La Ville Fleurie'

The Dream of 'la ville fleurie': A Non-Linear History and Pragmatic Criticism of Public Gardens in Montreal Erin Despard A Thesis In the Department of Communication Studies Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2013 © Erin Despard, 2013 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Erin Despard Entitled: The dream of ‘la ville fleurie’: A non-linear history and pragmatic criticism of public gardens in Montreal and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Communication) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: Chair !!! Dr. J. White External Examiner Dr. L. Cameron External to Program Dr. J. Didur Examiner Dr. M. K. Gagnon Examiner Dr. B. Massumi Thesis Supervisor Dr. P. C. Van Wyck Approved by Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director Dr. W. Buxton, Graduate Program Director April 8, 2013 Dr. B. Lewis, Dean Faculty of Arts and Science ABSTRACT The dream of 'la ville fleurie': A non-linear history and pragmatic criticism of public gardens in Montreal Erin Despard, PhD Communication Studies, 2013 ! This thesis sets out to theorize the social and political agency of public gardens, and to find a means of comprehending their potential for facilitating creative as opposed to prescriptive cultural change, as well as their (perhaps more predominant) culturally conservative tendencies. I pursue this objective in large part through a more fulsome description of effects specific to gardens, attempting to develop a criticism capable of perceiving the function of different garden forms, and a more open-ended trajectory for their evolution. The focus is on gardens in Montreal, as seen in part through the lens of the city’s annual beautification campaigns (which ran more or less continuously between 1914 and 1989) and a variety of other horticulturally-oriented beautification initiatives undertaken by the municipal administration and in large part enabled by the staff and resources of the Montreal Botanical Garden. Culminating in the city’s hosting of the Floralies internationales in 1980, this history provides context for the evolution of a distinctly horticultural urbanism in Montreal—one which attributes to gardens an enhanced social significance and sees in them an avenue for (usually prescriptive) cultural change. iii Against the background of this history, as well as in more active juxtaposition with it, I investigate the social and political functioning of two particular gardens in Montreal—one found at the site of the Botanical Garden and the other at the Jardins des Floralies in Parc Jean-Drapeau. By weaving together an experimental fieldwork, creative writing practice and archival research, I attempt to describe a much wider range of effects in and of gardens than is usual from either a social scientific or art historical point of view. Juxtaposing those descriptions in turn with analysis of a variety of (historically related) media forms, I produce a way of seeing gardens that registers a distinctive but underappreciated sociality (in other words, the basis for re-imagining their role in processes of social change). iv "#$%&'()*+),)%-.! This thesis has been a long time in the making and there are several institutions, city departments, and many individuals who have helped to bring it to completion. Some of the most significant support has come from the staff of the archives and library at the Montreal Botanical Garden—without access to the collections there, my thesis would have been a very different, likely less interesting project. The staff of the library and médiathèque have been very helpful to me on numerous occasions, and provided me with numerous images and documents from a distance. I thank Guy Frenette, Steluta Ovesia, and Lise Servant, and am particularly indebted to Céline Arsenault—not only for technical assistance, but also for numerous suggestions, introductions and general knowledge of the Garden and its activities in the city over the years. Technicians at the Archives de Montréal have also been extremely helpful on numerous occasions—I thank especially Gilles Lafontaine. I also thank Michel Lemire at the Direction des grands parcs et du verdissement, for providing me with access to many otherwise unavailable plans and documents pertaining to the Floralies internationales and the floral park. I have also been fortunate enough to benefit from informal conversations with a number of former employees, administrators and landscape architects connected with the Montreal Botanical Garden, the Service des parcs, and the Floralies internationales: Maurice Beauchamp, Pierre Bourque, Jean Landry, Jean-Jacques Lincourt, Fredreich Oehmichen and Gilles Vincent. These conversations enriched my perspective greatly, and helped to make the search for archival materials much more effective. Among my friends and colleagues I thank Cecilia Chen and Shirley Roburn for accomplishing a couple of key tasks late in the research process while I was absent from v Montreal, and Fabien Rose for providing me with a comprehensive list of historical resources I consulted repeatedly. I thank Mél Hogan for her very timely and capable assistance with translation. And I am indebted to Kendra Besanger, Fiona Buss, Heather Davis, Kristina Knight and Shirley Roburn for their help proofreading. Many of these individuals also provided friendly ears and constructive feedback at several points during the earlier stages of the research process. I am also grateful to have found within the Joint Doctorate in Communication Studies, and in my interactions with faculty and other graduate students at Concordia, both interest in and support for research on gardens. Individuals who have provided particularly valuable support and feedback in developing this project include Jill Didur, Monika Kin Gagnon, Chantal Nadeau, Brian Massumi, Kim Sawchuck and Sha Xin Wei. My thinking about gardens in relation to other media also benefited significantly from my stay at the Berkeley Center for New Media in 2010, and in particular from conversations I had there with Nicholas de Monchaux and Ken Goldberg. I am grateful for the financial support of the Fonds Québecois pour la recherche sur la société et la culture, which made completion of my degree, and the visit to Berkeley, possible. Most of all, I thank Peter van Wyck for understanding and encouraging my insistence on the importance of writing and an open-ended research process, and whose patience, interest and confidence in my ability to deal, eventually, with a large and unruly set of materials was exactly the form of supervision I needed. Finally, I thank my parents, for their unwavering support and interest, and I thank Liam Watson, who always gives me the support and advice I need, just before I’m ready for it—and whose sleep has suffered almost as much as mine in the course of completing this thesis. vi -"/()!&0!#&%-)%-.! TABLE OF FIGURES....................................................................................................... x! A PREFATORY NOTE ON LANGUAGE .................................................................... xi INTRODUCTION: Hope and Politics in Public Gardens ............................................... 1! Characterizing the object of study: Why do gardens make us hopeful?...................................... 2! The political uses of gardens........................................................................................................ 7! (The lack of) a history of public gardens.................................................................................... 12! Garden criticism ........................................................................................................................ 31! Conceptual framework .............................................................................................................. 41! Central research question and methodological overview.......................................................... 48! Introducing the gardener: Split personality garden criticism.................................................... 52! The garden’s perceptual challenge and the limitations of visual expertise................................ 54! The gardener’s minority status .................................................................................................. 59! Writing as research and conventions of garden criticism .......................................................... 61! Chapter breakdown ................................................................................................................... 68! CHAPTER ONE: The Myth of Beautification and the Tree-Pit Garden....................... 79! Origins of the beautification campaigns .................................................................................... 87! Early beautification campaigns.................................................................................................. 91! Beautification and the quality of urban citizens ........................................................................ 98! Gardening for everyone: The introduction of the window box contests................................. 102! Later window box contests and the dream of the ‘ville fleurie’ ..............................................

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