Nestled at the foot of Mount Royal, McGill’s campus offers a respite from the busy downtown streets of Montreal. Over the years, many projects have been proposed that would improve the campus experience for students. While these ambitions and concepts are exciting, McGill must often rely on the cooperation of various levels of government for funding and approval, and as a result, their ability to execute these plans leaves many promising designs stuck in the blueprinting phase.
Join The Tribune as we head down memory lane, reminiscing about a campus that could have been.
McTavish underpass
Many students on campus are intimately familiar with the joys of its northwest area, home to the Law, Medicine, and Education faculty buildings, among others. Crossing on red at the McTavish and Docteur-Penfield intersection has become a rite of passage for many rushed students. In the late 1960s, however, McGill had other plans. True to the planning principles of the time, where impeding the flow of vehicular traffic was seen as taboo, the proposal saw the construction of a pedestrian underpass underneath Docteur-Penfield. Perhaps it was better that this plan never got off the drawing board, as pedestrian underpasses are associated with safety and connectivity concerns.
Fiat Lux
A beautiful library is a defining characteristic of long-established universities. Though McGill has some impressive spots, like the Birks Reading Room or the Morrice Hall Octagon Room, it lacks a truly impressive flagship library. For fans of brutalism, McLennan might scratch the itch, but it’s a tier or two below the libraries at Johns Hopkins, UC San Diego, and U Chicago, among others. In 2019, when I first started at McGill, the administration announced the Fiat Lux project, their plan to completely overhaul, modernize, and expand the McLennan-Redpath Library complex by 2025. Back then, I remember thinking that if I ever ended up pursuing a master’s at McGill, I would get to enjoy the renovated library. Today, as I enter the final weeks of my master’s, all I’ve gotten is a library devoid of books and an announcement that the project has been suspended.
McGill College Avenue revitalisation
Maybe this one is a bit of a stretch—it’s really a municipal project, but it bears the name McGill, so why not include it? One of my first pieces for The Tribune was about the McGill College Avenue Revitalization Project: Announced in 2020, the city envisioned pedestrianizing the avenue and adorning it with micro-forests, an outdoor fire pit, and an entrance to the McGill REM station. Though slated for completion by 2025-2026, construction has yet to start. The Ring, however, is a nice surprise that adds a flourish to the view from the Roddick Gates.
Bike parking garage
In 2015, a plan to build an underground bike parking facility in the University Centre was proposed by McGill and ékm architecture. The project included 250 rentable secure bike parking spaces, 10 shower stalls, changing rooms, 116 lockers, a repair station, and a space for the FLAT Bike Collective. Construction was supposed to begin in 2018, but alas, 10 years after the proposal and 17 years after the idea was initially floated, the notion of secure indoor bike parking is but a pipedream for the McGill community.
The future of McGill campus
Though McGill Campus Planning and Development has a pipeline of projects, both small and large, funding directives from the provincial government have unfortunately pushed McGill to suspend many of its capital projects. While it might be a while before McGill can return to its ambitious roots, students can at least look forward to the Fall 2025 reopening of the Upper Main Road… well, hopefully.
