Climbing the walls

>> One eccentric Montrealer believes his love of vines would make a great civic movement

by PHILIP PREVILLE

Maybe it's the fact that they slither and tangle their way up sheer surfaces. Maybe it's the way they turn drab man-made structures into living, breathing, vertical fields. Or maybe it's the genetic anomaly of it all, the idea that plants can have suction cups. Whatever the reason, Gilles Lepage has an obsession with vines.

Lepage has mapped out the location of almost every vine in Montreal. Once, he even grew vines indoors, along an exposed red brick wall in his apartment. But his favourite vine, far and away, is the one growing in the courtyard of the Ste-Elizabeth Pub, formerly known as California, on Ste-Elizabeth street, just above Ste-Catherine two blocks west of St-Denis. He says he "visits" the vine regularly. Sometimes he stops in for a beer, other times he just stands on the corner and admires it. "I once got tossed out of the bar for causing a fuss," Lepage recalls. "I was so overcome by it, I started going to every table and bothering the other customers, insisting that they admire it. I was really belligerent about it, so they threw me out. I deserved it."

90 feet and still growing

The pub's courtyard is a vine's paradise: two windowless brick walls, one four storeys high and the other seven storeys high, at right angles to one another. The vine has been there for at least 12 years and has managed to cover most of both walls--it even wraps its way up a neighbouring chimney and is now making its way around to the front of one of the buildings. Its maple-like leaves have brought a drab downtown corner to life.

Curiously, the worst view of the vine is from the pub's courtyard itself. Aside from the fact that they climb walls, vines grow a lot like trees: the leafy canopy is reserved for the top, while the bottom 20 feet of this 90-foot vine is a collection of leafless trunks--long, winding, bark-encased, two-inch-thick branches, creeping their way up the walls.

This entire maze of plant life grows out of a small flower bed at the bottom of the courtyard, no more than 18 inches wide. Pub staff say the vine requires little maintenance other than a pinch of fertilizer in the spring. Lepage says vines are like the squirrels or pigeons of the plant world: "They've adapted to a hostile, cramped urban environment. Climbing the walls keeps them out of harm's way--trees have a much harder time surviving in the city."

Bringing Martha's Vineyard to Montreal

Over the years, Lepage has noticed how vines are used for different purposes in different parts of the city. In Westmount and Outremont they are used as decoration: people grow them on the facades of homes that would be beautiful without them. In the Plateau, Villeray and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, people use them defensively--they grow them on their back fences to keep out noise and peeping toms.

"I used to live in Villeray, and one of my neighbours had an old, beat up garage. It was a total blight on the neighbourhood. People kept asking him to do something, but he refused. So we planted some vines, and within three years it was completely covered. Turned it into a work of art."

Lepage considers himself a one-man lobby group: he wants the City of Montreal to start encouraging the growth of vines in public spaces. "Just imagine what they could do with some of the city's ugly, sterile streetcorners," he says. "Or with the old, unused garbage incinerator at St-Grégoire near Papineau. Within a few years, both smokestacks would be covered in green, and they'd be a kaleidoscope in the fall."

Édith Pariseau, spokesperson for the city's public works department, says the city does grow vines in a number of places--especially on walls lining autoroutes, to help keep noise out. But, she says, the city won't grow them on park fences due to security concerns: parents and motorists need to be able to see the kids, and vice-versa. And anyway, she wonders aloud why anyone would want a vine policy. "That's like asking the city to change all red buildings into blue buildings," says Pariseau.

Lepage doesn't think it's crazy at all--vines help clean the air just like trees, they protect buildings from weathering, and he thinks they could even boost tourism. "Boston is known around the world for its vines. What do you think Martha's Vineyard is? Why do you think people visit there? To see the vines."