[Late last year,
I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit
to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling
spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and
artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading
up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]
Three telling
spots that together capture the complex past and present of Old Montreal.
1)
The “First” Public Square: A small
sign on the side of a historic building on Place
Royale designates that area (known then, at its 1657 origin point, as Place
du Marché) as “The First Public Square of Montreal.” Which makes sense with
that important “of Montreal” modifier in place—the New France settlement (really
fort, initially) had been founded just fifteen years earlier, in 1642, and
I certainly believe that it took that long to organize enough of a true city
that it would need and feature a public square. But as that last hyperlinked
piece notes, there was already an existing First Peoples village, known as
Hochelaga, when the first French explorers arrived in the area—and I think
it’s safe to say that its inhabitants had public gathering places of their own.
So that “first,” while technically correct in its context, represents the same
kind of historical elision I’ve highlighted in the week’s earlier posts.
2)
Notre-Dame
Basilica: I think it’s just as safe to say, however, that the village of
Hochelaga encountered by Cartier and his fellow explorers did not have a
Catholic church. Neither for that matter did the settlement of Montreal for its
first three decades—the city had a small Jesuit parish from the outset, but it
was not until 1672 that the church of Notre-Dame (on which constructed began in
1657) was completed on the Place d’Armes. And while that church was apparently
much larger and more impressive than the first, it was only in the early
19th century that the stunning cathedral we know today was
built. That’s one thing that Notre-Dame reflects, then: the multi-century
development of Montreal, from that initial frontier outpost through its gradual
expansion and into its enduring status as one of the world’s great and most
cosmopolitan cities. But as any 21st century visitor can attest, the
city and its region are also defined
once more by the French
heritage with which they began, and Norte-Dame is a vital symbol of that
cultural presence as well.
3)
The Waterfront: Montreal wasn’t settled by the
French because of religion, though—it was settled because of its prime
location as an island on the St. Lawrence River, and what that would mean
for the fur trade and the overall development of New France. It’s been a long
time since the waterfront served such a vital purpose, as the imposing presence
of the abandoned
Canadian Malting Silos illustrates. But that doesn’t mean that the
waterfront, like Old Montreal more broadly, doesn’t have a role to play in the
21st century, and while there I had the chance to experience one
example of how that historic waterfront has been remade: Bota Bota, a Nordic baths spa located in a
refurbished and refashioned barge. Spas alone aren’t the answer to revitalizing
a historic neighborhood, of course—but neither is simply preserving historic
sites without finding ways to make such areas new at the same time. As Bota
Bota reflects, Old Montreal is working to do both, and it’ll be exciting to see
where the neighborhood and city go from here.
Last memory
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?
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