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Is Montreal starving its arts? ...Still, Joyal's letter, and recent events, leave Montrealers facing some uncomfortable questions. Are they taking their city and its institutions for granted? Robert Everett-Green The Globe and Mail September 19, 2005 Relâche is the word some French-speaking theatres post on their front doors when there is no performance. It has become a sensitive term in Montreal, where two major performing-arts companies began their current seasons by announcing what they wouldn't be doing. Want to hear l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal's opening concert tomorrow? Relâche. The OSM has been on strike for four months, and with no agreement in sight, management cancelled its September concerts (negotiations, however, resumed Friday). Want to see Montreal director François Girard's vision of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex? Relâche. Opéra de Montréal just scotched the production, which was due to reach Place des Arts in February. In both cases, the root of the problem is money. It seems there's just not enough cash in the city's cultural systems to pay orchestral musicians what they are worth, or to produce an opera that David Moss, OM's general director, called "the pillar of our season." The trouble isn't limited to two companies, or even to the performing arts. Last month, Serge Joyal, a Liberal senator, art collector and prominent figure on Quebec's arts scene, wrote an open letter about "Montréal déclassé," in which he surveyed the evidence of the city's eclipse as a cultural capital relative to Toronto. That's been obvious in recent days, as the Toronto International Film Festival roared on bigger than ever, while three competing festivals in Montreal vie for public attention. But that debacle is partly the product of private wars between Serge Losique, the autocratic director of the Montreal World Film Festival, and just about everyone else in Quebec cinema. By contrast, Joyal's letter, which was published in La Presse, was an open-handed document that stung the pride of Quebec nationalists and reignited a debate about what the urban centre of French-speaking North America is and should be. Montrealers love to mock Toronto's obsession with becoming a "world-class" city, but they also hate to acknowledge signs that their city is being left behind. Joyal left them no choice. He zeroed in on Toronto's boom in capital projects for the arts, including new or expanded facilities for the Royal Ontario Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canadian Opera Company and TIFF. He pointed out that these and four other projects were launched with $240-million in public money, from the federal-provincial infrastructure programs of four years ago. Montreal had access to the same kind of funding, and what did it use the money for? New pipes and sewers. The big capital projects in Montreal these days are a pair of hospitals and several academic buildings. Like the sewers, they're needed, but they're also draining money away from the city's cultural base. After years of talking about a new concert home, the OSM is still holed up in Place des Arts, while orchestras in Calgary and Edmonton celebrate anniversaries in their own halls. By other measures, however, the Montreal arts scene is floating on a lake of public money. Performing-arts groups in Quebec get 44 per cent (on average) of their revenue from governments, according to the latest survey by the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada. Ontario groups get just 19 per cent. The flip side is that organizations in Ontario are much more successful at finding private funds. They gathered up 49 per cent of all private donations to the performing arts in Canada in 2003-2004, while Quebec companies got only 19 per cent. A report by Imagine Canada, based on a national Statistics Canada survey, says that individual Quebeckers gave an average of $117 to non-profit organizations in 2000. People in Ontario gave $312, and Manitobans gave $383. The low donation rate in Quebec was further diluted by the fact that the province has 40 per cent more non-profits than Ontario does, and all are looking for money. It's easy to conclude that Quebec's cultural institutions have an unhealthy reliance on public money, and that the citizenry doesn't want to pay for what it consumes. Opéra de Montréal had a highly successful season last year, with paid attendance above 80 per cent and a 93-per-cent satisfaction rating from a recent audience survey. It still closed the season with a deficit of $1.5-million. Opéra de Montréal's David Moss blames the governments for his troubles, because they gave him only 21 per cent of his budget -- still more than the average in Ontario. He admits, however, that the public in Quebec isn't ready to engage in philanthropy the way arts-minded Ontarians do. "The culture of philanthropy is slower to come to realization in Quebec," he said. The arts companies have also been slower to develop effective fundraising strategies, he said, because it takes money to attract the best talent, and the hospitals have more money than anyone. The OSM used to be one of the most glamorous and successful orchestras in North America, and sold out regularly when it travelled to New York and Tokyo. But even in its glory days, it ran up regular deficits, in spite of several bailouts from the provincial government. It's still trailing a blood-spoor of $3.4-million, which is one reason management is willing to keep subscribers out of their seats this month. Lucien Bouchard, who once lavished money on the orchestra from the Quebec premier's office, is now the chair of the OSM board and very critical of what he sees as the musicians' piddling respect for financial restraint. They haven't had a raise in two years and blame the board for not raising enough cash. "This is not New York," Bouchard said. "We're limited by the economic means of the milieu. We know that there's an imbalance between our economic means and the excellence of our musicians." A bitter admission, no doubt, from the unofficial standard-bearer for a sovereign Quebec. But at least saying your town is not New York doesn't hurt as much as admitting that it isn't even Toronto. Montreal's pain happens to coincide with exceptionally flush times in Toronto, and it's not just a matter of luck. Aside from the infrastructure choices made four years ago, Toronto's cultural community has had the benefit of years of savvy spadework by fundraisers, and a marked elevation of what leading private donors are willing to give. "Toronto right now is probably in the middle of its heyday in terms of cultural fundraising," said Wendy Reid, a former senior manager of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and the National Ballet of Canada. When plans for the Ballet Opera House were being made (and ultimately unmade) in the late eighties, the prospect of a $30-million donation from one person was a novelty, she said. Today, it's a benchmark. Of course, cash and capital projects don't make a culture. Montreal is still an exceptionally dynamic place. Its achievements in literature, dance, film and popular music are beyond dispute, and its cultural identity is strong. In this context, Toronto's boom may symbolize the degree to which the city's cultural identity is still a work in progress. Still, Joyal's letter, and recent events, leave Montrealers facing some uncomfortable questions. Are they taking their city and its institutions for granted? Do they care if their museums, theatres and opera company are second-rate, or worse? And if they do care, what are they going to do about it?