MONTREAL OLD BUS TERMINAL

Operating until 2011, the old Montreal bus terminal was relocated a few meters to the north, on the same block from its original location. The original building is now mostly empty, although the city decided to allow its transitory use by a Purolator delivery point and a bike garage community project. Right on the corner of the Maisonneuve boulevard and Berri street, it faces the Émilie-Gamelin park, also known as Berri square. For years, this area of the city has had a bad reputation for being associated with drug trafficking and as a meeting point for a stigmatized homeless population. In an attempt to change the face of the neighbourhood, the city has decided to allow the use of a part of the building’s first floor to the Cooperative Les Valoristes, an organization with mandates for social inclusion and urban environmental sustainability. Coming into the building is a strange experience; on the first floor you can see the abandoned ticket sales counters, the passenger waiting areas with a few public chairs remaining, and, through the windows of the boarding gates, the wrecks of the bus’ parking bays.

The cafeteria area is like a time machine; prices are frozen in 2011, when you could still get a full breakfast for $4.99. Water is leaking in the kitchen and is finding its way down the stairs that go to the basement. In only 10 years, the lack of use and occupancy has deeply damaged the building on the surface. To occupy it means to protect the structural well-being of the terminal. While sitting in the diner you can see the main entrance to the Grande Bibliothèque and the main pavilion of the Université du Québec à Montréal, where thousands of students and the general public come and go everyday. Surrounded by artificial plants, you can feel how dirt keeps darkening the windows while time runs desperately outside for those catching the bus or going to class. If you sit still and quiet, besides the water dropping, you can hear the trains arriving and departing from the Berri-UQAM metro station. For the city having an empty building like this means expenses, while for the Cooperative Les Valoristes, emptiness is their business. They find value in the empty bottles and cans that we throw away as trash, for them, these empty aluminum and glass pieces represent a salary, a way to feel useful, to find pride in working towards a sustainable city. They create more spaces of inclusion and diversity in a city that is focused on reinventing itself, becoming an increasingly unaffordable place to live, while disregarding what has been its main attraction; cultural diversity, affordable housing and an inclusive society.