7 a.m.: Rebecca and I go running. Avenue des Pins is gutted – zigzags between orange cones, bulldozers and cracks that carve the sidewalks. Higher up, Mount Royal, the statue, the paths under the bare trees. The stairs jostle as I climb two steps at a time, weaving through a sea of tourists and strollers. Skyscrapers and Leonard Cohen (no, he’s not my cousin) loom over familiar mountains.
Posted yesterday at 3:00 p.m.
My memories at the belvedere are numerous. I also went there for chill until 4 a.m., to drink tea with a friend in search of light, for a date Tinder, to accompany the visit in the middle of winter and burn the snowy paths. To cry, to laugh, to confide in it, for nothing at all.
The belvedere, Saint-Joseph’s oratory, Orange Julep, Building 67, the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel – all these places are striking in the collective imagination of our dear metropolis. But what do we really know?
This week, thanks to the podcast of the remarkable Serge Bouchard and the monotony of Highway 20, I learned that this lookout has a name, that of Kondiaronk.
An Aboriginal leader, warrior, great diplomat, outstanding orator and architect of the Treaty of the Great Peace of Montreal signed in 1701. The one also nicknamed “the Rat” was often invited to Frontenac and the Jesuits for evenings of lively debates. His greatest reported feat was bringing together some 36 Indigenous nations in an unprecedented peace treaty, which cost him his life. Indeed, the day after a so-called sensational two-hour speech to convince the assembly, Kondiaronk passed away. He will be given a large funeral.
I run and I see the individual and collective ignorance of our history. Of what the Quebec of today is built on.
Of what we choose to tell and what we choose to keep silent. Our city, our province, our planet are filled with these invisible remains, these non-places, these ruins on which condo towers are built, like sedimentary strata piling up on top of each other. What we forget resurfaces as surely as seashells at low tide.
History must be kept alive
This History is not over: it continues its march as inexorably as time slips through our fingers. This History, we have the annoying tendency to teach it according to the actions of individuals, mainly men, acting according to an innate and singular genius.
What drives our behavior if not the values, social norms and collective frameworks of the time? If it weren’t for Christopher Columbus and Jacques-Cartier, others, similar, would inevitably have replaced them. And yet, if it hadn’t been for Kondiaronk’s river speech, would the Montreal peace treaty have been signed?
The next time you go for a walk on Mount Royal and, perched against the balustrade of the belvedere, you contemplate the horizon: take a deep breath, look at what is not visible and become aware of the silence.