Quote:
Originally Posted by xzmattzx
Great pictures. I remember a couple threads by someone else of Hull (Gatineau? What city became what?) and I was hoping that you would cover it as well.
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Five cities (including Hull, which had about 65,000 people) were merged to form the new city of Gatineau. There was already a city named Gatineau just to the east of Hull with just over 100,000 people. But the former Gatineau was and is quite sprawly and lacking a true centre, so what was previously Hull has become the downtown of the new Gatineau.
As such, the central Hull part of Gatineau is not particularly vibrant outside of the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday office hours. It has not been abandoned residentially but can be a pretty depressing and deserted area evenings and weekends, except perhaps for the area around Place Aubry/Rue Laval which has some lively cafés and restaurants.
Something will have to be done to rejuvenate it if Gatineau is to have a downtown that you would normally expect in a city of its size (250,000 people). Though I do realize that the downtowns of many North American cities much larger than Gatineau are much worse off than ours.