Montreal is presenting its $3.45-million granite sculptures as a project that will link the three summits of Mount Royal for the city’s 375th anniversary.
However, one of those summits – in Westmount – will not be furnished with the pieces, which are otherwise planned for spots all around the mountain.
“We said ‘Thanks, but no thanks’,” Peter Trent, the mayor of Westmount, said when asked about the apparent omission on Thursday.
Last fall, the members of Westmount city council rejected a request by Montreal to install some of the planned pieces in Summit Woods, which rise 201 metres above sea level.
The two other peaks of Mount Royal, one of the St. Lawrence region’s Monteregian Hills, are in Montreal, where the peak rises to 233 metres above downtown and Parc Ave., and in Outremont, a former suburb and now a borough, where the peak reaches 211 metres.
Montreal approached Westmount in the spring of 2015 with early renderings of the granite stumps, but the members of council there said they found it expensive, intrusive and not appropriate for the natural appearance of the mountain, the minutes to Westmount caucus meetings in May and September show.
They were the same granite pieces that Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre described this week as “art” after critics said they look like petrified “tree stumps.”
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The caucus also rebuffed a request from Montreal this past April to bind elastic signs to two trees within Westmount’s Summit Woods to identify them among 50 remarkable trees on Mount Royal. That’s another initiative intended for next year’s 375th anniversary of the founding of Ville-Marie in 1642.
Westmount does not put signs on its trees, councillor Cynthia Lulham relayed to Montreal, the Westmount caucus minutes say. However, Westmount would be willing to add a notice on a board in front of the woods to indicate that the woods contain two trees that are qualified as remarkable.
She also said the city of Montreal was using the 375th anniversary as a pretext to impose its vision of Mount Royal on the portion situated in Westmount.
The suburb voted to demerge from Montreal in 2005 and regain its independence.
Lulham suggested that instead of signs, a mobile application for forests, urban parks and trails be developed to act as an audio guide for visitors when they stop at trees or landmarks on the mountain. Westmount already has reference points created when it geo-mapped Summit Woods that could be used for such an app, she added.
The members of caucus also agreed they would explain the vocation of Summit Woods, which Westmount considers an urban wildlife as opposed to a park, in their letter rejecting the stumps. The woods contain wild plant and flower species and is a designated bird and wildlife sanctuary.
Westmount, like the other island suburbs, voted against the $3.5-million contract for the granite pieces at the last island council meeting in May. The expense is to be billed to the island council, so the suburbs will foot part of the cost.
Meanwhile, Westmount has a project this year that happens to coincide with the 375th anniversary. It plans to demolish half a kilometre of road that separates Summit Woods from a wooded area to the north by removing the asphalt, signposts and guard rails along Summit Circle, then naturalizing the space.
The project will remove an acre of asphalt and add over half an acre of forest with 75 new indigenous trees, plus a winding gravel footpath. Half of the $800,000 price tag is to be paid by the Quebec government and the other half by Westmount.
