Viger Square, a review

Gervais Nash

Before I arrived at Viger Square I had a vision of a concrete prison yard sort of thing.  Each of the pictures that I had seen previously had been taken in the winter, and thus looked devoid of any life, of the human or plant variety. I had read in a Mirror article that the square was a place full of street kids and drug addicts, that there were sleeping bags, old couches and garbage all over the place. This is not what I experienced; I found a clean space along with concrete structures that had vines climbing on the wall and small bushes growing on top.

Viger square is a public space in somewhat of a spotlight at the moment, because many people feel it is an eyesore that needs to be destroyed.  The concrete park frequented by street people and sometimes skateboarders is located below Rue Berri and above St Denis.  On the west side, Viger is contained by Rue Viger and on the east, St Antoine. Strangely, the surrounding areas are all quite safe and seem to be filled with people simply doing regular tasks such as getting lunch, or going for a stroll.

When I first arrived at the square, I said “wow this isn`t nearly as sketchy as I thought!“ I went during the day though, so that definitely made a difference.  It was not that there were not any street people, but that there were not very many and those who were there were sleeping.  I even saw a couple of office workers eating their lunch underneath one of the many skeletal concrete cubes.

Personally, I enjoyed Viger Square; I went there with my friend who had his skateboard.  We found a space that used to be part of a now out of order fountain, which was closed because of an accidental death.  It was perfectly flat, so we jumped off of that platform, over a gap to land on another flat surface at the bottom of some stairs. After I had been skating for a couple minutes I decided I needed to explore the square in more depth and see the square from another angle, so I climbed up on top of one of the concrete skeletons. From up there I decided that Viger was a very interesting space.

The way each of the concrete skeletons created a sort of “room” without boxing you in was comforting. There were spots where you could sit in the shade, but nowhere felt too gloomy. I was sad that more people didn’t feel the same way.

Earlier, on the same day that I visited Viger Square, the group that I am collaborating with on this publication visited (arguably) one of the best/most well known architect in the city, Éric Gauthier.  When I asked what went wrong with Viger Square, he explained it does not matter how a public space is designed, but any space that is open to everybody can become a place where vagrants congregate.

I agree with what Gauthier had to say about public spaces; but in this case I feel that there were other reasons why the homeless were driven to, and others were driven away from Viger. One is that the building one block to the north on St Antoine is a huge block-long hotel that is totally empty for whatever reason, and the large building across the street to the south is being demolished.  This means the area immediately surrounding the space is not very dense, meaning there are not many people go there even if it was “desirable”.  Another is that some of the structures have roofs that provide shelter year–round for the homeless.

So, despite Viger Square being a place that many people avoid; I do not think that it is such an awful place. I found it to be a great place to skateboard, and if it was as busy as it was meant to be, I probably would not be able to do it.