- POINTE-ST-CHARLES -
Février 2015 - Octobre 2015
@ La Salle Alexandra
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History of the NeighbourhoodTiohtiá:ke, unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka has long been a gathering place for many Indigenous nations prior to European colonization. At that time, prior to the industrialization of the city, much of the landmass that is now known as La Pointe, Point St-Charles, did not exist, or was lush marshland along the river.
In 1659, the Sulpicians founded a large farm at La Maison St-Gabriel, which then became the house of the Filles du Roi under the leadership of Marguerite Bourgeouys and the Notre-Dame Congregation. At this time, the Point was predominately farmland with a very small collection of farm houses. Nowadays, you can still visit la Maison St-Gabriel, which has become a museum to show the lifestyles of the first European immigrants and les Filles du Roi - the destitute women who were sent from France to Canada by order of the King to marry the voyageurs and populate the province. Its hard to imagine this house ever being surrounded by expanses of open agricultural fields. |
Aerial view of the Grand Trunk Workshops, circa 1930
© Library and Archives Canada / PA-37500, © Héritage Montréal http://www.memorablemontreal.com/accessibleQA/en/histoire.php?quartier=14 |
In a strange turn of events, industrialization covered the marshland and the farmland in railways and eventually highways. the contemporary coastline of the neighbourhood is artificially constructed to build more land for industry. In fact, it is very difficult to access the river from the neighbourhood (which might be why there are so many references to the Lachine Canal in our community quilt and no reference at all to the St-Lawrence even though forms most of the boundary of the neighbourhood).
Protestant skilled workers from England and Scotland settled in the south end, while the larger population of the Point, Catholic Irish and French-Canadians settled in the north. The flat-roofed row houses that are iconic of the Point were built to accommodate workers, inspired by the model of industrial neighbourhoods in England.
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Point-St-Charles hard, and as the Lachine Canal closed and factories moved out of the neighbourhood, many of the workers left to follow the work. Those who stayed though became models for community organizing in Quebec, creating tools to foster community and togetherness, negotiate falling standards of living, improve housing, and to deal with pollution after years of industrialization.
This legacy of community organizing continues to thrive in Point-St-Charles, as is evident in posters on telephone poles, the public artwork in the neighbourhood, and the Batîment7, which was in its early dreaming stages as we worked on this quilt.
Protestant skilled workers from England and Scotland settled in the south end, while the larger population of the Point, Catholic Irish and French-Canadians settled in the north. The flat-roofed row houses that are iconic of the Point were built to accommodate workers, inspired by the model of industrial neighbourhoods in England.
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Point-St-Charles hard, and as the Lachine Canal closed and factories moved out of the neighbourhood, many of the workers left to follow the work. Those who stayed though became models for community organizing in Quebec, creating tools to foster community and togetherness, negotiate falling standards of living, improve housing, and to deal with pollution after years of industrialization.
This legacy of community organizing continues to thrive in Point-St-Charles, as is evident in posters on telephone poles, the public artwork in the neighbourhood, and the Batîment7, which was in its early dreaming stages as we worked on this quilt.
Quilted/Quartier - Pointe-St-Charles
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La Salle Alexandra is a multipurpose room in the belly of an HLM found on 210 Rue Charon. Its hard to spot if you don't know where to look, but the unmarked door on the left side of the building leads from an empty parking lot down into a bright spacious room used for dance classes, collective cooking, or community arts and crafts, depending on the day of the week.
The art hive in this space was a relatively new project at the time, a collaboration between the HLM Salle Alexandra and the YMCA in the neighbourhood. We started the Quilted/Quartier quietly in February 2015 as a way to inaugurate the space and introduce participants to the idea of community art and collaboration. As with any new community project, it took time for the neighbours to hear about the project. We were in no rush to finish this quilt, letting it grow as new art-makers walked through the door over the months. This quilt started to come together as the Art Hive established its roots in the community. Many of the participants at this Art Hive are residents of the HLM or neighbours along the street. Demographics are as diverse as the population of the Point, and these quilt pieces have been dreamed up and created by seniors, children and everyone in between, francophone and anglophone Quebecois men and women who grew up in the neighbourhood, as well as immigrant families from Latin America, North Africa, and Russia. A lot of the physical space in this neighbourhood is still inhabited by the railway, and so many of these quilt pieces take long strange forms, occupied by rail yards and carved up by train tracks. As such, many of these pieces were worked on collectively, and were born in the space where two or more minds come together. Many of the pieces reflect a rich collective memory held by the participants of this work. This quilt was assembled in a time right before the Batîment7 opened, and the development of the neighbourhood has changed a lot since then. This map quilt reflects a specific moment in time, and I can't help but wonder how different the map might look if we made a new one in the next couple of years. |
