{"id":11030,"date":"2011-07-12T18:34:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T23:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=11030"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:47:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:47:53","slug":"lost-neighborhoods-a-montreal-few-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2011\/07\/12\/lost-neighborhoods-a-montreal-few-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost Neighborhoods: A Montreal few remember"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Former residents of Goose Village describe fond memories of their neighborhood in a video projected on a sheet-laden clothesline (Natascia Lypny photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Red Light District, Goose Village, Faubourg m\u2019lasse. These neighborhoods have disappeared from Montreal maps. Between 1950 and 1970, they were erased during the city\u2019s modernization era. Hundreds of dwellings reduced to rubble; tens of thousands of people displaced across the island.<\/p>\n

In a new exhibit, the Centre d\u2019histoire de Montr\u00e9al<\/a> rebuilds these areas the only way possible: not brick by brick but memory by memory. Lost Neighborhoods is an innovative, documentary-style exhibit that reintroduces or, in most cases, introduces<\/em> visitors to these three demolished neighborhoods thanks to the accounts of their former residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like you actually step into one of those photographs of demolition and have people talk about the impact it had in their life to lose their home, to lose their neighborhood, to lose their life in some sort of way,\u201d says Catherine Charlebois, the Centre\u2019s Project manager for oral history and memory projects.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Charlebois interviewed some of the fifty-four former inhabitants whose stories form the foundations of what she considers a unique exhibit demonstrating the \u201chuman relation to the city.\u201d True, the Centre\u2019s second floor looks little like a stereotypical museum. Its walls are virtually free of descriptive texts or graphics, and only one corridor is plastered with photographs: black and white snapshots of working class neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

The bulk of information is conveyed through video interviews projected in rooms outfitted like the areas they document: Robert Petrelli describes the coexisting seedy and family life in the Red Light District; Frances and Ortuso and Adolf Diorio are ripe with nostalgia over their time in Goose Village; and C\u00e9cile and Guy Pauz\u00e9 remember cramped apartments of the Faubourg m\u2019lasse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see in the exhibit is a Montreal that does not exist anymore; it\u2019s a Montreal just before the modernization of the city,\u201d says Charlebois. The neighborhood recreations are counterbalanced with an exhibition room devoted to city planning. Interviewees from the urbanism field attempt to explain to visitors how and why such destruction was deemed beneficial to Montreal at the time.<\/p>\n

It began with the modernist and functionalist ideas of the 1920s and 1930s. The rise of the automobile required cities to improve traffic flow. With the end of WWII, cities sought to clean up the remnants of the industrial era: cramped neighborhoods and unsanitary conditions. \u201cWe were planning and thinking a very modern city and a lot of people, including ordinary Montrealers, were exalted with the idea of having a very modern Montreal,\u201d says Charlebois.<\/p>\n

Arguably no Montrealer had such as powerful vision for the city as Jean Drapeau. Acting as mayor from 1954-57, then again from 1960-86, Drapeau was determined to make Montreal an international city and, with the help of a large urban planning office, many would say he succeeded. Drapeau\u2019s government is credited with such mega-projects as the Place des Arts, Expo 67, the Ville-Marie expressway and the metro system. He also put into motion the Habitation Jeanne-Mance, the CBC\u2019s Radio-Canada tower, and the no longer existing 1967 World\u2019s Fair Autostade which replaced the Red Light District, Faubourg m\u2019lasse and Goose Village, respectively. Montreal\u2019s downtown became a civic and commerce core, and residents migrated to the newly built suburbs.<\/p>\n

Where there were losses, there were gains. Habitation Jeanne-Mance provided hundreds of social housing units to low-income families, and the Radio-Canada tower greatly increased Montreal\u2019s media capabilities. The Autostade is the only project which Charlebois condemns as \u201cvery bad urban planning\u201d in that 350 buildings were destroyed and 1,500 people exiled for the sake of a temporary structure. It is now a parking lot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The first room makes a powerful impact as visitors must sit in a simulated rundown, semi-demolished apartment to watch former residents' interviews.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a room simulating a half-demolished apartment watching a video of residents\u2019 emotional testimonies, it\u2019s hard to believe \u201cpeople actually saw those mega-projects in a very positive light.\u201d But Charlebois reminds us this destruction must be considered in the context of a modernizing high that was sweeping the Western world. “Of course,” she adds, “it didn\u2019t take long to realize that by destroying very large parts of neighborhoods, the impact was not necessarily what we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urban planners convinced business owners in these neighborhoods that the loss of local clientele would be made up for by higher earning customers drawn in by the new mega-projects. This was not the case. According to Charlebois, Sainte-Catherine\u2019s East end business sector never fully recovered from the demolition of the Faubourg m\u2019lasse residences.<\/p>\n

For the neighborhood\u2019s inhabitants, the greatest loss was on a social level. The dispersion of these thousands of Montrealers to different corners of the island caused a breakdown in the social fabric that had defined these communities. \u201cIt was like a death,\u201d says one interviewee of the forced severance of communal ties.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the exhibition is not to condemn mega-projects whose infiltration of Montreal’s neighborhoods continues to this day. Instead, \u201cthe core message of what we\u2019re presenting is that urban development is something that concerns you because you live in the city,\u201d says Charlebois. Since the 1960s, Montrealers have gained more and more of a say in urban planning with such things as public consultations. The final exposition room entitled \u201cVisions, reflections, mobilizations\u201d encourages visitors to voice their opinions on the changing landscape of their city now,<\/em> not in retrospect as was only possible for the Lost Neighborhoods\u2019 inhabitants.<\/p>\n

Lost Neighborhoods is on June 15, 2011 to March 25, 2012<\/em> at the Centre d\u2019histoire de Montr\u00e9al<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Red Light District, Goose Village, Faubourg m\u2019lasse. These neighborhoods have disappeared from Montreal maps. Between 1950 and 1970, they were erased during the city\u2019s modernization era. Hundreds of dwellings reduced to rubble; tens of thousands of people displaced across the island. In a new exhibit, the Centre d\u2019histoire de Montr\u00e9al rebuilds these areas theContinue reading “Lost Neighborhoods: A Montreal few remember”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5076,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[6511,283,6512,6516,6509,2741,6517,6508,347,346,6515,125,6513,6514,3229,6510,28,1092],"class_list":["post-11030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spacing","tag-adolf-diorio","tag-canada","tag-catherine-charlebois","tag-cbcs-radio","tag-cecile-pauze","tag-centre-dhistoire-de-montreal","tag-drapeaus-government","tag-guy-pauze","tag-jean-drapeau","tag-mayor","tag-media-capabilities","tag-montreal","tag-ortuso-diorio","tag-project-manager-for-oral-history-and-memory-projects","tag-radio-canada-tower","tag-robert-petrelli","tag-spacing-montreal","tag-ville-marie-expressway"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLost Neighborhoods: A Montreal few remember - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2011\/07\/12\/lost-neighborhoods-a-montreal-few-remember\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lost Neighborhoods: A Montreal few remember - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Red Light District, Goose Village, Faubourg m\u2019lasse. 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