New park coming to Montreal's west end as final touches put on St-Jacques escarpment
CBC
A stretch of sloped wooded land sandwiched between Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood and Highway 20 will finally be walkable this spring, complete with the long-promised linear park.
While that's exciting news for any nature-loving city dweller, there's still more to be done to ensure pedestrians, cyclists and wildlife can easily navigate between the west end's green spaces, said Roger Jochym.
He's a member of a group that has been fighting to protect and promote the natural beauty of an escarpment known locally as the Falaise St-Jacques.
Turning the escarpment into a linear park, or green belt, has long been part of the plan as Quebec's Transport Ministry (MTQ) renovates the Turcot Interchange and Highway 20.
The park will stretch about three kilometres adjacent to the busy highway, south of NDG's St-Jacques Street — a commercial strip with car dealerships, cheap motels, restaurants, bars and supermarkets.
The park will have features like picnic tables, garbage cans, bike racks, birdhouses and a path roaming through the landscaped green space.
The path connects Pullman Street, near Decarie Boulevard, to Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Boulevard, near the border with Montreal West.
But while the public park has been in the planning and construction phase for years, citizens have also been adding their own touches to the escarpment. There are paths that people walk or cross-country ski, with handmade signs and bird feeders hanging from trees.
"I always like to compare it to being a country road in the city," said Jochym.
The escarpment has also been a dumping ground for everything from household garbage and tires to dirty snow that accumulated in parking lots and was illegally pushed over the edge.
Côte-Des-Neiges—NDG, in collaboration with the Sud-Ouest borough where the escarpment lies, has been cracking down on trash and snow-dumping. Meanwhile, volunteers have been making an effort to clean up the slope — and keep it clean.
"There are still, on the falaise, some tires, but I would say about 85 per cent of the tires have been moved," said Jochym.
And the land is teeming with wildlife, he said.
"There's a tremendous number of chickadees here and nuthatches," he said.
This story was originally published on May 28, 2024.
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