60 years ago, more than 300 families learned that they had to move because their neighborhood, surrounded by the CN railway and the Victoria Bridge, was going to be destroyed.
Sad, especially when we see that this corner, located in what is today called the Bridge-Bonaventure sector, has become a no man’s land parking lots and large spaces used in particular by Canada Post and Hydro-Québec, all near a… Costco.
In 1964, the administration of Mayor Jean Drapeau razed the old district of Goose Village, called in French the Village-aux-Oies, or Victoriatown, in order to allow the construction of the Autostade for the holding of Expo 67.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
The Autostade under construction in 1964
“A few years after the famous Pink Floyd concert, the Autostade was destroyed,” recalls photographer Marisa Portolese with great irony.
The professor at Concordia University published the book last fall Goose Village, writing in collaboration with Vincent Bonin, on the sidelines of an exhibition presented at the Occurrence gallery. It thereby became a “living archive” project whose scope she had underestimated. Former villagers or their descendants continue to contact her.
PHOTO FROM THE MONTREAL ARCHIVES
1964 photo of Village-aux-Oies, where two-story houses were lined up on top of each other
Victoriatown was born in the mid-19the century with the workers who built the Victoria Bridge.
Marisa Portolese
After the mass immigration of Irish people followed a wave from Eastern Europe, notably from Ukraine. Then after the Second World War many Italians arrived, including his father Domenico Portolese, who was only 15 years old!
Goose Village was a warm welcoming land. “Life was good in the neighborhood. I loved living there,” says the man who will celebrate his 87th birthday.
BOOK COVER GOOSE VILLAGE
In his daughter’s book, Domenico Portolese poses where the Village-aux-Oies was.
Today, an Irish memorial monument, called Black Rock, commemorates on a difficult-to-access platform the approximately 6,000 Irish people who died of typhus and were quarantined before the bridge was built. But otherwise, there is practically no trace or no reminder of Village-aux-Oies, laments Marisa Portolese.
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PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
The City of Montreal plans to move the Black Rock into a commemorative green space project. The enhancement of heritage is also in the new master plan for the Bridge-Bonaventure sector.
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PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
This plaque refers to the people of Victoriatown who died during the Second World War.
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PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
It took Marisa Portolese’s directions to find this mural work under the Bonaventure Expressway overpass.
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PHOTO PROVIDED BY PAUL LABONTÉ
Photo of Paul Labonté, who lived in Goose Village, in front of a Parks Canada poster that once stood at the corner of Mill and Riverside streets, near the bike path.
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A long quest
Marisa Portolese grew up hearing constantly about the “village” where her father had lived for more than 10 years and where people once hunted goose. She had a revelation with the documentary by Sylvain L’Espérance Uncertain springsreleased in 1992. She could finally discover previously unseen period images of Goose Village.
Later, in 2011, Marisa Portolese saw the exhibition Disappeared neighborhoods by Catherine Charlebois and Paul-André Linteau (from which a book was based). The photos, made public thanks to an agreement between the former Montreal History Center and the City Archives, gave him hope of being able to reproduce a map of Goose Village.
However, it was not that simple. “The Archives of the City of Montreal were a great help, but when I received the 2,000 photos, there was no caption,” she says.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Marisa Portolese managed, by pasting photos, to reproduce her father’s street, Forfar Nord.
His father first allowed him to identify his house on rue Forfar, then the historian Gilles Lauzon was able to decode “the sibylline digital system” allowing addresses to be associated with photos.
Many images are sad to see, including that of this woman in her empty apartment posing behind “her” expropriation number.
PHOTO FROM THE MONTREAL ARCHIVES
Anna Mazzonna, niece of the woman posed here (Maria Canale), came into contact with Marisa Portolese after the release of her book.
As it did for Faubourg à m’lasse and Le Red Light, the City razed Goose Village and displaced its approximately 1,500 residents in the name of modernity. “The city said that people could not live in these conditions. Yes, the houses were old, but you can see in the photos how they took care of the interior,” emphasizes Marisa Portolese.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
In an article from The Press dating from May 9, 1964, journalist Albert Tremblay speaks with melancholy of a “page in the history of Montreal that is being turned.”
Many of them were forced once again to leave their homes and make new lives for themselves. “It was already not easy for them to immigrate without speaking the language and without money. »
Marisa’s father told us about his arrival by boat via Halifax, then by train to Montreal. He came to join his older brother whom he considers his father, since the latter died when he was 18 months old. “My other brother went to war and I never saw him again…It was a difficult time. »
From Goose Village to Saint-Michel
Domenico Portolese will always remember the day he received a letter announcing that the apartment he was renting was going to be destroyed. “Two months later, I moved to Pointe-Saint-Charles, where my daughter was born. »
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Domenico Portolese returned to Italy to marry the woman he had corresponded with for years.
A tailor by trade, notably for Harry Rosen, Domenico Portolese later bought a building in Saint-Michel where he and his wife still live, and where Marisa set up her photo studio.
So what memories remain of Goose Village 60 years after its demolition? All in all… The Drapeau administration was able to get the people out of the village, but not the people’s village.