Frisbee. If enough people are interested, we might split mid-afternoon to hit up a gallery in the warehouse district, on our way to… 3.00pm – FARM FRESH Marché Jean-Talon. Cost: $5-10 (or more, if you opt to do some serious grocery shopping..) The city’s largest public market also serves up some of its best people-watching. We’ll pick the place over (free samples!) and headhunt the stalls for the piece of produce that best represents your personality! We can either take the Metro, walk, or cycle there. One-way metro fare is $2.75 cash or $3.00 debit/credit. 5.00pm – CINQ à SEPT Reservoir, 9 rue Duluth Est. Cost: ~approx. $10. Cozy little brasserie typifies the Plateau happy hour. Good brew, good crew – and a rooftop terrace which is excellent but does not rhyme. 9pm - ?? If anyone’s up for it, we can hit up the Main (that is, St Laurent blvd) – or any other dive that’s open on Mondays - for some dancing! (We're always open for suggestions!) So come on out, meet new people, enjoy some good eats, see some sweet sights, and have fun!

Welcome!

You’ve chosen to live in one of Montreal’s most vital and venerable boroughs: the Plateau–Mont-Royal.  Even better, you’ve chosen to join me and the rest of the Off Campus project for a freeform exercise in city living.  The Plateau, like any good neighbourhood, is best described by the variety of services, choices, and lifestyles it can furnish.  Your new living room is plush with alternatives: alternative cafes, transport, bookshops, groceries, politics, nightclubs, and clothing. Even for those veteran Montrealers among you, the density and diversity of opportunities in the Plateau should be admirable if not legendary.  This is where Montreal lives high and low – behind the glittering nighttime terraces and renovated high streets, patio parties are hidden away down darkened back alleys.  Music is near constant whether it’s public or private – in the apartment or across the square.  Food, too, appears so often in the streetscape it’s a guaranteed bargain.  Made by you or for you, you’ll find it in the Plateau.

But hold on.  Before you go out wandering the streets by foot or wheel, you ought to know a little more; not about what you can see and do today, but about your neighbourhood’s yesterday.  Your apartment is very likely squashed, sandwiched, or stacked under or on top of two or three others, and shoehorned between near identical combinations of the same.  In the Plateau, the Montreal ‘Triplex’, as these apartments are known, is ubiquitous, elementary, essential.  So who built them?

Most of the buildings we see today are the third or fourth iterations of a neighbourhood that expanded rapidly toward the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th.  Nearer the river (and the old city centre), houses were often built “within the family” – using the talents of kin to provide contracting, labour, and even design.  Closer to 1900, after several fires and the rise of electric transportation (in the form of the main streetcar line up Boulevard St-Laurent), the familiar three-storey brick facades raced up the long north-south blocks, built by a mix of enterprising families and property speculators. Immigration from Europe fuelled the real estate market and fostered mixed commercial neighbourhoods along the length of old St-Lawrence Main.  The Triplex was born of the need to house thousands of new arrivals in the minimal amount of space and within the confines of an old feudal lot-line system, passed down by les seigneurs.  So throughout its history, yours has been a community of newcomers, where strangers settled, built networks and pursued their new goals.

And that seems as good a note as any on which to begin an exercise.  Cheers!

Your Off Campus Fellow in the Plateau and Mile End,