Living Monuments
- Paule Mackrous
- May 31
- 5 min read
The first apartment I had was in Outremont on Bloomfield Avenue at Van Horne. Bloomfield Avenue ended abruptly at the next street over and continued somewhere in a different neighbourhood known as Parc-extension. In between was a huge area we called “no man’s land”, a former marshalling yard for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The yard was hidden by buildings and I only visited this uninhabited place in my imagination. I would never have imagined that 20 years later, I would move into this wasteland that now belongs to the University of Montreal.
Even though a lot of construction has taken place in the last few years (condominiums, a pavilion for the university, and an elementary school is now under construction), MIL is still characterized by vast fields. For some people, they are empty places to make profitable. For others, like me, they are precious places where wild nature can express itself in the middle of the city.
As I moved in mid-December, I was eagerly looking forward to discovering all the plants and insects that adorn the fields during the warmer months. I could already picture myself wandering through the fields with my notebook and my garden clippers, picking wildflowers and arranging them in dried flower bouquets for all of my friends.
That’s why my heart sinks with each new construction. Maybe my children will be the last generation to witness these fields. Maybe I will be among the last ones to contemplate how the wind, the sun and the rain make them even more alive and vibrant. I wish we would keep at least one of them to let it live its wild life. It would be a “living monument” as I call it in my book Les Prophéties de la Montagne, to celebrate the expressions of life that once thrived here.
The first week after I moved, I was grieving the view of the beautiful sunsets on the north slope of Mount Royal from my previous apartment. On the day of the winter solstice, I went for a walk to chase the sunset around my new neighbourhood. I soon discovered that there were perfect spots nearby to contemplate the slow and temporary disappearance of our star. I took the path through the Pierre-Danserau park, an innovative greenspace emulating the marshalling yards with metal bridges and indigenous plants and water meadows below. I realized that, at that time of the year, the sun was setting directly on the long diagonal line, illuminating the whole path for at least 300 meters. This created the perfect lighting for Michel de Groin's set of sculptures called Sporophore installed along the path. I told myself that they looked like giant tortuous blue testicles, but I couldn’t blame the artist: sporophores, the fertile part of mushrooms, do look like that. It’s just that they usually are microscopic.
Walking along the path, blinded by the sunlight, I thought that this precise angle of the path couldn’t be fortuitous, although I couldn’t find anybody talking about how the sunset lined perfectly with it. It reminded me of land artist Nancy Holt’s famous Sun Tunnels. She installed four large concrete cylinders in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, which are designed to line up perfectly with the rising sun on the winter and summer solstice. By doing this, she not only encouraged the preservation of the land where the tunnels are, but also the land around it and the sky : Holt’s artwork needs a lot of flat land and a 360 degree view of the sky to maintain its experience and its significance.
Since the spring equinox, the spectacle of the setting sun has moved and can be seen from the railway tracks. The lands surrounding these rail corridors are hidden gems, incredibly valuable for ecological connectivity. While watching the sunset there, I spotted two hares and a skunk, and later I came across a weasel. I noticed that railways provide expansive views of the surrounding landscape. Much like Nancy Holt's artwork, they help preserve vast areas of wild lands and the view of the sky.
Walking through the MIL, I discovered that it is not just a place of vast fields; it's also a neighborhood filled with small paths that are everywhere. Some pathways are intentionally designed, like the one in Pierre-Dansereau Park, while others have formed through the repeated passage of people, like the one that leads to the railways through a small clandestine trail and hole in a fence. The hidden paths give me the feeling of transitioning from one world to another, enhancing the experience of walking in the MIL and making it feel like an adventure. Thanks to the fields, it’s a place where you can still forge your own path. In the winter, I created trails while cross-country skiing, navigating through the fields after a snowstorm that blanketed the area, weaving through the tall phragmites still standing.
As the snow melted, before the plants came alive, I went to the biggest field of the area to create land art. Even though it was still cold outside, the fields were teeming with insects and snails. I discovered hundreds of tiny, spiral-shaped homes scattered throughout the area, abandoned by their former inhabitants as the soil dried up. I picked them up delicately and studied each shell by holding them towards the sun. The strong light coming through the translucent matter revealed all the details which allowed me to notice how unique and precious each of the shells were. I created a spiral with them, honoring their own design, a recurrent nature pattern that has inspired so many cultures for artistic creation and symbolism.
At first glance, the field appeared inanimate, but I knew that beneath the islands of muted colours, the dead plants held vibrant roots, waiting for warmth to bring them back to life. I picked only the dead parts of the phragmites that were on the soil and planted a series of concentric triangles in a temporary swamp. I used the reflection of water to complete this urban field diamond that would appear only at a particular angle, at sunset. It’s amazing what can be made with dead plants, water, and light.
I then picked some dead branches from bushes. These ones did not bend easily. To shape them required work and a touch of water, yet they often still resisted curving. With dedication and patience, I molded the brittle branches without breaking them. I was grateful that the circle was completed by the time the sun reached its center.
By engaging in land art, it's impossible to view these fields as empty spaces. This playful practice deeply connects me to the land, and I leave it knowing the place by heart, caring deeply for its intrinsic perfection. Children do it spontaneously to connect with their surroundings. As I become part of these fields, it is particularly painful to realize they face extinction in the city. Through my explorations with Cœur d’épinette, I have come to believe that “Practicing the territory” with land art is an essential way to truly feel the loss that accompanies the destruction of nature. Cocreating with our environment is a path that leads us back where we belong, that reminds us what we are part of : the living world. Only living monuments can fully celebrate who we are.
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