Fourth and final article in a series dedicated to books that crystallize the essence of a Montreal neighborhood. This week, we delve into the works of those who immortalized Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
A symbol of all the clichés associated with poverty, a prime example of the gentrification of Montreal, the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, located east of downtown, occupies an important place in our collective imagination. Its rich, diverse, and profoundly Quebecois history is no stranger to this.
Named after an indigenous village discovered on the slopes of Mount Royal by Jacques Cartier, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve—HoMa, for the hip—was a primarily working-class area for over a century. Before being annexed to Montreal in 1918, the city of Maisonneuve was the fifth largest industrial city in the country, and its architectural heritage still bears witness to the ambitions of its political leaders.
This economic prosperity was however undermined in the late 1990s, when the district had to deal with the massive closure of factories and the loss of thousands of jobs. The workers, already living in precarious conditions, were forced to leave the area, or sink into poverty. For years, the place would be associated with both poverty and crime.
It was the neighborhood’s rich criminal history that prompted David Goudreault to imagine it there Maple (Stanké, 2022), the adventure of a sex worker with colorful verve who is released from prison at the same time as a series of murders targeting prostitutes hits Hochelaga. Feeling “geographically challenged”, the fifty-year-old will soon get involved in the judicial investigation, determined to get her hands on the culprit.
“I am basically very interested in this neighbourhood, a French-speaking stronghold that has resisted as best it could over the years to preserve its soul, despite gentrification and changes of all kinds. It retains a tasty “Queb” colour. Then, there is a certain mythology around Hochelaga, which has experienced a series of great moments in Quebec crime — we can think of Mom Boucher, for example. It seemed obvious to me that it was the perfect place to write a tragicomic thriller in which a major criminal, Quebecer to the core, would evolve,” says the author.
Not being a native of the neighborhood, the latter did his homework, walking the streets and alleys up and down, and visiting the places that had experienced the most significant police raids. “My contact is a former manager of crack house. So we visited an old one, on Sainte-Catherine East. He told me epic stories about the great moments of these places of perdition, in addition to giving me the chance to meet some characters linked to this universe who have nourished my creativity. My greatest influence in literature is the painter Caravaggio, with his inspiring play of light and shadow. Hochelaga allowed me to use great darkness to bring out clarity, beauty, because it is both a place of solidarity and great violence.
Change the world
The romantic potential that rumbles in the fabulous history of the district has also fired the imagination of Simon Leduc. In Arthur’s Escape or the Commune of Hochelaga (Le Quartanier, 2019), he invents a community of children, poor people, immigrants, punks and students who squat an abandoned school, erect barricades, dig tunnels and prepare to stand up against the police, the media and capitalism to change the world.
“It’s like two universes in themselves. There’s Maisonneuve on one side, which recalls the history of the French-speaking bourgeoisie, then you cross Pie-IX Boulevard and it’s a completely different world. This fracture tells of social struggles, of fights for dignity, for the right to live somewhere. In my novel, I invented a commune in a school, but there were many similar examples in vacant lots, in wooded areas; people who, without being activists, lived in a territory and made it their own. The place carries many stories that are repeated through time and whose echoes we can still hear.”
The writer saw her first baby grow up in the neighborhood, and so associated the streets with a multitude of emotional memories that made it a perfect theater to celebrate childhood and the parent-child relationship. “Even if what I’m telling is phantasmagorical and takes place in a completely hallucinatory place, I needed to know the place intimately to let my mind wander. Then, the fact that I haven’t lived there for years allowed me to tumble into a whole series of fantasies. Especially since it’s changed so much, I barely recognize Ontario Street now.”
Light at the end of gentrification
The heroine Maple — written by David Goudreault — is perhaps the one who best describes the repercussions of the major transformations that the neighbourhood is currently undergoing, forcing the most deprived into their last entrenchments. “They are pushing us out of the city, they are making us as peripheral as possible. In the process, they are stuffing us with social diversity and good intentions. What hypocrisy, discrimination is still based on colour, but the colour of the bank account, against those who live in the red. No more filter coffees served in Styrofoam at a buck a fill, no more big pints of extra salted draft beer in the clouds of smoke. Now, you have to pay a fortune for their little pumpkin lattes and their estie of local eggplant gin.”
But it takes more than pumpkin lattes and trendy restaurants to erase the soul of Hochelaga, according to the author. “This is due to two main reasons. The human who lives there, at all ends of the spectrum, from the reality of distress to those who have it easier, who love the neighbourhood and make it vibrate, with a background of Quebec pride. Then, Hochelaga stands out for its unique presence in the collective imagination. Thanks to a very strong cultural and artistic representation, it still has the virtue of embodying what remains of Quebec in Montreal.”
Michel Duchesne, for his part, has a front-row seat to see the consequences of gentrification. For several years, he has worked in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve collective kitchen. He also worked for two years as a public writer in the neighbourhood, during which time he helped illiterate people write letters of application for low-cost housing, resumes, pension applications and declarations of love. From these experiences, he has written two novels: The public writer (Leméac, 2016) and The echo of the cauldrons (Leméac, 2020).
“We often turn a blind eye to distress. But if we want to change things, we have no choice but to name it. While we give billions to multinationals in the name of the economy, there are penniless single-parent women with three children who are 163it is on the waiting list for social housing. With my novels, I wanted to show that it exists, but also to show all the solidarity, the nets of resources that are woven in an environment like Hochelaga.”
If the neighborhood has a soul, it may be there: in the gesture of asking for help, and that of reaching out, which continues to define it and rewrite its history. “With the collective kitchen, I feel like I’m tearing four hours away from the darkness of the world.” While it would be easy to lose hope, in Hochelaga, there is light on every street corner. You just have to know where to look.