A park becomes party central and puts N.D.G. on the map

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During the darkest days of COVID, when most everything was shut down, I remember walking through Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park with my friend and neighbour Jérôme Glad, both of us grumbling about the fact the city wasn’t doing anything to add some life to the park. With no bars, cafés or restaurants open, and outdoors the only place where people could get together safely and legally, it seemed like a no-brainer to organize some activities in the park.

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Fast-forward a few years and all of a sudden this summer N.D.G. Park at Girouard Ave. and Sherbrooke St. W. was transformed into an outdoor venue via the Rendez-Vous project. The organizer of the novel initiative: my friend Glad.

Earlier this year, he had approached the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough administration with a plan to have concerts in the park and Borough Mayor Gracia Kasoki Katahwa and her colleagues loved the idea.

The result is that every week over the summer, from Thursday through Sunday, activities took place at the chalet in the centre of the park. There were bands — everyone from popular new wave outfit the Tina Trons to Rolling Stones tribute band Nasty Habits to Radiohead homage band Street Spirit. And 85 per cent of the artists were from N.D.G.

The site also featured quite a few DJ dance parties, including three High Fidelity soirées, with me spinning vintage new wave tracks from ’80s artists like the Cure, the Human League and Depeche Mode.

Rendez-Vous also opened a full bar in the chalet and a terrasse outside where folks could sip their drinks and/or chow down on the food being served while listening to the music. A skate park right in front of the chalet was transformed into a dance floor for the occasion.

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At my DJ parties, people would often come up to me and thank us for creating such a cool community initiative — and it was particularly appreciated in a neighbourhood that, it has to be said, is notably short on places to catch live entertainment. Much as we all love N.D.G., the Plateau it ain’t.

But suddenly our hood had one of the cooler things in town, something that was underlined when Projet Montréal Plateau-Mont-Royal councillor Marie Plourde showed up for one of the High Fidelity parties and told me she thought it would be a great thing to try to replicate in her borough.

“It’s a project by the people of N.D.G. first and then we were able to work with them to turn it into reality,” said Kasoki Katahwa, at the start of a recent interview at the Rendez-Vous site in the park.

But given that it’s a people’s project, she said, she preferred to have Glad, who lives right near the park, begin the discussion.

“It’s kind of an obvious idea. There’s a great chalet and a plaza in front of it, a mini Place des Arts,” said Glad, who is partners in a consulting firm called Belleville Placemaking that gives advice to cities regard urban animation.

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But he said it took a perfect storm of support — from the politicians, the neighbourhood community and the folks who work for the borough’s services department.

“There’s no other project like this in Montreal,” said Glad. “What’s incredible here is the audience. It’s really the people who live nearby. When you come, you are with your neighbours, the people with whom you share the neighbourhood, and you get to see familiar faces. People you don’t know become friends. And it creates something incredible.”

Added Kasoki Katahwa: “We had, honestly, a magical summer.”

And the mayor just thought it made such sense to do it in N.D.G.

“They collaborated with merchants from N.D.G. and artists from N.D.G.,” said Kasoki Katahwa. “There’s a big important artistic community in N.D.G. People enjoy their artists locally and all of that made it possible. When they shared (the idea) with me, I said: ‘We need to do this.’”

The borough contributed more than $134,000 to finance the initiative.

“The last time I came, there were a lot of people dancing — from kids to grandmas and teenagers,” said the borough mayor. “Mothers were coming to me to say, ‘You know sometimes it’s hard for me to talk with my teenager except when we come to the Rendez-Vous N.D.G. and we’re able to dance together in the park.’”

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Glad seconded that emotion.

“We had so many people who came up to us and said it changed the course of their life,” he said. “Older people who said, ‘We didn’t think we could go out again and have fun. We thought we were too old for that.’ A mother who loved to dance before she had her daughter and now her daughter is nine and at your party, it was the first time she danced again at a party. The first time in nine years. It re-ignited something in her.”

Both Kasoki Katahwa and Glad feel there’s a particular N.D.G. flavour to the project.

“There were people from the Plateau and Rosemont who came to N.D.G. this summer because of the Rendez-Vous,” said Kasoki Katahwa. “Montreal is downtown, it’s a big metropolis, but it’s also each and every neighbourhood that has their own identity. The success of Rendez-Vous is really because of the N.D.G. neighbourhood.”

“The people of N.D.G., for a long time we’ve felt we were a bit neglected because of the Great Wall of China that is the Décarie Expressway,” said Glad. “I’ve had a lot of discussion with neighbours. We want to go out, but there are no venues in N.D.G. We have a big void.”

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Glad mentioned that it’s good that a place like the Wheel Club on Cavendish Blvd. just below Sherbrooke books a lot of live music but there are simply not enough live-music venues in the neighbourhood.

People on his street would say to Glad: Why do they have everything in Rosemont and the Plateau?

“It’s not to brag, but it’s crazy to see that, with just one good project, we changed a lot of those perceptions,” said Glad.

“I think we should brag, honestly, this doesn’t exist anywhere in Montreal and I think it worked because of the identity of N.D.G.,” said Kasoki Katahwa.

Given its success, the Rendez-Vous is going to continue through the coming months. Last Friday, a Pumpkins in the Park/Halloween Party was held, including 300 pumpkins lit up, a witches’ dance and a DJ dance party. There will be four days of holiday programming around Christmas and other events, such as musical skating parties and snowmen competitions (if there’s enough snow!).

And it looks likely that the Rendez-Vous will return again next summer.

bkelly@postmedia.com

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