Canards Canins

Montréal Island Dog Owners Journal

"Canards Canins"? "Doggie Ducks"! It sounds like a cartoon character, not like an online Journal about dogs! Well, a more accurate translation would be "Doggie Rags". Canards Canins wants to be an on line journal for the Dog Owners who are citizens of Montréal.

It hopes to offer everything that a dog owner needs to know to survive in the City; that is, where the dog runs are, how to get one and how to keep one. It also provides basic information: what do the canine by-laws say (in the case of Boroughs created from the territory of the Old City of Montréal, as well as in St-Léonard and Outremont, though in the last two cases, the documents are in French); who our Councillors are and who is a member of the Executive Committee, as well as the history in some details of one Montréal dog run, that of de la Bruère park (this text is in French).

The Register of Dog Enclosures provides you with the information about the 29 dog parks that I know of; that is, where it is located, what it has, and who is or are the people responsible for it, and the date of last revision. The information about who is responsible was provided by the City last Autumn and might very well be out of date. I do not have the time nor the excuse to phone the people mentionned as I am not myself member of our dog run association's executive committee.

People who are in charge of dog runs are not always interested in sharing their expertise and contacts with others; after all, that is what makes them indispensable where they are. Some don't mind but can't be bothered. For some, the idea of archiving information on a website on which they have no control so that it becomes available to everyone who has Internet access is inacceptable; either because they don't want to share this information or because they wouldn't know how to get to it themselves. After all, many people still think that this form of sharing information is just a fad for the young and the restless and impossible to master by people who weren't born in it.

Of course, that is not the case. A good friend of mine is 79 years young and uses the Net for business and Canards Canins. To go back to the main topic, I run this Journal at the moment and have to depend on informants for quite a lot of the knowledge I have gathered since I do not own a car and do not leave my area very often. Fortunately, some people have been nice enough to go out of their way to gather information.

Canards Canins, as I have said before, wants to make a real difference for Montréal's dog owners. But this will only be possible when more people want to get involved in bringing me information and in making this Journal known. The fact that there where 2205 visits during the 59 days covering the months of February and March is only a start.

I am not a politician nor a member of any Association's executive; this is not my rôle. I want to be there to further the cause of dog runs for our city by providing information and hopefully, a virtual meeting place for dog owners' associations.

The Journal privides a complete and detailed structural plan of its contents in both English and French including that of the four residing associations.

The French section of Canards Canins is much bigger than the English one. One of the reason is that most readers can manage to read French pretty well, and another is that I am lazy.

You will be able to notice that some cahiers, only available in French, have been produced in answer to specific problems that have accured in the last year. Those readers who already frequent a dog run which has a uncertain future would find in it a lot of useful points based on concrete experience and reflexion based on facts.

Getting, maintaining and keeping a dog run is not an easy task. You can find the (unfinished) saga of the dog run of parc de la Bruère a long read but probably worth your while. It records how was saved what was at one point a doomed dog park .

worthwhile to read Stratégie pour obtenir un enclos could be a useful read even if you already have a dog park, as long as its future is not assured. Reading Le pourquoi d'une association dans un parc canin as well as Réflexions sur les enclos récréatifs canins de l'ancienne Ville de Montréal (AEC) could also be quite useful.

It is also important to understand that the bylaws which apply at the moment are the ones of the City from which your borough was created but it is far from clear who has the power to change these bylaws. For those who want to know what the City Charter has to say about this instead of just believing any Tom, Dick or Harry, you can find all the relevant articles of the Charter . Again, you can find what are the real by-laws say in English or in French instead of what some official insist they say (which is often not the truth. An interesting section called Réflexions sur les autres politiques de l'ancienne Ville de Montréal is a case in point.