Architect and professor Joe Baker, who perhaps did more than anybody else to shape the current identity of Point St. Charles has died.Baker passed away on Dec. 30, Coolopolis has learned.
Baker was an architect and an activist whose most important legacy will likely be in helping attract government funding that transformed about half of all housing units in Point St. Charles into subsidized housing for the poor.
This is either good or bad, depending on what your politics are on public housing, but it made the area livable for many embattled people, including the city's highest percentage of welfare recipients and single-parent households.
He came to Canada from England in the early 1950s, as he opted to move here rather than perform two years of military service in Britain.
After living in Toronto for six years, Baker came to Montreal to design some structures for Expo '67 and ended up fighting to save a house from a highway expropriation on Greene Ave.
"I got calls after that, people knowing we had achieved something," he said in a 2011 interview with the excellent Adam Bemma. (see below).
"I got calls after that, people knowing we had achieved something," he said in a 2011 interview with the excellent Adam Bemma. (see below).
So he stayed and helped people attempt to defend Griffintown from being transformed into industrial areas.
In 1971 he urged a massive redevelopment of Montreal along the lines of what was happening in Boston where homes near the waterfront had proved very popular.In 1973 Baker led opposition to placing the Olympics on green space in the East End of Montreal.
That same year he was called in to help rethink the Main, possibly turning parts of it into a pedestrian mall, an idea which never happened.
He was also engaged peripherally with the battle to save Milton Park from the La Cite development. It was only a half-victory as about half of the homes targeted were razed.
The next year he proposed that empty lots downtown be turned into green spaces.
He became head of McGill University's Community Design Workshop in the mid-70s, a post which also took him to Universite Laval in Quebec City.
After about a decade of public prominence Baker was suddenly heard from much less frequently and his death has apparently gone unreported elsewhere.
Baker and his anglo wife from Toronto raised four children, sending them to French schools.
He once voted for the Parti Quebecois even though he didn't agree with their language policies.
He enjoyed speaking the French even though he was pretty bad at it, as can be seen in the video below where he explains something about the future of Griffintown.