Southwest Montreal's Friendly Recycling Centre
In a post about three posts below (click on the TITLE above), Blogaulaire advocated that bookstore owners dispose of box-loads of 'overstock' that constitute nothing more than printed materials: all the magazines and books that no one will take from a bookstore or on-line dealer whether or not it is sold for a dime out of some bin left sitting on the sidewalk in front or is given away for free. (I can just see the antiquarian dealers among my thousands of daily readers shudder at the image! Ha!)
Blogaulaire wants to AVOID ANY IMPLICATION that the used bookstore dealer in a working class neighbourhood is at the very bottom of the food chain (despite what I wrote). We are NOT SAYING that once Mister or Misses bookdealer 'disposes' of a printed document at some recycling centre, that said document has been irrevocably DESTROYED.
Well I know better than that . . . because:
At the municipal recycling depots in Montreal, there are workers clustered around an entrepreneurial person who acts as gang-boss. This team almost immediately salvages the material that is dumped in the recycling bins to give it One More Chance , another opportunity to be picked over by folks who drop by driving vans or with big backpacks or saddlebags on bikes.
The recycle-cycle never ends . . . not for old televisions, not for cheap credenzas, not for nada or ninguno. All of which is an opening for CPE to upload a few images that introduce you to an area recycling centre and its environment:
All year-round, even when the snow blows off the highway overhead, somebody is there to put the recycled books and household rejects under tarps for people to come pick through . . . 'come rain or come shine'.
The recycling centre for the Southwest is between Côte St. Paul and St. Henri - halfway between the Champlain Bridge and the Turcot Interchange.
Recent immigrants from the Caribbean Islands seem to gravitate to this recycling centre for work out-of-doors and with great demands physically and to their ingenuity at fixing stuff.
Locals can feast their eyes on an acre of appliances and electronic gadgets or jump in under the tarps and dig through the National Geographics and Readers Digest Condensed Books to hunt out the leftover treasures of publishing traditions.
3 comments:
I had forgotten about that place altogether. But didn't know anyone could just go on down and sift through. Will be taking a longer look for sure.
Neath
Hi Neath. Congratulations on making the first page of The Gazette with your blog and involvement on Turcot Yards. It is an honour and a privilege . . et cetera, etc.
I thought you were going to browse over to CPE and 'call' me for saying that the little industrial and warehousing enclave off Roberval and Cabot is situated 'between' Côte St. Paul and St. Henri. We both know that the Canal Lachine and St. Patrick St. cut in before we get to St. Henri from there. It is testimony to how the 15 and the Décarie Expressways have sliced up our part of the Southwest that the small zone off Angers is virtually nameless. I could name half a dozen zones up to the Metropolitan that are distinct and nameless as well . . a situation that has lasted for over 40 years.
Or you could have 'called' me for claiming that the recycling centre is 'halfway' between the Champlain Bridge and the Turcot Interchange. It just seems that far away due to how the canal and the underpass from Lanaudière and St. Ambroise cut Cabot off from the Turcot Yards. In fact, the Turcot begins not far beyond where you see the tree in my photo looking up at the 15. It is another case of 'you can't get there from here'.
In the coverage that local urbanist activist artists, photographers and architects received in the Gazette coverage, you all lucked out in being written up by a competent reporter with a good photo-journalist to do the images. I hope this sort of coverage continues. Too many locals have conveniently forgotten that there is a population living cheek-by-jowel near the Turcot Yards. We have buit up transportation arteries (including the Canal Lachine) to be impassable barriers. Thank goodness for the bike paths (which become deplorable, nonetheless, the closer they come to the expressway) because these recreational paths prove that the Turcot Yards has potential to be opened up to public access and enjoyment.
Until I visited your blog, Walking Turcot Yards, I didn't realize that there was a worldwide movement to recuperate all these morcels that have been cut-off from civilization by the rise of four wheel traffic and the decline of rail transportation. Kee it up!
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