THE methodology for documenting, comparing and properly acknowledging civil society’s involvement in the heritage conservation movement still remains an unchartered territory as compared to the level of knowledge developed by the academic and institutional sectors on architectural or national history, archaeology, indigenous cultures or cultural landscapes. This unbalanced situation might explain why there are virtually no heritage properties on UNESCO’s World Heritage List conveying the values of democratic civil society of the modern metropolis, even though humans are increasingly urbanized, creating a new level of society between community and country.

The following observations are based on the author’s experience as a Heritage Montreal Foundation staff member. Heritage Montreal (www. heritagemontreal.org) is an independent, not-for-profit organization founded in 1975 in times of massive demolitions of a so-called modernist urban development model. Its mission is to encourage and promote through education, advocacy and research, the protection of historical, architectural, natural and cultural heritage of communities in the Province of Québec, not just the City of Montreal. It implements it by activities – homeowners restoration courses, lectures, family rallies, expert round tables or coalition building – connecting the three following concerns:

1. Heritage buildings, sites and ensembles with their built, landscape, memorial, archaeological and natural dimensions.

2. Urban planning and development policies, programmes and projects.

3. Public consultation and citizens participation.

 

Heritage Montreal’s founding mission relates to communities and citizens to support their role and capacity in conservation. Among its first activities in the 1980s was the coordination and management of the Milton Park Project which allowed the conservation and renovation of an entire 19th C. traditional neighbourhood into a 600-unit cooperative quarter to ensure the future of a genuine urban heritage and the low income residents’ right to live in the city.

Heritage Montreal is part of the civil society and has factually no real power to stop destruction or devalorization of heritage buildings, areas or sites. Yet, it effectively contributed to policy and institutional developments such as the establishment in 1987 of Canada’s first Masters programme in conservation at the Université de Montréal (whose first full-time coordinator was ICOMOS’ past Secretary General Herb Stovel), of the Conseil du patrimoine de Montréal and Office de consultation publique de Montréal (City of Montreal’s Heritage Council and Public Consultation Office) in 2002, and including cultural heritage in the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities adopted in 2005 (http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=3036, 3377687&_ dad=portal& _schema= PORTAL), in part an offspring from the ICOMOS Stockholm Declaration on Heritage and Human Rights (1998).

 

In 2015, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Heritage Montreal created an on-line platform (www.heritagemontreal.org/plateforme-h-mtl/) to encourage citizen participation in identifying and addressing heritage issues. Inspired in part by the process for the ICOMOS Heritage at Risk reports and participatory websites like New York’s 596 Acres project, the H-MTL platform gives individual citizens the opportunity to identify heritage alerts about buildings or sites on a public ‘heritage radar screen’ but also to debate issues or to collaborate and share ideas on solutions through connected social media. H-MTL also includes a tool kit to help citizens understand and navigate the legal and institutional framework and to effectively communicate with authorities.

This H-MTL platform is also an opportunity for policy makers, professionals, students or the media to hear concerns from the general public. Heritage Montreal has included its own priority sites on the platform’s map as well as ideas and videos – Inspir Actions – about successful revitalization accomplishments like the Milton Park Project or the designation of Habitat 67, a world-known modern architecture landmark.

Yet, this exposé is not about one particular civil society organization, one of many thousands around the world, but about the Montreal experience in heritage in local and metropolitan democracy. Like heritage which is no longer limited to some remarkable archaeological sites and exceptional monuments but also includes living ensembles like cities, landscapes and routes, democracy has been observed in the Montreal context to have various expressions beyond the more obvious representative democracy. Nowadays, there is a growing acknowledgement of the value of participative, collaborative and deliberative forms of democracy, in particular in a local or metropolitan context. Each of these living forms of democracy has different contributions to the acknowledgement, protection, revitalization and enrichment of the cultural heritage that ICOMOS exists to look after.

 

Representative or elective democracy is based on the people electing their representatives as decision makers, embedded in such founding documents as a country’s constitution, when there is one. In Canada, the constitution goes back to 1867 and still assigns to the provinces the responsibilities and powers for controlling private properties, education and municipalities, key subjects in relation to the conservation of cultural heritage. These form the general base of the heritage identification and protection legislation with variation between provinces and territories, and within the federal government jurisdiction over some very specific types of properties. The definition and implementation of these laws and complementary policies, accountability, ministerial responsibility and budgetary resources for projects, expertise or training is part of what can be expected from representative democracy.

In the case of Montreal, the Province of Quebec is the first Canadian province to have adopted a heritage law, the 1922 Act respecting the conservation of monuments and works of art of historic or artistic interest modelled on French legal concepts, since Quebec follows the Civil Code tradition while other provinces operate under British Common Law. Yet, despite special powers granted to Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s through its Charter, authority to designate and protect heritage buildings was only granted to municipalities in 1985 and, for the interior spaces, in 2012.

 

In Montreal, elective democracy was established in the 1830s when the city was incorporated and elected its first mayor in 1831. Originally, only property owners could vote and the Municipal Council included delegates from some of the city’s institutions and religious communities. In the 19th C., the powers and concerns of a municipal corporation for what we would consider as heritage matters was mostly limited to inspecting buildings and to supporting commemorative activities like the naming of streets and squares or the installation of monuments, since there were no heritage laws or bylaws to designate and protect heritage. Yet, in terms of urban landscape, in the 1870s the City of Montreal used its then limited powers following citizens’ petitions to acquire land at great cost and hire the most famous social reformer and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to create Mount Royal Park to safeguard the city’s iconic visual background.

The modernization of Montreal’s representative democracy owes a lot to the 1986 election of the Montreal Citizens Movement with a strong urban planning, housing and heritage protection political platform, showing the interest for the heritage sector to challenge political formations to define a position on heritage issues and overall protection and conservation framework. In 1988, a first public consultation policy was adopted and an independent consultation bureau created which got cancelled by the next political party in power before being re-established in 2001 municipal reform legislation passed by the Provincial Government of Quebec.

 

In 2017, the Provincial Legislature adopted two pieces of legislation. One act acknowledged municipalities as local governments and increased their powers, in particular by freeing them of their obligation to allow citizens petitions and referendums on subjects like zoning change, an instrument of direct democracy which had helped citizens to encourage better consideration for heritage by insensitive elected officers and mayors. The legislature also adopted an act relative to the status of Montreal as the ‘métropole du Québec’ which transferred responsibility for implementing some of the Minister of Culture powers under the Cultural Heritage Act without ensuring the permanent status and independence of the City’s Heritage Council.

These legislative changes are signs of a general trend on devolution of authority regarding heritage matters from the Provincial Government to its counterparts, the elected municipal governments, without much consideration for civil society and citizens. This seems to serve more political and management accommodations than high ideals of heritage conservation for the common public good.

In the case of Montreal heritage and urban development, participative democracy and public consultation processes find their roots in controversies raised in the 1980s by projects from private or public developers. The main argument was that demolition or large construction projects affected the heritage and urban landscape of everyone and couldn’t be legitimately assessed and authorized only by politicians or bureaucrats behind closed doors.

Among these controversial project, in 1984 a real estate developer proposed to build a shopping mall over McGill College Avenue in downtown, thus blocking a view on Mount Royal – ‘la montagne’ – which had been a defining feature of the city centre since the 1850s. The public outcry that resulted forced the developer to appoint and fund an independent commission which held hearings and demanded respect for its recommendations, resulting in a considerable reduction of the proposed construction and a widening of the vista.

 

In 1985-86, the Montreal citizen and civil society organizations pressured the Canadian government to set up an independent commission to hold hearings on the redevelopment of the Vieux Port, the old harbour areas adjacent to the historical city centre. The public consultation led to the government retreating from plans for major constructions to transform the site into a large public space for the benefit of citizens in a manner complementary to Old Montreal. In 1987, the City of Montreal pioneered its first municipal public consultation on the extension project for the Museum of Fine Arts which had heritage and urban landscape implications.

The Montreal approach for public consultation was adapted from models of public hearings established in the 1978 version of Quebec’s Quality of the Environment Act. It differs from the mechanism of municipal referendums which existed in smaller municipalities in Quebec, allowing citizens to formally call for a decisive vote on zoning change. As a civil society organization, Heritage Montreal has worked hard to advocate and support the development of public hearings processes considering the cultural and civic nature of heritage values in comparison with natural heritage and its stronger attention to quantifiable data. We also value the collective pedagogical benefit of a public discussion open to all, citizens and experts, youth and elders.

The main focus of that approach is the City of Montreal’s Office de consultation publique de Montréal which was established in 2002 and has since carried on, with its independent commissioners, some 139 public consultations on specific projects, area plans, the Heritage Policy or on subjects requested through petition under the Right of Initiative granted in the City Charter.

 

Over the past 30 years, Montreal has seen the growth of a network of local community panels – the ‘table de concertation’ or ‘table de quartier’. The model was originally developed in areas with significant social issues like housing, education, low income or public health and is based on establishing a continuous dialogue with and coordination of different community groups and local merchants association to build a common understanding of issues, give a voice to local society, generate proposals and solutions and develop a local capacity to monitor their implementation.

Though it is not a primary focus of these neighbourhood panels, heritage has gradually been integrated in their concerns, as culture, local identity and sense of community pride and creativity it conveys has become part of local concerns for revitalization and equality.

 

Equally, the table de concertation model was applied to large and iconic heritage sites in Montreal with a clear intent to support an integrated conservation approach. These are:

* Vieux Montréal: The historic centre is where the city was founded in 1642 by French Catholic colonialists on unceded indigenous territory. In the 1890s it was the place of one of the first citizens’ heritage action when people petitioned to stop the demolition of Château Ramezay, the old French governor’s residence which was later designated as the first Monument historique by the Government of Québec in 1929. In the 1950s, citizens successfully opposed the construction of an elevated highway in the old quarter and in 1964, it was legally declared a protected heritage district by the government. In 1994, following a symposium on tourism and quality of life in Vieux Montréal, a table de concertation (TCVM) was created to offer a meeting point to residents, merchants, cultural organization, tourism industry as well as the municipal, provincial and federal authorities. The TCVM has allowed for direct dialogue and collaboration between groups and neighbours which ignored each other before and to enrich and inspire the otherwise rather technical management tools for the heritage district.

* Mont Royal: A geological phenomenon generated long ago, this monument of nature stands proud as a landmark in the 100 km wide St. Lawrence River valley and plains. Archaeological evidence demonstrates how its importance in today’s urban landscape and society of Montreal and the greater metropolitan area is a continuation in a modern age of values already present centuries before Europeans came and called it Mont Royal in 1535. Since the 19th C., Montrealers of all social strata have collaborated to ensure that the civic meaning, visual presence and public access are maintained. They located on it cemeteries, hospitals, universities, parks and shrines which have high value in and for society and ensure public access to Mont Royal, unlike large private mansions built around it. They also sought a national status for it so as to establish a safer distance between local interests and its conservation.

 

Finally, by setting up collaborative mechanisms like the not-for-profit community organization Les amis de la montagne, created in 1986 after a series of controversial development projects, and the table de concertation du Mont Royal (TCMR) formed in 2005 by the city with municipal, institutional and community stakeholders after the Government of Quebec declared Mont Royal as a national historic and natural district. Over more than 10 years of regular meetings, the TCMR has generated over 40 consensus agreements and supported its members in their contribution to the conservation of the site and its heritage and social values.

One of these consensus agreements proposed that Mont Royal’s ensemble of protected institutional and civic components be submitted for the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites in Canada, as an outstanding example of a place where nature and culture meet and where successive societies, from the ancient indigenous traditions to the citizens of a modern cosmopolitan metropolis, have acted consciously to maintain the social and cultural values of a civic place. The table de concertation experience, along with World Heritage concepts of periodic reporting and collaborative monitoring, inspired the biennial Agora métropolitaine which brings together elected officials and civil society organizations like Heritage Montreal to support the implementation of a metropolitan development plan.

A fourth form of democracy is one which acknowledges the value of exchange and communication between people, organizations and institutions – be they governmental, academic or religious. In Montreal, that exchange has greatly benefited from the presence of a diversity of universities and media reflective of the diversity of the Montreal society itself. Since the 19th C., citizens, scholars and civic leaders have had the freedom to express their views in the newspapers, then on radio and television, in both French and English as well as media of other immigrant communities. This has greatly contributed to raising awareness and interest in the general public on heritage matters.

A high point was reached in the 1980s when almost all newspapers had dedicated columnists covering news about heritage buildings, their history and interest or the possible loss. Since many of these columns have been removed or merged with the general local news section, the Montreal based media have used these local cases as an opportunity to advocate or otherwise influence a national agenda of legislative improvement or public policies.

 

The new digital age landscape of media and communication offers many opportunities for a deliberative democracy which organizations like Heritage Montreal had started to explore back in the 1990s. There are risks involved like the distortion of priorities by the social media but equally, this offers the benefit of a broad conversation that would enhance the porosity of the expert/citizens traditional divide.

Heritage, like democracy, is a social construct that emerges from the confluence of place, people and time and connects all the three. As such our understanding of heritage has also evolved. Heritage has expanded from the individual monument or archaeological site to a much broader range that now acknowledged includes living landscapes, indigenous culture and metropolises in an ecosystem of values expressing the human endeavour in the full richness of its diversity, in a duty towards holders of memory as well as a gift to the future generation.

Democracy has moved from an exclusive institution-centred system of organizing the delegation of power and authority to a broader range of society-based processes that strengthen the representative components with participation, collaboration and exchange of information in a digital and communication age.

 

Understanding and connecting these two stories would be very interesting, especially if it is done jointly from an academic, citizen and traditional communities viewpoint. One opportunity could be to look, in ICOMOS for example, at key junction points like the evolution of civil society and citizen involvement in conservation or the heritage places of democratic processes and institutions. And why not imagine the development of a ‘Heritage Happiness Index’ complementing the current attention to management tools with a focus on the welfare and contribution of heritage in society?

Some years ago, the former Chancellor of McGill University, David Johnston, then Governor General and Commander in Chief of Canada, gave a friendly warning to young scholars. He challenged these bright people to avoid confusing data with information, information with knowledge and knowledge with wisdom.

In a world of rapid and reactive communication, with demographic and environmental transformation that require collective understanding, attention and collaboration, this challenge is also ours in the field of conservation so that it gains recognition as a founding stone of a modern and better world.

 

* A word of thanks to ICOMOS India for hosting the 2017 ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium on the timely and relevant theme of Heritage and Democracy, bringing together a broad international and interdisciplinary gathering of experts in the field of cultural heritage conservation.

** This note has been drawn from the paper ‘Heritage Conservation in a Metropolitan Society: Citizen Participation and Consultation in Montréal’ presented by the author at the ICOMOS International Symposium, on 13 December 2017. Although a complete history of the heritage movement in Montreal and its metropolitan area has yet to scholarly written, its experience of the last 150 years with its strong citizen and civil society contribution to a collective and institutional consideration for heritage in the urban and metropolitan development model, deserves consideration and comparison.