André Lafontaine was the first Quebecois landscape architect to be hired by the City of Montreal, circa 1953. The City’s new Parks department (founded 1954), did not yet exist. André sat at a design table in an old, over-heated CP railway station, working with difficult-to-use oil paper, on preliminary studies for sectors of Parc La Fontaine (the 10th or 11th versions). It was only the first of Montreal’s iconic parks that would see his designs.
Jean Landry, who decades later would follow Lafontaine to become Superintendent of Planning for Parks and the Botanical Garden, relishes the story of the young designer who, despite the challenges, joined the city at a most auspicious time. His career had barely begun. He’d graduated from the Université de Montréal and New York State College of Forestry, and spent a few months with Louis Perron before launching a career that would span over 25 years.
With colleagues André Chartrand and Ulric Couture, remembers Montreal’s LA historian Ron Williams, Lafontaine would form “the nucleus of the future design team of Montreal’s Park Department.” It was destined to become the largest landscape architectural office in Canada in the game-changing years when the City prepared for Expo ’67, the Montreal Olympics, and the Floralies.
The growing contingent of LAs at City of Montreal Parks would also become founding members of the Association des architectes paysagistes de Québec (1965). Lafontaine served as the AAPQ’s first Secretary, and also Treasurer for the CSLA (1964-66).
Working with Warner Goshorn, the LAs rapidly added new elements to Montreal’s iconic parks and squares, and shaped new parks, changing the face of Montreal. Leisure facilities burgeoned, as the City added gaming courts and playing fields (tennis, bocci, branloir, roleau), place-making elements (Ste. Helen’s stone bleachers, Mont Royal’s petit train), and countless plantings, modernizations and “embellissements” to public spaces (Place Vauquelin, Palais de Justice).
Lafontaine rose to become Superintendent (Parks and Botanical Garden), and despite periods of austere economics, new ideas took hold. The LAs expanded their reach to design public pathways, planted alleys, cycle paths and mini parks.
Lafontaine’s remarkable list of successes recalled words he had written early in his career, in a landmark issue of Architecture-Concept (1969). “The landscape architect has an extremely vast field of action,” he wrote. He brings not only “art and technique to his work, but a profound knowledge of man and the natural environment.” Landscape architecture, he said, “is a profoundly human science.”
André Lafontaine died in 2016 in his 90th year.
Sources
Architecture-Concept magazine, mars 1969
Ronald Williams, Landscape Architecture in Canada.
De Parcs à Espaces Verts: Plus de 25 ans d’architecture de paysage à la Ville de Montréal, by Jean Landry. Courtesy Archives of City of Montreal Parks/ Ville de Montréal, Service des Grands Parcs, du Mont Royal et des Sports.
Images 1-8 : Courtesy, City of Montreal Archives
1 Parc Jeanne Mance, courts de tennis, 1953
2 Mont-Royal Park, Lac aux Castors, Boucle pour Le Petit Train, 1964
3 Etang Ile Ste Helène, 1967
4A Maison Olympique Détails, 1967
4B Parc Mont-Royal, Monument Sir Geo-E-Cartier Détail du Paysage en Béton, 1967
5A Coupes et détails Biosphère, 1968; 5B Détails de Pavage
6 Vieux Palais de Justice, Plan de nivellement d’implementation, 1974
6B Bassin Olympique, Mâts de vainquers, c 1975
7 Place Vauquelin Réaménagement, 1984
8 Planting Plan Parc Patro le Prévost, 1991
9 Architecture-Concept magazine, mars 1969
