I was in Montreal a few weeks back and was struck by well treed their residential side streets were. In particular, I was impressed by the neighbourhoods around the old Olympic Stadium/Botanical Gardens, because the neighbourhood also dated from the early 1900’s, like west side Ottawa.
There were many blocks of these treed streets. And they weren’t Glebe-rich either, they were the typical fine mix of rows, triplexes, doubles, apartments, and singles. The wiring is along the street too, not underground or running over the rooftops.
I do believe the Montreal climate is worse than ours for trees (more snow, more ice) and they sure are generous with salt in winter, as befitting a Province that supports local industries to a fault.
And the trees were there despite the driveways many houses had, although most of the area did not have individual driveways. Presumably they had rear lanes.
Ottawa streets once looked like this. Then we chopped down our trees to make way for through traffic. Recently we started to make provision for trees again, eg Kent Street, Preston, Somerset/Wellington. But the City is reverting to type again on Preston, planning road widenings that will once again push pedestrians right up against speeding traffic.
Montreal – it was nice while it lasted.
According to my good friend who lives in the NDG area of Montreal, sidewalks outside of downtown are never salted, and only sometimes plowed. When she lived in Ottawa for a few years she couldn’t believe that you could actually see the pavement on the sidewalk in winter. She was back in Montreal for the year of the big ice storm, when the city put down NO salt because they thought it was going to change to rain. That strategy caused them more damage than what happened in Ottawa.