Few trips are really installed in stopovers, roads or stages. On the holiday route, we only stop stealthily in these places, however crucial. The duty invites you to brake and take the time to discover these often underestimated adjoining spaces. Third judgment: the service area of the North holder, in the Laurentians.
For many, the place is symbolic. We see a border between the city’s hassles and the comfort of the chalet. In this sense, the service area of the North Carrier is aptly named: for many Montrealers, it is on the main access route leading to the resorts of the Laurentides.
Located between Saint-Jérôme and Saint-Sauveur, the place was very busy during the passage of Dutya Friday afternoon in mid-August. The parking lot overflowed with cars fleeing for a moment the inevitable congestion of the highway 15.
The place is enclosed by fast tracks, but it is also a destination for some. Several people interviewed on the fly mentioned living in the surroundings and stopping there regularly. The numerous recreational vehicles confirmed the vocation of the place as a respite for vacationers.
The complex consists of a service station and two buildings hosting fast food shops. A generous parking and a handful of picnic tables are adjoin there that agglutinate under the rare trees still standing in the sector.
The network of road stops operated by the Quebec Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility is available in different forms, from the simple belvedere to service areas, such as the North of North holders, which combine parking, toilets, playgrounds, catering services and fuel sale. These places correspond to the very petrol of the adjoining judgment: it is forbidden to stop there for a period of more than four hours or to spend the night, except for truckers. We are legally condemned to go into a gale.
Never mind, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, director of the UQAM design school, obtained permission from the Ministry of Transport to spend the night in road parks. “This is a subject that raises a lot of questions!” He admits. Trained in architecture, he studied at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. This is how he multiplied the back and forth between Quebec and Ontario, visiting a multitude of road stops in passing.
Between September 2021 and April 2022, he visited all 49 provincial roads in the province at the time. This journey led to the publication, in May 2023, of an article in the learned journal Captures.
For him, the road stopover, “it is not just an architectural curiosity, it is like a manifestation of choosing society and culture”.
From welfare state to PPP
The evolution of the road park is in a way the reflection of our values and our economic model, continues Mr. Kenniff. In the 1960s, when the Quebec government began to develop a network of public road stops, the objective was to offer rest areas to motorists and truckers – think of toilets in small wooden “huts”.
It was the time of expanding the role of the State, of taking control in the territory, recalls the expert. “I find it funny that we can read the company through public toilets! He said laughing. Nevertheless, we find in public space a reflection of the values of the time. In these first service areas, “there was no commercial aspect”.
Mobile canteens have been allowed in these places for a few years, but the idea of developing road stops with good and due form appeared in the 1980s. This evolution of the model reflects a disinterest in the welfare state and a growing preference for the free market, explains Thomas-Bernard Kenniff.
The government has made this idea mature until the turn of the 2000s. We then see stops that offer a diverse range of services, without accommodating service stations or restaurants. “And there will happen in the mid -2000s will happen the experiences of PPP [partenariats public-privé] “, With the aim of” making the network of road parks financially autonomous “. So this is how in 2010 was born in 2010, the first service areas with complete commercial offers: restaurants, service stations, cafes, etc.
The experience was not smooth. In an audit report published in the spring of 2024, the auditor general of Quebec was very critical of the funding and sharing of risks linked to the construction of PPP service areas. He concluded, among other things, that “despite a higher public financial participation than expected, the financial model remains” fragile “”.
Replace “brown huts”
The Quebec government made public in 2022 its plan to modernize the road parks 2022-2027, with the assumed objective of carrying out “a large project to replace the“ brown huts ”by more modern facilities, in addition to adding sites, we read in the document. Quebec then had 8 service areas, 16 permanent road stops, 27 seasonal roads, 37 belvederes and 10 rest areas for heavy vehicle drivers.
On the architecture side, in the service areas developed in PPP, “the promoters have tried to give commercial architecture an or vernacular aspect or cultural. But, obviously, it is a commercial architecture, so it’s all on the surface, ”notes Mr. Kenniff. He notes in passing that the last road stops, which were built in the 2020s, have no commercial offer.
To see the speed at which motorists enter and leave the North holder at the start of the end of the weekend, it is presumed that few take the time to think about the socio-economic symbol of the service area. To meditate during an upcoming fuel?
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