Howdy!

Yes, I know it sounds like a strange request, but Denys Arcand is getting up there in years – he just turned 71 years-old. I bring it up, because one of my favorite places in the city is Parc Claude-Jutra at the corner of Clark and Prince Arthur where there is a Charles Daudelin statue memorializing Claude Jutra, who died in 1986 at the age of 56.

Both the park and the statue are stately and elegant, comfortable and very well planned and made.

I bring up M. Arcand’s mortality, because I just discovered something called Place Gilles Carle. According to Google, a six minute walk from Parc Claude-Jutra. As you might have suspected M. Carle was also a noted Quebecois cineaste who died at the age of 81. M. Arcand is next in line as amazing, highly respected and extremely influential Quebecois directors. Well anyhows, Place Gilles Carle is a horrible little thing.

All bricks and no movement, nothing green six spindly and scrawny trees that don’t look like they will survive another winter, not a single living soul anywhere, it is obvious that whomever is designing public places to honor recently dead Quebecois filmmakers doesn’t have a clue as to what they are doing. So as a consequence I respectfully ask that M. Arcand stay alive a little bit longer (and so that no one gets the wrong idea, I don’t think he sick or anything, just getting up there in age) in order that someone else can design Square Denys Arcand and not whomever is responsible for the travesty that is Place Gilles Carle.