In 2017, Montreal will be celebrating its 375th birthday. I was born there in 1991, would make it my permanent residence until the age of 18, then inhabit it on and off again until today. Despite our differences in age, I feel as if the city has grown up alongside me—albeit at a quicker rate.
When I was only taking first steps, Montreal's tallest skyscraper, 1000 de La Gauchetière, sprang up above me. I was barely filling my toddler clothing when the Biosphère ballooned onto Île Jean Drapeau. Before I acquired a taste for anything musical but Backstreet Boys, concerts at the Bell Centre were rivalling Montreal Canadiens games in ticket sales. And by the time I was old enough to study the history of the city, I could look up all the related research material at La Grande Bibliothèque.
Socially, politically, culturally and (as I've described) structurally, Montreal's evolution on any and all adverbial terms seems to be constant. Although during my childhood I did not take advantage of some the above developments (and others I only became aware of long after the fact), I understood that being a Montrealer meant living in a landscape that was constantly building upon itself. Moving to Halifax two years ago, I realized that ever-shifting surroundings were a fact of life in urban centres—and I rejoiced in the perpetual possibility for newness.
What had not occurred to me was that development necessitates destruction.
Lost Neighborhoods is the Centre d'histoire de Montréal new exhibit.. Last week, it introduced me to three areas of Montreal that were demolished before my parents had even met, setting in motion my simultaneous upbringing with and within the city. Between 1950 and 1970, the Red Light District, Goose Village and Faubourg m-lasse were reduced to rubble to make way for mega-projects. The city maps that once included these areas have now greatly changed: I, along with the majority of Montrealers, are living in a city that did not exist half a century ago.
An exhibition room devoted to urban planning impressed upon me the impact of Jean Drapeau's vision for an internationally-renowned, monumental Montreal. Drapeau was mayor from 1954-57, then again from 1960-68, and is credited with such famous projects as the Place des Arts, Expo 67 and the Ville-Marie expressway. He is commemorated across the island. But never is a great work (or, in this instance, the remodelling of an entire city) the result of one man's aspirations. Speaking with the Centre's Project manager for oral history and memory projects Catherine Charlebois, I learned that Drapeau's Montreal was spawned by a modernist movement sweeping North America.
First, there was the modernist and functionalist ideas of the 1920s and 1930s, Charlebois told me. Then, came the rise of the automobile, which required a more fluid traffic flow. With the end of World War II, cities were looking to spruce up the 'unsightly' remnants of their pre-war industrialism: cramped neighbourhoods and unhygienic conditions. In many North American urban centres, these factors translated into an exodus of the residential population to the suburbs, and a re-organizing of the downtown core to promote civic and collective buildings.
In Montreal, this modernization period began in the 1940s and, according to Charlebois, grabbed the imaginations of city planners and ordinary citizens alike. But, once I had finished learning of this period from urbanism specialists' testimonies and moved on to the neighbourhood-themes rooms, I discovered the effects of this modernization on Montreal were drastically different from those on its residents. Lost Neighborhoods emphasizes that cities are organisms in their own right; but, they also house thousands of people whose lives are greatly influenced by the maturation of the organism they inhabit.
The exhibit contains three areas designed to simulate the neighbourhood they document. In a wallpapered room with rough wood slats, I watched a video clip projected on a bed sheet hung from a clothesline featuring two of Goose Village's former residents. These testimonies (those of 54 former inhabitants were gathered in total) are the exhibition's strongest point as they not only provide first-hand descriptions of these vanished neighbourhoods but also convey the impact this demolition had on Montreal's working-class: 25,000 people exiled from their homes; nearly 1,000 buildings destroyed. Moreover, hundreds of local businesses lost their clientele over night and never fully recovered.
Hearing these stories, it was hard to accept justifications for this destruction of entire neighbourhoods. But Charlebois insisted that many people had confidence in the benefits of these mega-projects. The Red Light District became Habitation Jeanne-Mance which continues to provide low-income housing to hundreds of Montrealers, and CBC's Radio-Canada tower occupies what was Faubourg m'lasse, providing the city with a vital media hub. Then there's Goose Village, whose former site is now occupied by a parking lot. It use to be the 1967 World Fair Autostade but, as with many of Expo 67's installations, has now become more or less obsolete.
Absorbing the overwhelming content of the exhibit, I wondered whether parts of Montreal I hold dear could be the focus of a Lost Neighborhoods exposé in the future. The idea of a more modern, more impressive Montreal stills fuels many urban developers' plans (and those across North America). The Turcot interchange construction, the Glen Yards mega hospital, and the Griffintown redevelopment are but a few ongoing projects in my hometown whose overtaking of large swaths of land, displacement of people and businesses, and uncertain success in the future mirror those of the exhibit's featured areas. By the end of my exhibit visit I was disheartened: had the face of city planning truly changed?
Charlebois tried to convince me that, yes, in some ways it had. The former residents of the Red Light District, Goose Village and Faubourg m'lasse were only given the opportunity to voice their opinions on the demolition of their neighbourhoods in a documentary some 50 years later. Since the 1960s, Montrealers have had an increased say in the development of their city with such things as public consultations. More consideration is also given to recycling, renovating, preserving and incorporating older structures into new urban projects.
Still, Charlebois reminded me that as long as cities are seen as comprised of plots of land for sale, each defined by their price tag and profits, the human relation to the city will be largely swept aside.