Segregation fence to live on

>>

Kristian Gravenor

According to his platform, mayor-elect Tremblay has no plans to remove the fence on Acadie that divides the rich of the Town of Mount Royal from the poor of Park Extension. Outgoing TMR Mayor Ricardo Hrtschan says he has no plans to order it down in the last days of his mandate, but suggests that the neighbouring community also put up a green space with a fence on their side of the street to allow children to play. Recently re-elected incumbent Park Ex councillor Mary Deros doesn't take much of a shine to Hrtschan's double-fence notion. "We should stop building barriers, invisible or visible, and work together," says Deros, adding that city planners saved very little greenery for her 'hood. "Maybe Hrtschan should come over and see how densely Park Ex has been built up," she says.

Former councillor Sofoklis Rasoulis says he had made headway towards having the fence destroyed in 1988, but was prevented from doing it when voted out the next year. Mayor Bourque had no plans to remove the fence but derided its supporters, commenting that "the people of TMR have some sort of psychological need for it." The fence was built in 1958 following the widening of Acadie and survived denunciation by the City of Montreal, an attack by college students in 1970 and long-time TMR Mayor Reginald Dawson's repeated promises to have it removed.