A tale of two parks

>> The yet-to-be-built Taz Mahal is already placing upstart Orkus in peril

CLOSE TO THE EDGE: Laduke (left) and Trépanier

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Gabriel Laduke stands up from the couch and strides over to a balcony door overlooking the Orkus skate park. The thin 27-year-old swings it open and yells, “Hey you! Put your helmet on!” He stands there for a moment, making sure his command is obeyed, and walks back, rolling his eyes. “It’s like a frigging day-care centre,” he says.

Since November 2004, Laduke and his partner, Louis-François Trépanier, 47, have run Orkus on a bare-bones budget. A converted metal factory just next to Highway 40 on Côte-de-Liesse, Orkus looks like the DIY skate park it is: walls are covered in graffiti art, its high windows stream in light and the echo of wheels rumbles though its massive, 30,000-square-foot interior. A half-dozen kids—maybe in their early teens, probably younger—are skateboarding on a holiday afternoon, under the watchful eyes of Laduke and Trépanier. Those kids—the 10,000 who are members—are the park’s lifeblood.

“If we lose five per cent of our clientele,” says Laduke, “we’ll have to close.” And if a massive, long-promised skate/in-line/BMX park-slash-cultural centre opens only a few kilometres away as planned, they probably will.

Shoestring operation
Orkus is under threat from the Taz Mahal, which has threatened to rise from the dead for years now. The original Taz, across from the Voyageur bus station on Berri, closed and was demolished in 2001 to make room for the mega-library. Its new location is in the Miron quarry, near the St-Michel Environmental Complexve and the Cirque du Soleil’s sprawling TOHU facility. The Taz will benefit from three levels of funding—municipal, provincial and federal—to the tune of some $6-million (Michel Comeau, the man in charge of the Taz project, was unavailable for interview despite repeated requests). It’s scheduled to open in 2009—eight years after it closed, and after several delays. But that hasn’t stopped Laduke, Trépanier and others from worrying about it now.

“The little kids are excited, but they don’t realize it’s going to hurt us,” says Laduke.

Orkus is currently operating as a non-profit, meaning that all the money it takes in in one year has to be spent. It’s going everywhere except salaries. “We don’t get paid for this,” says Laduke. “I’m sponsored, so I have clothes, and maybe a few bucks left over for a beer.” He sleeps at the park, and spends almost every waking hour there.

Laduke and Trépanier are trying other ways to stay alive in addition to charging regular rates. They’re hosting parties, printing t-shirts, running a summer skate camp for kids and are actively seeking corporate sponsors. But they’re still a long way from financial stability.

Love and money required
Dan Vezina, the owner of Brossard’s South Parc skate park and one of the original founders of the old Taz, wishes them luck but is doubtful about Orkus’s future. “I like it,” he says. “It’s a good park, but it needs love and financing.”

Vezina opened South Parc in November 2003 with the Taz in mind. Although he’d ceased being involved with the original in 1999, he was well aware that plans were afoot to rebuild it somewhere in the old city of Montreal’s confines, and chose South Parc’s location accordingly. “As a business decision, I decided to operate outside the Taz’s radar,” he says. He says he originally wanted to create a park in the suburbs, either on the South Shore, in Laval or in the West Island. He jumped ship in 1999, he says, because he wasn’t interested in the long-term vision Comeau and the other directors had for the Taz, with ambitions of transforming the simple skate park into a sports and culture centre. “There wasn’t any real animosity, it was just a different vision,” he says. “I wanted to focus on a skate park.”

But Comeau hasn’t had an easy time. Yes, he’s received significant financing, but the Taz still “isn’t anything,” says Vezina. “Right now, it’s an idea, a dream. Michel’s brought everyone he thinks is pertinent to the project, sat them around a table and discussed it.”

A big problem in the Taz’s development has been finding a suitable spot to build it. Originally, it was slated for the old des Carrières incinerator, but those plans collapsed in 2002. The next two years were spent looking. In 2005, the present location on Papineau between Émile-Journault and Lecocq, north of the Metropolitan in St-Michel, was finalized, with an opening date scheduled for 2007. That never materialized, in part, Vezina, Laduke and Trépanier suspect, because of the Taz’s ever-changing functionality, and typical city bureaucracy.

Partners or bust
At the moment, the city seems content to leave the development of the Taz in Comeau’s hands. “It’s up to them now to complete the project and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do according to the money we have,’” says Bernard Larin, the press attaché to Francine Senécal, the city executive council member for sports. Orkus won’t be getting any cash, though.

“They’ve been asking,” says Larin. “But as we’re working with the Taz, we didn’t think it appropriate to switch partners in mid-stream. Plus, Orkus is not on city of Montreal territory.” Which is true: technically, Orkus is in the wealthy but small Town of Mount Royal.

Laduke and Trépanier say dealing with the city has been a nightmare, and that they are past trying. After investing all their savings, an inheritance and a bank loan, they don’t really have any other option than to try their hardest to stay above water. They have some community support, for what it’s worth financially: there is an online petition at www.saveorkus.com, and the discussion board at http://islandproductions.org, a local skateboarding site, is definitely pro-Orkus and anti-Taz (“FUCK LE TAZ C N’IMPORTE KOI!!!” writes FrOsT_mAn; “for sure man , jvais aller skater des modules solo qui descendent a 90 degree de 9 marches mesurant 2 marches ou faire une rail qui rentre dans le sol ou bein le classique un kicker qui amene no where ou ma rouler dans la sale a rollerblade qui coute 300 000 ket chose dmeme,” according to skat0r, writing rather nastily about the Taz’s skateboard component).

“We’re not trying to stop the Taz,” insists Trépanier. “We’re asking for a partnership.”

Vezina, who has been involved in the Montreal skateboarding scene for two decades, believes that a partnership—such as Laduke and Trépanier giving up Orkus to run the Taz’s skateboarding component—is the only way to go. “It’s a sad situation,” he says. “But there’s no way the two can coexist.”