A Canadian at Harvard
How nationalism, separatism and the politics of architecture
inspired Peter Rose
Kathryn Engel
For one of Canada’s most celebrated international architects, even the invitation to teach at Harvard and work in the lush urban environments of Boston and New York City didn’t make leaving home much easier.
“I left Canada dragging my feet, it was not an easy thing for me to do at all,” Peter Rose recalls from Cambridge, where he has been based since 1991 when he moved from his hometown of Montreal.
After spending a decade in New York City in undergraduate and graduate studies at Yale, Rose returned to Quebec in 1970 right when the momentum surrounding the FLQ was set to peak and reshape both Rose, and his home province, forever.
“With a small number of other people, I was there through the beginning of the separatist movement and emergence of the FLQ and the moving out of Montreal of a half a million people and collapse of the economy.”
It was amongst his group of closest friends where the Alliance Quebec found root, historic notables in the movement including Michael Goldbloom, Eric Maldoff and Jeffrey Chambers.
Alliance Quebec strengthened with the simultaneous power of the separatist movement, and became known for its instrumental work as a mediating body over issues surrounding language, school laws, nationalization of organizations and more.
“The group was instrumental in convincing anglophones Quebec was worth fighting for and staying in, and also instrumental in convincing francophones that the English presence was valuable. I was involved tangentially in the real political stuff but very involved in a parallel movement in architecture, which was trying to raise the level of discussion about the value of architecture and the value of cities in a time cities were very wantonly being knocked down.”
That philosophy found Rose and others in parallel movements alongside separatism with the formation of groups such as Heritage Montreal and Save Montreal. Rose’s own deep commitment evolved into his leadership in a couple of pivotal projects that garnered widespread acclaim and awards, as well as international exposure.
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