A Neighborhood Is Worth a Thousand Words | A Tour of Montreal’s Beirut

If the pages of the best-selling novel A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers transport readers from Cairo to the Saint-Joseph Oratory, and from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce to Alexandria, they also introduce us to a little-known sector of the Saint-Laurent district. Accompanied by the writer Alain Farah, The Press went to visit the neighborhood where she grew up, Little Lebanon.

Saint-Laurent Cemetery

Although the first place visited does not appear in the novel – it would appear in the screenplay of its film adaptation, which will be directed by Philippe Falardeau – Alain Farah nevertheless wanted to begin the interview in the Saint-Laurent cemetery, which, according to him, embodies the evolution of the neighborhood and constitutes an important element of the novel.

As we go deeper under the trees, we understand what he means. The grandiose tombstones bearing French-Canadian names, vestiges of the founding families of the agricultural village that has now become Old Saint-Laurent, gradually give way to more recent, sober graves with Greek, Egyptian, Syrian and, of course, Lebanese names.

“The book is a bit of a reflection on this kind of movement in the history of Quebec in relation to immigration. You feel it even when the names start to change [sur les tombes]. »

A large part of Alain Farah’s family is buried in the cemetery, including his uncle, the father of the famous Édouard, a crucial character in the history of A thousand secrets, a thousand dangersand his beloved Téta, his grandmother.

On the horizon, the “projects” – these residential towers emblematic of modest neighborhoods – mark the landscape and demarcate the border of Little Lebanon.

“For a long time, we snubbed this kind of landscape a bit, but I’ve always been quite moved by them,” Alain Farah emphasizes. “That’s where the desire comes from, to try to make them part of fiction too, into the imagination, to inhabit them, to take the time to explore them.”

The Topaz

The McGill French professor spent his formative years in a local apartment building, the Topaze, where the rest of his family also lived, including his cousin Édouard, the other half of the “duo of imbeciles,” as he calls them in the novel.

“If your life is made up of concentric centers, you arrive at the most central circle,” explains Alain Farah, describing his childhood in this building on Boulevard de la Côte-Vertu.

Although he often returns to the neighborhood, the author has only returned to the building once in 20 years, to scout locations for his upcoming film. “It’s certain that entering the Topaze, being in the Topaze apartments, was powerful, because I had never set foot there since my grandmother died.”

Most of his family eventually left the Topaze to settle elsewhere, but his Téta remained there until her death. From the outside, he shows the approximate location of apartment 217. “It was an important place for me because it was like a haven of peace,” the writer recalls. In the novel, he recounts that he often took refuge in her home, from where they could observe Mount Royal and Saint Joseph’s Oratory.

The view is now obstructed by other buildings, but the feelings remain.

Coast Vertu Center

The author also showed us around his hanging spotthe Côte Vertu Center. “Our whole life revolved around this shopping center,” explains Alain Farah. “That’s my earliest childhood.” According to him, businesses change names and owners, but rarely their purpose.

The neighbourhood has long been a poorly accessible enclave. In 2014, an integrated urban revitalization program (RUI), which targets impoverished communities, was set up by community organizations, the City of Montreal and the borough of Saint-Laurent. Several public consultations have been held in recent years, the objective of which was, among other things, to improve public transportation in the area.

Melkite Church

We end the visit on rue du Liban, at the edge of the neighborhood, where the community has mobilized to finance the construction of a new Melkite church, backed by the community center that already existed and that Alain Farah attended in his youth.

“I think it also speaks to an evolution of the neighborhood which, all of a sudden, has the means to afford the representations it needs,” emphasizes Alain.

Without an Olympic stadium, skyscrapers or stretch of water, Little Lebanon can seem like a residential neighborhood like any other, according to the writer who hails from there. For Alain Farah, the neighborhood stands out for the people who live there and “the stories that can be told.”

“What makes them really, really unique is what we experienced in those places.”

A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers

The author: Alain Farah

2021, currently being adapted for cinema

The Quartanier. 512 pages.
The neighborhood: Officially called Chameran, the neighborhood known as Little Lebanon or Little Beirut is located in the northeast of the Saint-Laurent district.
Population: nearly 15,000 inhabitants, or 16% of the district’s population.