May, 2009
May 31st, 2009
Last Friday, a group called the “Centre Social Autogéré” stated their intent to occupy an abandoned building and appropriate it as an grassroots community centre. The CSA describes itself as opposed to capitalism, hierarchies and imperialism and autonomous from political, religious or economic authorities.
Photographer Tristan Brand and I attended the event where about 500 people gathered in park St-Gabriel to support the groups’ appropriation of the space. At the assembly, CSA organizers spoke about resisting gentrification, reclaiming spaces from “privatized hyper-capitalist development” and creating grassroots projects to meet local needs. Both spokespeople had tiny babies in slings and spoke of opening an autonomous daycare in the future.
The CSA has been active in Pointe-St-Charles for the past 2 years, organizing courses, movie nights, bicycle sharing, communal meals, urban agriculture and other activities. They planned to make the abandoned building – which is slated for condo development – into a permanent headquarters for their activities.
“Its with pride and dignity that we reclaim this building” said a CSA spokesperson, before outlining how to behave in the case of a confrontation with police.
The crowd marched through the streets of Pointe-St-Charles, following the upbeat – if rather macabre – minor key marching tunes of the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble.
In front of 2525 rue du Centre, marchers were invited to light a candle to remember the Café de la Petite Gaule, a community space that had to close when their rent was raised to $3000 per month. The commercial space remains empty.
Arriving at the corner of St. Patrick and Argenson, about 60 CSA core members entered an abandoned candle factory. The crowd sang and cheered as two members hung a banner reading “espace libéré” from the roof. Others unpacked food, gardening implements, and a composting toilet. (Somewhat ironically, the group of autonomous squatters did their best to prevent us from entering the premise).
When we left the rally around 7pm, the police were keeping an eye on things from a respectful distance. One police officer explained that it was not clear whether or not the CSA had a legitimate right to access the property, but that since no complaint had been made they would not interfere. However, he added that if the crowd were to light a fire or receive noise complaints the police would intervene. He also said that he was a bit concerned about the presence of one group whose members had been involved in with violent protests in the past.
None-the-less, Friday night’s festivities went over without a hitch and were deemed successful.
But the very next day the truce was broken. Radio Canada reports that the property owner asked police to evict the squatters. When negotiations between police and CSA members failed, a riot police squad was called in. No arrests were made and the police deny the group’s allegation that pepper spray was used to smoke the squatters out of the building. You can read the CSA’s version of their “brutal eviction” here.
I can absolutely relate to the CSA’s desire to take concrete community action without jumping through hoops to get government support. But squatting a private property slotted for development comes across as more of a confrontational act than a realistic means of finding a sustainable community space. And it was pretty evident that at least some of the organizers were prepared for a clash with police to escalate.
The CSA plans to continue their activities, beginning with a protest outside of the borough office on June 2nd.
Top and bottom photos by Tristan Brand. See his series on the Launch of the Autonomous Social Centre.
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Permalink for Rally for community centre squat ends in eviction
Posted by Alanah Heffez
Categories Intervention, Pointe-Saint-Charles
May 31st, 2009
1960-2009
Un gros merci à M. Denis Desjardins, un lecteur du blog, pour m’avoir fait parvenir cette photographie prise par son père feu M. Omer Desjardins.
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Permalink for Montage du jour : Le terrain de la place de la justice depuis la rue St-Antoine
Posted by Guillaume St-Jean
Categories Avant-Après
May 31st, 2009
Photo by Mike Erb, a photography student at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton. You can visit his photoblog at www.erbanphoto.com.
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Permalink for Guest photo du jour : downtown skyscrapers
Posted by Chris Erb
Categories Photo du jour
May 30th, 2009
My friend recently picked up a copy of the book “Picture this! Posters of Social Movements in Québec (1966-2007)“. While leafing through the pages of posters from various social causes and movements from over the last few decades, the above image caught my attention. The hand-drawn poster, with what are presumably St-Norbert residents at one side of the block of typical downtown row of houses with it’s massive human fist punching a back-hoe, a cop, and what appears to be perhaps politicians, lawyers, developers, landlords, or any combination of greedy, powerful people looking to demolish the block and put its residents on the streets. The resident’s sign beckons readers to take their right to housing and the caption at the bottom declares an occupation and a “squat-in”. The poster is credited to the Comité de citoyens de St-Norbert.
Most of the posters in the book provide no follow-up as to how successful the campaigns were or what kind of effect they had on society as a whole. It is left up to the reader to decipher, based on current conditions, what kinds of successes and failures activists of the past endured, or what fights are still being waged today. For example, posters in the book demanding better rent control may have eventually led to the very tenant-friendly regulations of the current Régie du logement and we know the results of the book’s posters from both the “oui” and “non” sides in regards to the question of independence of Quebec. The St-Norbert poster is different, however. A few pages into the book, this poster appears:
Sadly, the fight to save St-Norbert failed and activists, promising to remember and continue the fight, staged a demonstration at the site of the demolition ten years after.
When I first saw the posters, I had no idea where St-Norbert was, which is excusable, the street being a narrow quiet residential street only a few blocks long. It feels more like an alley for Ontario and Sherbrooke between St-Laurent and Hôtel de Ville than an actual street.
The first poster says that the plan was to demolish the houses and turn the block into a surface parking lot. This may well have been the case for many years but it appears that the block has recently been rebuilt with luxury condos which look to have been built sometime in the last few years:
I was curious, what happened to rue St-Norbert? Why was the block demolished? What kind of opposition did the demolitions face and what tactics were used by residents and housing activists to try to save it? To look for an answer, I turned to newspaper coverage from the day of the protest in 1985 and around the days of the demolition ten years prior in 1975. Sadly, looking through microfilms from The Montreal Star, The Gazette, Le Devoir, and La Presse, I failed to come up with much information. Perhaps I could have searched through the weeks and months leading up to the demolition in the 1975 archives but, I haven’t the time nor the ambition. What I did come up with was a photo from the September 25th edition of Le Devoir in 1975 showing the devastation of the demolition with a pole covered in posters in the foreground. The caption reads “Rue Saint-Norbert nature morte à la façon montréalaise avec stèle et souvenirs des chambres de bois…”
La Press in 1985, the day after the protest, ran the headline “Montréal n’a pas tenu ses promesses rue Saint-Norbert”. The article briefly describes how the block was just one of many casualties of the Drapeau-era demolitions and alludes to large demonstrations, arrests, and court injunctions ten years prior. Not much more detail is given.
Finally, although it is not related to St-Norbert directly, I was amused to find this cartoon in The Gazette from 1975.
So, having come up with very little about what happened concerning this small piece of Montreal history during the months and days leading up to September 25th, 1975, I turn to SpacingMontreal readers to give any insight as to what happened. Anyone who was around at the time, do you remember what happened? Was there a squat? What happened at the demonstrations and why the arrests? What was on this lot before the newly built condos? Anything that can be shared would help satisfy my curiosity and give us a bit of insight concerning urban development during those turbulent years under Mayor Drapeau.
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Permalink for What happened to rue St-Norbert?
Posted by Chris Erb
Categories Downtown, Historical / Historique, Housing / Habitation, Posters / Affichage, Social Trends / Tendances sociales, Streetscape
May 30th, 2009
Photo by Mike Erb, a photography student at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton. You can visit his photoblog at www.erbanphoto.com.
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Permalink for Guest Photo du jour : Red lights
Posted by Chris Erb
Categories Photo du jour
