5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Drimonis: Montreal's multitude of ‘third places' enriches our city and our souls
Last Sunday night found me in a park in Griffintown enjoying the latest free movie offering by Film Noir au Canal. For close to a decade, this local group has been screening moody black-and-white masterpieces on the banks of the Lachine Canal, showcasing a world where women were take-no-guff dames, men sported tailored suits and fedoras, and the verbal exchanges were always razor-sharp.
For six Sunday evenings (until Aug. 17) Montrealers can grab a blanket or their favourite camping chair, bring food and drinks and lie under the stars (or in last Sunday's case, an eerie orange half-moon) and watch French or English movies featuring sultry femme fatales who may or may not be up to no good and hapless private eyes who usually can't tell the difference.
The crowd — a mix of young and old, large boisterous groups, people on their own, couples out on a romantic evening — all sitting and lying so closely together, that occasionally as we shift positions on the grass, someone's shoe may brush up against someone's hand. No one cares.
There's a lingering poetic intimacy to a group of strangers sitting together in the shadow of old factory silos watching vampy Marlene Dietrich foreshadow the villain's demise in the 1958 classic Touch of Evil. Charlton Heston, wearing foundation that's five shades darker than his natural skin complexion, plays Mexican narcotics cop Mike Vargas. Not all films age gracefully. In fact, most don't.
A few weeks ago, I found myself at Mount Royal Cemetery for the launch of this season's Shakespeare-in-the-Park production, where Shakespeare was noticeably absent. Instead, an Oscar Wilde play is being performed around Montreal parks this year: The Importance of Being Earnest. Once again, I was surrounded by strangers (both the dead and the living) as we laughed at the campy production, an invisible magical thread connecting us.
Last week, I ended up on Nuns' Island, squeezing into West-Vancouver Park alongside thousands who came to listen to the Orchestre Métropolitain and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin perform for free under a gorgeous summer sky. I saw people of all backgrounds swaying their bodies to the same delicious notes.
There's a name for these spaces and the feelings they evoke. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term 'third places' in his 1989 book The Great, Good Place. If our homes and places of work are our first and second places, then parks, churches, cafés and libraries constitute third places. Public spaces where people go to simply be with others and connect with their community, mostly for free.
Humans are communal animals. Even the most curmudgeonly crave some contact. Montreal's outdoor spaces act like what's been called 'societal glue,' fostering connection and deep attachment to the city we all call home. In our parks, public squares, green spaces and pedestrian-only streets, Montreal has an enviable amount of outdoor third spaces.
I feel many people fail to truly understand their importance for a city's social cohesion; how they help build empathy for, and interest in, each other. Third places affirm our own sense of identity and belonging to a place while simultaneously making us feel as if we belong to a world bigger than ourselves.
In multicultural and multilingual spaces like Montreal, where people of all backgrounds and perspectives come together, and in a world where people are increasingly living solitary lives online or in their cars, these spaces provide a sense of shared reality. They wage war against loneliness and disconnection.
It can be the local basketball court, neighbourhood café or dog park. Or barbecues held in alleyways, cultural events sponsored by the city, or pay-what-you-can yoga in the park. It can be watching the sunset from the Lachine lighthouse or the full moon from the Kondiaronk lookout on Mount Royal. Third places have this irresistible ability to foster connection and tenderness for one another.
Now, more than ever, we need that.
