The not so Great Canadian White Elephant Thread

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by esquire

Yes, and it has an important role in cargo aviation. But still, it would be like building an entire office tower, having zero tenants, and saying "well, at least it has a pretty nice Tim Hortons"

lol, this is funny!

I think the businesses have more economic impact that what a Tim Hortons would have vs a full office tower but i get your point.

[MolsonExport]

Back in the late 1960s (when the city was on a heck of a roll....the ball suddenly stopped with the FLQ's shenanigans) Montreal was projected to have 8 million people by the early 2000s. With a high speed train link, Mirabel made a lot of sense (it could have served Ottawa too, with another high speed train link).

The growth didn't materialize. The train was never built. The direct highways were not completed.

Originally, there was a plan to put the giant airport on the South Shore (much closer) but the Yanks balked at having international planes starting to make their descent into Montreal, over Plattsburgh Airforce base (in nearby NY State).

[urbandreamer]

Market Square and the Eaton Centre in downtown Kitchener. Uptown Waterloo has the very dead Waterloo Town Square and possibly the Region of Waterloo Airport.

Cambridge has downtown Galt: an historic attractive downtown slowly dying thanks to continuous suburban sprawl and a concentration of social services downtown/homeless. Old Quebec Street Shoppes in downtown Guelph is dead.

I always liked the Big Owe, which I call the Big O cuz it's sexy.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by vanatox

Eccentric, storied regional centre... sorry but this is something that could be used to describe places such as St John's, not Montreal. Or maybe you mean in the same way Copenhagen and Stockholm are both eccentric and storied regional centre?

Exactly
It sounds like one is talking about a place like say St. John's, or American examples such as Buffalo or New Orleans and not the second largest city with a Metro of ~4.3M in a country of 39M

[WhipperSnapper]

Bloomington is brand new. The plan is to surround it with 1000s and 1000s of investor condos. It can still work out.

Ontario Place had its moments in the early 1980s. Significant expansion to compliment the popular IMAX , bandshell and, waterpark. The only problem is Ontario themed educational fun (that doesn't compete with science and technology) is just not fun. Food is fun. IIRC, there was outdoor food court offering international foods. It wasn't ever open.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Market Square and the Eaton Centre in downtown Kitchener. Uptown Waterloo has the very dead Waterloo Town Square and possibly the Region of Waterloo Airport.

Cambridge has downtown Galt: an historic attractive downtown slowly dying thanks to continuous suburban sprawl and a concentration of social services downtown/homeless. Old Quebec Street Shoppes in downtown Guelph is dead.

I always liked the Big Owe, which I call the Big O cuz it's sexy.

I was just there in May.
The plaza "Waterloo Public Square" in front of it is pretty busy with plenty of foot traffic or people just hanging out and people watching, there's two bars/restaurants fronting King (me and my buddy drank on the patio fronting the plaza) and "The Shops" has a grocery store and Shoppers. Not to mention there's constant buses and the ion light rail dropping people off right there.
Not vibrant per se but not exactly dead in my opinion.

[O-tacular]

For Calgary it's been a few of the public art pieces that have gone up in recent years. 1% of the budget for city capital projects needs to be allocated to public art. In theory it's great, but in practice it has led to some odd locations for public art projects including sewage treatment plants, pump stations and random overpasses. Here are some of the more controversial ones:

Travelling Light (aka The blue ring or Hoolahoop):



Bowfort Towers (aka contruction debris):





Wishing Well (aka giant mirror that burned a visitors jacket and had to be removed and put into storage):





Watershed (aka LED's in a lift station that light up a display of the pipes when poop flows through them)

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by vanatox

Eccentric, storied regional centre... sorry but this is something that could be used to describe places such as St John's, not Montreal. Or maybe you mean in the same way Copenhagen and Stockholm are both eccentric and storied regional centre?

Yeah, pretty much. They're great cities but nobody would think of them in a list of Europe's most powerful or crucial cities.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Yeah, pretty much. They're great cities but nobody would think of them in a list of Europe's most powerful or crucial cities.

Oh okay. Now I understand.
Typical North American mindset of "regional center" is different in my mind, anyway

[kool maudit]

I wasn't thinking of St. John's, I was thinking of places like Lisbon, Turin, Stockholm, Marseille.

Metropoli for sure, but yhe biggest decisions are made elsewhere. Montreal is a great city but it once commanded a continental level of resources. In the early days of civil aviation, maybe even unto the start of the jet age, it had more flights than anywhere save NYC and Chicago.

[Wigs]

O-tac,

Are you familiar with Leroy & Leroy? hilarious vignettes "there's always something to do"
You can also find them on Instagram or (probably) TikTok

• Video Link

Anyway they did a longer video for the Traveling light
• Video Link

Here's their shorts
https://m.youtube.com/c/LeroyandLeroy/shorts

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by Wigs

O-tac,

Are you familiar with Leroy & Leroy? hilarious vignettes "there's always something to do"
You can also find them on Instagram or (probably) TikTok

• Video Link

Anyway they did a longer video for the Traveling light
• Video Link

Here's their shorts
https://m.youtube.com/c/LeroyandLeroy/shorts

That's great!

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I wasn't thinking of St. John's, I was thinking of places like Lisbon, Turin, Stockholm, Marseille.

Metropoli for sure, but yhe biggest decisions are made elsewhere. Montreal is a great city but it once commanded a continental level of resources. In the early days of civil aviation, maybe even unto the start of the jet age, it had more flights than anywhere save NYC and Chicago.

When you come from a historical perspective like that yeah it makes it seem like Montréal is long past its peak, but speaking as an elder Millennial Canuck to me it seems like Montréal has never been more vibrant in the past 20 years that I've been following it.

[kool maudit]

Yeah its a better city than ever, funnily enough. Those old Square Mile types ran a cramped, teeming, tenement-style industrial city. Montreal is a much more livable, creative place now, even adjusted for the norms of the time. But there was that moment where it was gunning for a top spot in the Americas, and Mirabel was the tail end of that.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Anyone else can think of Ontario-specific ones?

The Trent–Severn Waterway was quite controversial. Given that its proposed route led through a handful of important swing ridings, work on the project continued even after it had been rendered obsolete. It didn't deliver on the economic growth that was promised to the regions it served, and it's never gotten much (if any) use aside from leisure.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Yeah its a better city than ever, funnily enough. Those old Square Mile types ran a cramped, teeming, tenement-style industrial city. Montreal is a much more livable, creative place now, even adjusted for the norms of the time. But there was that moment where it was gunning for a top spot in the Americas, and Mirabel was the tail end of that.

In my mind it still is: NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal are what I consider the top 5 cities/Metros for North America
Maybe I'm viewing it from a Canadian lens, although I have travelled to a decent chunk of America that I feel qualified to make this assessment

I know I'll probably get flack from Yanks in particular. To me these are the most cosmopolitan and have the blend of historic areas, charming and interesting neighbourhoods combined with constant change in the core.

Back to the airport, do you think had they piled all that money from the Mirabel dream but instead to make Dorval the best it could be that Montréal would have maintained more international connections?

[thewave46]

The marker for whether a city might be considered having aspired to be a real global city might be an avant garde vanity project or potential White Elephant that represented the peak of an era.

For Montreal, Olympic Stadium or Mirabel Airport would have been that impulse. They’re peak ‘70s attempting to look forwards for the next few decades. And rather missing the mark, like these things often do.

For Toronto, the CN Tower or SkyDome might be it.

Other Canadian cities? Not really. The closest thing I see is maybe BC Place?

Trying to think of other more minor global cities out aiming for that same stature. Sydney’s Opera House?

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by Wigs

In my mind it still is: NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal are what I consider the top 5 cities/Metros for North America

Mexico City indisputably ranks ahead of 4/5 of these cities.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

Mexico City indisputably ranks ahead of 4/5 of these cities.

I forgot about it to be honest

[lio45]

I call Dorval Airport “Dorval Airport”.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport has always, obviously, been Mirabel to me.

(Doesn’t matter as much as one’d think. Can’t recall the last time I’ve flown from Quebec / Canada. It was over 20 years ago.)