Montreal says it had no choice but to close wooded area in N.D.G.

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The city of Montreal remains committed to creating a nature park along the southern edge of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, despite the closing of a major section of the future park, according to a member of Montreal’s executive committee.

Alex Norris, the associate councillor for large parks and Mount Royal on the city’s executive committee, said the city had no choice but to close the cliff area of Falaise St-Jacques following an August landslide, even if forest users don’t see the danger.

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“It’s no longer a theoretical risk, it’s something that’s come to pass,” he said in an interview. “We’re not at all happy about this, but we do have a responsibility to ensure that people are safe when they venture into areas like this and the advice that we’ve received is that it is not safe.”

Earlier this week, the city sent notices to residents of the St-Raymond neighbourhood in southern N.D.G. informing them access to the cliff area is prohibited, but several members of a community organization that fought to preserve the natural area have said they don’t see the risk.

David Gamper, one of the co-ordinators of Sauvons la Falaise, said he believes the danger is localized in steep areas below where businesses along St-Jacques St. have been dumping snow, and not along the main path through the forest, which is on a broad ledge.

“It appears that the strength of the soil is not what it should be for a park. We understand that, but we don’t think it’s a very big risk,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not really a dangerous situation in our opinion and doesn’t justify closing the whole Falaise.”

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The August landslide occurred during a record-breaking rainstorm and Chris Breier, who has been volunteering to maintain the Falaise trails for three years, said he thinks people should use their common sense about going into the wooded area during heavy rains and snowstorms, which can also knock down trees, but noted the area remains safe.

But Norris argues the danger is more widespread.

“That is the very problem, that the danger is not apparent to the naked eye. When one ventures there, it seems perfectly fine, but in fact the soil underneath the trails, the soils along that entire stretch of the Falaise is highly unstable,” he said.

The city plans to put up warning signs, but will not fence off the Falaise or station police in the area to prevent access, he said. “We do have a responsibility to warn people that if they go there, they are putting themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.”

While Norris said the city wants to ensure people can access parts of the cliff area, he said it’s too early to say how that will be done.

Stabilizing the cliff could require significant amounts of vegetation to be removed, destroying a natural environment rich with biodiversity that the city wants to protect, he said.

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The cliff area is one part of a planned nature park — Le parc-nature de l’écoterritoire de la falaise — which also includes a multi-use path between the cliff and Highway 20, and a piece of land on the other side of Highway 20, freed up by the reconstruction of the Turcot interchange and the removal of a train yard in the area.

The multi-use path along the bottom of the cliff, separated by a small gully, remains open and does not pose a danger.

In 2022 and 2023, the city purchased several buildings on St-Jacques to create a new entrance to the cliff area, Norris said that area will still be part of the project, but could now become viewpoints over the Falaise, instead of an entrance.

The city is also still committed to building a north-south link for pedestrians and cyclists that would connect the different sections of the park across Highway 20. A link called the “Dalle Parc” was first proposed in 2010, as part of the Turcot reconstruction plan was being developed, but wasn’t in the final plan for the new highway, something has frustrated advocates for the park.

Norris said the city is “determined” to provide the link, which would connect N.D.G. with the Sud-Ouest Borough, but that it will still take time.

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“We’re still at a pretty preliminary stage, it’s not this year, it’s not next year, a lot of planning work has to be done, a lot of negotiations as well with other partners, it’s not something that we can do on our own, it will require cooperation with other levels of government,” he said.

But advocates say the park plan is moving slower than expected.

“They talked about producing a plan and having that ready at the end of this year, we actually don’t know where that stands,” Gamper said in an earlier interview.

Norris said the city plans to contact all of the property owners along St-Jacques to ensure they’re not putting snow and heavy materials near the edge.

“Property owners along the upper part of the cliff has a responsibility to ensure that what they do does not imperil the safety of people who are below the cliff or the biodiversity that we find on the cliff that could be really badly damaged if we have more landslides like the one we had in August,” he said.

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