Independent Quebec: Jane Jacobs

Montreal Gazette Dept: Sovereignists still sometimes invoke the icon's name to rebut those who say sovereignty would batter this city's economy. Jacobs's reasoning, however, has been largely overlooked. Her expanded book on the subject, The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty, came out shortly after the 1980 referendum and copies have been hard to find, according to Montreal Gazette. The question of sovereignty's potential effect on Montreal has been taboo among sovereignists. Leaders of both opposition parties at city council, sovereignists Louise Harel and Richard Bergeron, clam up on the subject. With luck, the revived book will spur debate and jane Jacobs was the most influential expert on North American cities of our time. Her critique in the 1960s of the razing of old neighbourhoods and constructing of apartment towers built support for more traditional, humanscale development. Many of us forget, however, that in delivering CBC's Massey lectures in 1979, a year before the first sovereignty referendum, she focused on Montreal and declared its prosperity would increase in an independent Quebec. To make her view better known, a new edition of the book is coming out next week. The publisher is Baraka Books, which is headed by writer and former Parti Qu b cois candidate Robin Philpot. The book includes Philpot's interview with Jacobs in 2005, a year before her death at age 89. In the interview, she stands behind everything she wrote. The U.S.-born author, who moved permanently to Toronto during the Vietnam War to keep her sons from being drafted , also acknowledges that she knows Montreal "not well: " "I've been there a few times." As reported in the news.
@t louise harel, massey lectures