An open-air school to claim a real school on the former site of the Montreal children’s Hospital

COURTESY/GRAHAM SINGH

QMI agency

Saturday, 3 march 2018 20:06

UPDATE
Saturday, 3 march 2018 20:06

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Dozens of people demonstrated Saturday in mid-day in order to claim a school on the site of the old Hospital for children of Montreal located at the intersection of Atwater and René-Lévesque, in the borough of Ville-Marie.

The event named “Where is our school?” has been organized by local community organizations in Cabot square, near the site of the old hospital where the construction work of a mega-real estate complex are in progress.

Last year, during the public consultations on the project, stakeholders had requested that a primary school is an integral part and the promoter Devimco Immobilier was said to be open to the idea. However, after negotiations that have stretched, Devimco has had to go ahead with the project without the provision of school, letting them know recently that it had sold 80 % of its condos planned on the site and that it was too late to include a school.

In response to this, on Friday, the mayor of Montréal, Valérie Plante, who is also the mayor of the borough of Ville-Marie where the project should see the light of day, said that there was still time to find a solution and invited the parties to file to sit down and resume negotiations. “We are in the mode solutions”, stressed Geneviève Jutras, Saturday, during a telephone interview, adding that no development had taken place since the release of the mayor on Friday and Saturday.

“Currently, there are 406 students in Peter-McGill, who need to travel in the nearby areas to go to school every day, has explained the Inter-action of the Peter-McGill district, one of the organizations that organized the event. The promises heard in recent years about the introduction of a first public elementary school in the district have not yet borne fruit. It is time to take action and demonstrate to decision makers the extent to which this need is of paramount importance to the community.”

For a few hours, on Saturday, the protesters were so busy Cabot square by holding a “school flowers” with, in the open air, the desks of school children, tables and other items from a school classroom.

Parents, children, members of the community participated in the event, as did the president of the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM) Catherine Harel Bourdon, the councillor for the district of Peter-McGill, Cathy Wong, and the councillor Sophie Mauzerolle.

“The next step is to ensure a meeting as soon as possible, between the CSDM, the ministry of Education, the City of Montreal and Philip Kerub (the other developer of the site) and can also be Devimco, said Corey Gulkin, communications officer for the Inter-action of the Peter-McGill district. It is necessary that all these actors work together to find a solution for our community, mainly for our children! […] We keep the pressure on his actors and the intelligence on the issue.”