New noise bylaw for Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough

On June 10, the City of Montreal introduced a new noise bylaw for the Ville-Marie borough, replacing the one previously proposed for the Plateau-Mont-Royal on June 2.

The new bylaw keeps the concept of spectral emergence, meaning how much a venue’s sound stands out compared to the usual background noise in the area. Unlike the earlier version, this one adjusts for each environment’s typical ambient sound when the venue isn’t active.

Venues in Ville-Marie are now allowed an additional 3 decibels at night—from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.—and 4 decibels during the day and evening, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

If those limits are exceeded, corrective measures could be required. However, some groups, like Les Scènes de Musique Alternatives du Québec, or Les SMAQ, argue that police shouldn’t be involved in enforcing the bylaw, to avoid the risk of abusive or excessive noise complaints —and ultimately, the shutdown of concert venues.

“I was a little bit surprised that it didn’t really carve out concert venues as a separate community to be dealt with separately than other noise complaints,” said Executive Director of Les SMAQ, John Weisz.

“The SPVM still have the authority to arrive at a venue to ask them to stop making noise, in other words to close the show, to stop the show, or to find them regardless of all the other provisions in the proposed bylaw. So at the end of the day, if this bylaw passes, it won’t necessarily have prevented La Tulipe or Divan Orange [from closing]. So all the work that was done will be for nothing, unless there’s a provision in the bylaw, black and white, directly in there, that makes it so that separate inspectors deal with noise complaints related to venues and not the SPVM.”

The organizations Suoni Per Il Popolo and Réverbérations d’une crise are also planning a “Funeral Walk” this Sunday—a symbolic march to mourn lost cultural spaces and push back against gentrification.

“They came to me and said, we have this idea to do a march for all the disappeared cultural spaces in the neighborhood. This neighborhood has been one that has for many, many years been a hub for creativity and cultural spaces. Long before we were even here, artists have been in this neighborhood,” said the Artistic and General Director of Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival, Kiva Tanya Stimac.

The march starts at Jeanne-Mance Park, at the corner of Esplanade and Mont-Royal.

“Definitely interesting instruments will be there, maybe ones you haven’t heard before,” added Stimac.