Pandemic. E-commerce and megacenters. Inflation. Labor shortage. There is no shortage of traumatic shocks for the shopping streets of Quebec. With the series Our streets on foot, The duty therefore assesses the resilience of some of them using a walking approach. Fifth promenade: rue Saint-Joseph, in Quebec.
Rue Saint-Joseph may no longer have the chic clothes of yesteryear, but it has evolved with fashion and time, resilient like Lower Town Quebec and its residents. Sometimes wealthy, sometimes modest, it is today a living artery as much as a crossroads of contrasts, without any other similar in the landscape of the capital.
For nearly a century, Saint-Joseph dominated the retail trade in Quebec City. A showcase of prestigious brands that have now disappeared, it is here that department shopping reigned supreme until the advent of the suburbs, its cars and its shopping centers came to shrivel up the commercial fabric of city centers. .
At its zenith, rue Saint-Joseph was called the Broadway of Quebec, with its tramway, its cabarets, its illuminated facades and its dreams on display. More than 200 businesses had a storefront at the start of the Roaring Twenties. The retail trade, between Gaspé and Quebec, brewed 80% of its business there in the middle of the 20th century.e century.
The time when the neighborhood was the economic heart of Quebec is now over. To stem its decline, Saint-Joseph tried to reproduce, in the mid-1970s, the comfort of shopping centers by styling itself with the Saint-Roch mall. Having become the longest covered street in the world, Saint-Joseph especially, during this period, accommodated the misery and the torments of a deinstitutionalized population which, since then, has never abandoned the district.
This fauna has left its mark on Saint-Joseph well beyond the demolition of the mall in 2007. A more popular commercial offer has grown on the rubble of the large disappeared signs, giving the artery a hint of punk that preserves it from the ‘boredom. The street, today, is gentrified, without however denying its originality.
“Saint-Joseph is really at the heart of all deviance, illustrates Dany Boisvert, former beneficiary who became an employee of Portage, an organization located in the former presbytery of the Jacques-Cartier church and dedicated to relieving the suffering of the most fragile. It is also a street located at the crossroads of all the aid resources. »
A street and its reputation
“Before, the neighborhood was a little dirtier, but it has improved a lot, believes Laurence Albernhe, the energetic owner of two retro thrift stores on Saint-Joseph. the vie de Nuit, This is where it happens. It’s not a clientele of “mononcles” and “aunts” from the suburbs. »
A contrasting crowd parades behind the windows of its two boutiques, Billie Bob and Babelou. A tattooed youth, office people, regulars of the street who wander according to the meetings. ” It is a beautiful crowdexplains M.me Albernhe in his hoarse voice. It’s going from junky the poorest to the richest tourist. Business, she says, is doing well despite the industry’s reputation. “People from Upper Town don’t descend on Saint-Joseph very much. Some call us the lower townspeople. For others, we are still the “lower villains”. »
Right next to the Billie Bob, Génina has been selling second-hand furniture and antiques for nearly half a century. Business, here, is brewed the old fashioned way: prices are negotiated without fuss, order forms are written on the mitten, sales are concluded with a handshake. Electronics and tinsel have not yet found their place among the surrounding bric-a-brac.
“The customer who comes here is not rich, explains Daniel Giguère behind his counter. We don’t have a lot of credit card payments, let’s say. »
However, assures the sympathetic salesman, “it rolls, it’s hell”, especially because of the shortage of manpower. “Companies have no choice but to hire abroad, and they have to house these employees. They therefore call on us to furnish their apartments,” explains Mr. Giguère. A few weeks ago, the store chartered two trucks to Hawkesbury, Ontario, to furnish the accommodations of a brigade of Filipinos hired by a local McDonald’s.
Child of the Lower Town, Daniel Giguère notices the effort of social diversity undertaken on Saint-Joseph. “Email, for me, should never have existed. It had become a refuge,” he recalls. Its demolition 15 years ago gave way to revamped facades and a renewed chandelier. The prestige has been rising for a few years in the form of high-rise apartments, often unaffordable for the locals. “No one from the neighborhood can live in there,” laments Mr. Giguère.
A new wealth among poverty
However, a new wealth takes root near Saint-Joseph. Video game studios are swarming in the area, pouring a significant windfall on the businesses of the artery. The mixture turns out to be heterogeneous: tattoo parlors rub shoulders with pastry shops and refined cafés, gourmet restaurants follow pizzerias that display their tempting two-for-one, luxury kitchen instruments face the shops of the culture.
A color has been added for several months to this already varied palette: the orange of construction cones. At the corner of Dorchester, the work of the future tramway becomes impossible to miss. “It’s a necessary evil, believes Benoit Vanbeselaere, director of the Pantoute bookstore located not far from the jackhammers that are agitated. It will be good for the dynamism of the district. »
A little further on, past the La Bordée theatre, the Gabrielle-Roy library hides behind its cocoon, in full transformation. The authorities are injecting more than 40 million dollars to modernize the installation located in the heart of the street. Next door, the Fresk Tower, with its glass-walled accommodations and posh rents, rises above a misery that has been even more visible since the pandemic.
“The homeless are coming back, remarks Pashang Alizadeh, founder, 21 years ago, of Pizza Welat [« le pays », dans sa langue kurde natale]. The neighborhood is moving in the right direction, but we will see what will happen with poverty.” He tries to relieve her as best he can by taking his unsold items to the shared fridges on the street.
Stranger things and low prices
The Nouvo Saint-Roch begins once you reach rue de la Couronne. Life teems in the shade of the huge steeples of the Saint-Roch church, majestic for nearly a century in the landscape of Quebec. Its forecourt welcomes a crowd of regulars who form a colorful community, often visited by patrol cars and community workers.
It is at this end of the street that the richness of Saint-Joseph’s contrasts is most apparent. Here, a dozen studios sometimes work on the special effects of popular series such as Stranger Thingssometimes on the new opus of successful video games like Baldur’s Gate. Their workers fuel the burgeoning new economy growing among the remnants of the old.
“Many people in the neighborhood don’t have a car, many are also elderly,” says Pierre-Marc Gendron, manager of Escompte Lecompte, the store that has offered everything for more than 40 years. Maybe the growing condos will change the dynamics of the neighborhood,” he wonders. In the meantime, he concludes, “people still come here every day and I don’t think that’s about to change. »