Inside Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mostly on the run, his office in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.

A Parc La Fontaine whose out-of-service fountain serves as an open-air urinal. A crowded and dangerous Saint-Denis street for pedestrians. An economically devastated Latin Quarter. It all forms a sort of inglorious triangle in the heart of Montreal.

As much as the neighborhood has gentrified, some of its best-known "gems" have, oddly enough, gone downhill, notes my colleague, Josée Legault, who has lived there as a tenant since 1995.

"I arrived a little before the last referendum and La Fontaine Park was still a rural place with beautiful flowers, pedal boats and lots of activities on the ponds. »

In the 1960s and 1970s, recalls the columnist, there were even small boats for families in this park in the borough of Le Plateau-Mont-Royal.

“It was beautiful, lively and full of children. All that has disappeared. »

Shabby

A pitiful duck splashes through a puddle near a graffiti-covered shed.

We walk on what was a sidewalk before being abandoned. The asphalt slowly returns to the earthy state.

"It's spring, it's May, and of course the pond basin hasn't been filled yet. »

We take a pedestrian path riddled with potholes to reach the restaurant pavilion where a statue of a whale with a battered skull and peeling paint awaits us.

A faded hopscotch game adorns the asphalt. Grids prevent you from sitting on the benches overhanging the pool.

“It used to be open to everyone. No obligation to buy to sit. Now it's wired up. »

Pissoir

Around the north basin where the theater repair site has been stretching for years, people are sitting in front of a gravel hole overgrown with weeds.

By a gravel isthmus towards the inactive fountain, at night, one comes to urinate there.

"There is a gross lack of toilets in the park, so people relieve themselves in the surrounding alleys," adds Josée Legault.

By car on rue Saint-Denis, there is traffic. In addition to the huge construction site that never ends at the corner of Avenue des Pins. It's 2 p.m.

"It's a difficult bike highway for pedestrians to navigate. Car traffic, once fluid, is no longer so. So, more pollution and impatience. »

The once very busy street with beautiful terraces has seen its character tarnish in 25 years...

Like the Bronx of the 1970s

We push on to the Latin Quarter at the Ontario intersection and...it's spooky.

Three of the four corners have vacant commercial premises.

In front of what used to be a hotel is a collection of various junk, from rotten food to pieces of broken cement.

“This dilapidation reminds me of the Bronx [in New York] in the 1970s and it is only in Montreal that we tolerate that, we would not see that in Quebec or Toronto,” said Ms. Legault.

She tells me about her fed up to suggest to Montrealers to express themselves.

“We have to stop tolerating this high level of neglect if we want to restore the beauty of the neighborhood. »