{"id":638,"date":"2008-02-22T23:01:41","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T04:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=638"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:25:36","slug":"an-elegy-for-griffintown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/02\/22\/an-elegy-for-griffintown\/","title":{"rendered":"An elegy for Griffintown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[youtube]XqxurfvV5bM[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something remarkably honest about the United Steel Workers of Montreal. Far from being a contrivance, their country and bluegrass music feels earnest and appropriate, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the new video for their song &#8220;\u00c9mile Bertrand.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>This elegy for the lost working-class life of Montreal&#8217;s southwest is named in honour of the \u00c9mile Bertrand restaurant, a snack bar at Notre-Dame and Mountain that was famous for its home-brewed spruce beer. It closed in 2006 when its owner, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/article.jsp?content=20060731_130919_130919\">Barbara Strudensky<\/a>, died of cancer, so the USWM filmed their video in Point St. Charles&#8217; Paul Patates, which has inherited \u00c9mile Bertrand&#8217;s legacy &#8212; and spruce beer. &#8220;Dreamin&#8217; just comes easy when work is just too hard to bear,&#8221; croon the USWM&#8217;s vocalists, Felicity Hamer and Sean Beauchamp, as the video cuts between present-day scenes of the Lachine Canal, St. Henri and Point St. Charles and historical photos of Griffintown. <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something about this landscape that invites nostalgia. Maybe it&#8217;s the unexpected tranquility of the canal and the brooding ghosts of industry along it. Five years ago, when I lived in St. Henri, I lay awake at night listening to the mysterious clanging of trains in the nearby railyards. Those solitary moments, more than anything, are what I remember about living in the city&#8217;s southwest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[youtube]XqxurfvV5bM[\/youtube] There&#8217;s something remarkably honest about the United Steel Workers of Montreal. Far from being a contrivance, their country and bluegrass music feels earnest and appropriate, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the new video for their song &#8220;\u00c9mile Bertrand.&#8221; This elegy for the lost working-class life of Montreal&#8217;s southwest is named in<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/02\/22\/an-elegy-for-griffintown\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;An elegy for Griffintown&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"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":[7837,7838,7839],"tags":[1235,1995,1230,1994,34,36,14,326,125,1996,61,59,1997],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-neighbourhoods","tag-barbara-strudensky","tag-emile-bertrand","tag-emile-bertrand-restaurant","tag-felicity-hamer","tag-video","tag-griffintown","tag-historical","tag-lachine-canal","tag-montreal","tag-paul-patates","tag-pointe-saint-charles","tag-st-henri","tag-sean-beauchamp"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An elegy for Griffintown - 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\/2008\/02\/22\/an-elegy-for-griffintown\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An elegy for Griffintown - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[youtube]XqxurfvV5bM[\/youtube] There&#8217;s something remarkably honest about the United Steel Workers of Montreal. 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