I recently did a performance in Montreal’s Cabot Square. I am calling this performance Memory Braiding as it is speaking to my experience of being an Indigenous woman trying to piece together space, identity, and community within an urban centre.
I chose Cabot Square because it is a space that I became familiar with from travelling through it on my way to work every day. I came to know a few of the people who frequented there and have been outraged with the actions that came with gentrification in the area, displacing many of the people who called this place there home.
I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be an Indigenous woman in an urban centre, working to create an identity for myself and how this has required questioning on my behalf to my family. Through this performance, I wanted to speak to my own path of finding place in Montreal, but I also wanted to speak to this cultural dislocation I have being trying to address.
Being both Dene and Coast Salish from Canada’s West Coast I have come to appreciate the importance of storytelling. Something I have to appreciate even more as my family has quite recently been informed that my grandmother has dementia and she is slowly forgetting more and more with every day that passes. What I am speaking to here are the gaps in knowledge that may never be filled.
I wanted the act of braiding to symbolize strands of different knowledges being brought together to create a story. The materials vary in length, some strands have holes, some don’t in order to show the inconsistencies that come along with memory loss. The two stumps reflect on conversations held between my grandmother and I, how we connect yet are still distant since her only real knowledge of who I am is from the fact that she knows my dad has a daughter and that one of her grandchildren has traveled around the world. Each time we talk however, she pulls together our connection when I say I now live in Montreal, she tells me about when she was living here during her time in the air force and the story pours from there. So what I have been working through with my research and this performance is how, although distant, my grandmother and I are connecting through space.
Otter Lake (Lac à la Loutre), also known as little St-Pierre Lake, fed into the St-Pierre River flowing to the St Lawrence River. The lake has now disappeared and can only be heard underneath the city through the sewers. The Lake spanned almost seven kilometres, its width at certain points being up to one kilometre, and covered the areas that are now Ville St. Pierre, Montreal West, Nôtre-Dame-de-Grace, St. Henri and Atwater. The name of this lake is said to have come from the Indigenous populations who surrounded it in reference to its shape, that of a baby otter inside a larger otter shape (the island of Montreal). The Iroquois cultivated the shores of the lake but with the arrival of the French and the fur trade in the 17th century the lake became used more and more for coureurs and voyageurs.
This projects aim was to follow the shores of this mysterious lake and document the sights and sounds. Through this experience we can see and hear what exists in these locations today.
There is so much mystery surrounding the exact location of Otter Lake and throughout my research I was only able to find certain points where the lake was known to be located. My goal was to see what this lake looks like today in all the points where I know the lake used to be. Initially I wanted to follow the shoreline but this was difficult due to the mystery surrounding the exact location of the lake as a whole and also the construction happening over many areas that the lake covered. So I mapped different points I found in my research and went to discover all those points. It was through this journey of exploring areas that was I able to rediscover parts of this forgotten lake in the present.
Video #1: Parc du Lac-a-la-Loutre
This park is an homage to Otter Lake, a lake that was completely lost due to the development of the City and the Lachine Canal. It is said that the park now rests on top of where part of the lake used to be. This park is the only remaining reference to the lost lake that spanned about seven kilometres from Ville St. Pierre through Notre Dame de Grace and St Henri and was one kilometre wide at its widest point.
Video #2: Parc du Lac-a-la-Loutre Fence
The fence of the park follows the shoreline of the forgotten lake. There is a lot of mystery around where the lakeshore was exactly located, this is the only point that is certain. This park is located at the corner of Courcelle and Saint-Ambroise.
Video #3: Underneath the Turcot Exchange Wide
Part of Otter Lake is known to have been right under the Turcot Interchange. It followed the railway tracks closely around this location and right around here is the point that the trains crossed the lake on their way to Lachine.
Video #4: Underneath the Turcot Interchange Close
The crumbling Turcot Exchange looms over the location of the former lake. The lake was filled using the dirt excavated for the Lachine Canal that would be an easier was of crossing the island.
Video #5: View Across Highway 20
As cars drive along this stretch of Highway 20 their view on one side are the Turcot Yards. This is where a large part of the lake was before it was filled up. Accessing this area is difficult. This view shows what exists now on what was probably the shore or edges of the lake. We can see the big piles of earth showing the constant construction happening in the area. Imagine standing here and seeing a green swamp and lake.
Video #6: View of Turcot Yards from Above
Trying to get many different views of the Turcot Yards is a difficult task. There are so many things blocking access and a view of the area whether it is the highway, fences, walls, or trees. Here it is from above along Rue Saint-Jacques, through the many trees that block the view.
Video #7: The Turcot Yards
The Turcot Yards are directly above where Otter Lake used to be. The ground was raised six feet since the days of Otter Lake and construction continues due to the ground not being solid. There have been debates about how to use this abandoned area. There are many who have begun arguing that the lake ought to be brought back.
Video #8: Saint-Pierre Exchange
This is the location where Otter Lake ended and it is now known as the St-Pierre Exchange where construction often closes the different parts of the interchange and keeps being delayed.
Video #9: Lachine Canal
The Lachine Canal runs close and at times intersects with the location of the former lake. Due to the shallow and swamp-like nature of the lake it was covered up to make way for the canal that would be a sure way of moving through the island easily. The land that was dug up to make the canal was used to cover up the lake. Now with these debates about bringing Otter Lake back they are saying that water from the canal would be used to fill the lake.
Many people do not know that this lake even existed, let alone the Indigenous presence that surrounded it. The land we live on has a history that so many are unaware of, even histories that are below the surface and hidden.
Disrupting the Visual Narrative of ‘Historical’ Indigenous Peoples: an Intervention on Le Collectif Au Pied Du Mur’s Mural in Pointe-Saint-Charles –Estelle Wathieu
The district of Pointe-Saint-Charles (South-West of Montreal) is located on unceded, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) traditional territory.
In September 2013, the Collectif au Pied du Mur inaugurated on Knox Street (Pointe-Saint-Charles) their first and only mural named La Pointe – All Dressed in the presence of 300 inhabitants of the district. [1] The project dated back from 2003 [2] when a development project (Action Populaire d’Aménagement) that aimed to improve the urban environment of the neighborhood was initiated by Action-Gardien, la Table de concertation communautaire de Pointe-Saint-Charles, an association gathering around twenty community organizations of Pointe-Saint-Charles. Inspired by this initiative, the anarchic group La Pointe Libertaire started their own mural in 2006, but they were instantly sued for vandalism, the wall on Knox Street being the propriety of the Canadian National Railway. After finding an agreement with the railway company, the collective partnered with the Carrefour d’éducation populaire of Pointe-Saint-Charles in 2012, received $20.000 from the artist organization ROUAGE / Engrenage Noir [3] in order to realize the mural painting, and the City of Montreal and the borough of the South-West funded the last $25.000. From November to May 2013, the collective prepared their intervention. Once they agreed on an outline, they presented the project to the inhabitants of the neighborhood during public presentations. The design of the mural being approved by the community, the mural was painted between May and September 2013. [4]
La Pointe – All Dressed: a positive evolution in the discourse around the origins of the neighborhood
Annie Hamel, The King’s Daughters’ mural, Wellington Street (Pointe-Saint-Charles), picture by Daniel Bertolino, 2013 [http://www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca/fr/programmation/350e-filles-du-roy.php].The theme of the mural was the history of Pointe-Saint-Charles, the fight of its inhabitants for collective autonomy and their hopes for a more egalitarian future. In this sense, La Pointe – All Dressed contrasted sharply with another public artwork that was unveiled on Wellington Street – only five hundred metres away from the first mural – in September 2013. This mural was designed by the artist Annie Hamel for MU, a charity organization producing “turnkey” (to use their own words) murals in Montreal, and depicted eight King’s Wards, the young women that were sent from France by Louis XIV in order to get married to colonists and increase in this way the colony’s population. The mural of the St. Gabriel Elementary School was commissioned by the Maison St. Gabriel Museum to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first thirty-six King’s Daughters in Montreal. The King’s Wards having been welcomed by Marguerite Bourgeoys and her secular religious community, the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, at the Maison St. Gabriel in Pointe-Saint-Charles, they symbolized for many inhabitants the birth of the neighborhood. However, this narrative completely denies the Indigenous presence on the land before the contact with the European settlers. Before the colonization, Pointe-Saint-Charles was a good fishing and hunting area well-known from the Indigenous peoples that lived on the island of Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). By representing them in their mural, the Collectif au Pied du Mur took a first step towards decolonization – something made possible by the collective decision-making process that was chosen for the realization of this project.
This public consultation process is in fact a laudable initiative, especially considering the short amount of time that the collective had to paint a mural of this scale. [5] From the beginning, the Collectif au Pied du Mur aimed to realize a mural in which the residents could recognize themselves and that would be anchored in the history of the neighborhood. Their desire to integrate and co-operate went so far as to invite the inhabitants of the neighborhood to paint with them on Fridays – within the few months of the project, two hundred children left their hand print on the mural and one hundred and fifty adults helped the team at least one time. [6] However, the fact that they visually represented Indigenous peoples on their mural without consulting beforehand any Indigenous community from Montreal [7] is questionable, firstly because Indigenous peoples are marginalized by the Canada settler state and that their depiction by descendants of settlers or immigrants that benefit from the current political system can be offensive and harmful for them. Secondly, because the mural was not meant to empower the Indigenous community, but the residents of Pointe-Saint-Charles. The valorisation of Pointe-Saint-Charles and its multiculturalism, as well as the celebration of its inhabitants and their commitment to the struggle for social justice were the stated goals of this mural.
The ‘historical’ and ‘assimilated’ Indigenous peoples: issues surrounding their visual representation in La Pointe – All Dressed
Detail of La Pointe – All Dressed, picture by Estelle Wathieu, April 2016.
The absence of a dialogue between the artist collective and the local Indigenous communities of Montreal is not the only issue around the representation of Indigenous peoples in this mural. The way that the Indigenous peoples are depicted in the mural is also problematic. Represented on the left part of the mural, they are completely separated from the joyful crowd of the inhabitants of the neighborhood who are demonstrating for social justice. The Lachine Canal makes a clear distinction between the Indigenous past and the modernity symbolized by the industrialization. The risk with this representation is to participate in the discourse of ‘vanishing Indigenous peoples’ that does not correspond to the reality. Another issue lays in the attitude of the Indigenous figures that was chosen by the muralists. In fact, the muralists picture them with a ‘mean look’ that may diabolize the Indigenous peoples in general and convey the idea that they do not belong to the so-called ‘modernity’. But Indigenous peoples still live on this land, they are thus an integral part of the life of Montreal and Pointe-Saint-Charles. In 2006, 555 Indigenous peoples were living in the South-West of Montreal, one of the highest concentration of Indigenous peoples in Montreal [8]. Admittedly, the Collectif au Pied du Mur acknowledged their presence, incorporating Indigenous figures in the crowd, but they represented them as assimilated, advocating for social justice with the others, and not for their own rights. The whole mural gives the image of silent and passive Indigenous peoples: whether excluded from the ‘modernity’ or completely assimilated. Their voices were silenced in order to celebrate the multiculturalism of the neighborhood and the political engagement of its inhabitants.
Disrupting the visual narrative of La Pointe All-Dressed: an intervention
“It is useless for us to become involved in a struggle to improve our image, because native people did not create these images, and they should not be concerned with trying to improve them so that whites will respect them. The society would simply create new racist images for us to work at… ” —Howard Adams, Prison of Grass, 1975 [9]
Inspired by this idea, I chose not to imagine a new version of the mural painting that would that would not be problematic or offensive to Indigenous peoples, but to bring awareness to the issues relatedthe representation of Indigenous peoples in La Pointe All-Dressed.
1- First, I initiated a discussion with two of the painters of the mural, Shaen Johnston and Marco Sivestro – who was also the coordinator of the project. They confirmed me that no consultation had been made with the Indigenous communities of Montreal, but that they would be open to have a conversation about the design of the mural.
2- Then, my physical intervention on the site of the mural meant to disrupt the visual narrative of the mural and to engage directly in a discussion with the inhabitants of the neighborhood. I put a poster on the mural saying in English and French: ”You are walking on unceded, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) traditional territory. Indigenous peoples are not only the past of this land, but its present and future.” (see below the video documentation of my intervention). I chose the form of a poster to keep with the activist spirit of the neighborhood where we can find many political posters in the public space. Moreover, in their book, the authors of the mural themselves encouraged the inhabitants to interact with the mural by adding posters to it.
3 – Finally, this textual intervention will document my critical approach of the mural, as well as my interventions. My hope here is to make my research available to a wider audience, leaving the door open to anyone who would like to engage in discussion with this site or the Collectif au Pied du Mur.
Notes:
[1] Chagnot, Johanne, in collaboration with various groups. Art communautaire militant. Projets 2012-2013. Montreal: Engrenage Noir / ROUAGE, 2013, 36.
[4] For more information about the creation of the mural, see Le Collectif au Pied du Mur. The Pointe All Dressed. Montreal, 2013 (available at the public library of Pointe-Saint-Charles), and their website <http://lecollectifaupieddumur.tumblr.com>.
[5] This information comes from my inteview of Marco Silvestro, the coordinator of the projet and painter of the three Indigenous peoples on the left part on the mural painting.
[7] This information comes from my inteview of Marco Silvestro, the coordinator of the projet.
[8] Indigenous peoples represent 0,8% of the total population in the South-West of Montreal, when the average is 0,5% and the maximum is 1% for the city of Dorval. Division des affaires économiques et institutionnelles de la ville de Montréal. Portrait de la Population autochtone à Montréal, 2010. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.
[9] Cited in Francis, Daniel. The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture, Second Edition. Vancouver, BC, CAN: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 April 2016.
We are Humans Too: Confronting the Problematics of Post-Colonialism in Music
““Sometimes it’s easy to walk by because we know we can’t change someone’s whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place.”
― Mike Yankoski
My original project consisted of bringing awareness concerning the epidemic of Aboriginal homelessness in Montreal, but more specifically, the astounding number of homeless Natives surrounding the Place-des-Arts metro station. My first project consisted originally of creating a mini soup kitchen for the evening outside the metrostation and with the assistance and food donations from my work place. My goal being to ease the hunger of homeless Aboriginals for the evening and hopefully bring awareness to the general public of the epidemic Montreal’s homeless Aboriginal community is facing. My project also consisted of handing out flyers with useful information for the Aboriginals such as important addresses and phone numbers in case of emergencies and, lastly, collecting donations from the passerby’s and donating them to the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal. However, the problematics of a white women attempting to reach out to a community that is not her own might pose a problem, thus, I decided to reroute my project.
After further research, it became apparent to me that the high number of homeless Aboriginals in the city of Montreal is rapidly becoming a problematic situation. According to a 2013 CBC news report by reporter Caroline Nepton, “Montreal is in the midst of a real homelessness crisis among Aboriginal people. The fastest growing population are Inuit from Nunavik, which comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec. Montreal is behind in terms of services, compared to other big cities like Vancouver, Calgary or Winnipeg.”. How can this be? In a city with booming businesses and what appears to be a wealthy government, why are we forgetting about these people in dire need of a simple helping hand in life? Aboriginals are dying on the streets and no one hears about it or they are getting beat up by Montreal police officers and it goes unheard, however, we are the first to hear about Justin Bieber using adult colouring books to ease his stress…There’s a major problem here. How is this treatment of the Aboriginal people, the people whom for centuries lived on this land, their land, be treated with such unethical behaviour by Montreal’s own population. It is heart wrenching to read stories such as the CBC news report from John Van Dusen that the community of Montreal need to be aware of and create awareness on the unethical treatment of Aboriginals. Since moving to Montreal in 2014 and becoming aware of the Aboriginal homeless problem in the city, it has boggled my mind as to why this city’s government refuses to help them. It startling as to why we continue to treat them with disrespect or victimize them as though they were not human. Rose, a homeless Inuit originally from Nunavut currently living on the streets of Montreal, states, “We might be homeless and have drug or booze problems but we are still human beings.”, a sentence no one should have to speak, human dignity is not a privilege but a basic human right that no one should have to fight for.These unfortunate homeless individuals are someone’s brother, someone’s sister and someone’e child, they are not stray dogs on the sidewalks and should not be left for dead because they have mental health issues of alcohol/drug problems.
Rerouting the homeless project:
One evening, while I was at work (I work at a bar on the Plateau), a girl sitting at the bar with her boyfriend, turned to him and asked “Jeff, who’s Iron Maiden?”. Being a big music fan, I chuckled at her ignorance and I was a little shocked that she did not knowwho Iron Maiden was. So, like any other good bartender, I played some Iron Maiden throughout the whole bar, “ Run to the Hills” began to play and after hundreds of timesof listening to this fantastic song, I heard the true meaning of its lyrics and I had an epiphany, this song was about the white man killing the “Injuns” or Indians. I began to think about the lyrics and think about my site specific project and I wondered, how many more songs dealt with the topic of colonizers and Aboriginals? And how could I incorporate them in a new project?
I got home from work that evening and after some research I found many songs which dealt with the problematics between the white man and the Natives. Here are the songs incorporated in my new project:
“Run to the Hills” – Iron maiden
“Half Breed” – Cher
“Pocahontas”Neil Young
“White Man” – Queen.
Each of these songs address the problematics between the white man and the Natives and although it does not speak directly to Aboriginal homelessness, it does speak to the root of the Native homelessness problem. The white man oppressing the natives and leaving them for dead on the streets, without resources or funds to better themselves.
My new project then consisted of the following, in order to bring awareness concerning the Aboriginal homelessness epidemic in Montreal to the everyday folks, I placed five USB keys which I had attached to a piece of paper (both placed in a Ziplock baggie) saying “ WE MIGHT HAVE DRUG AND ALCOHOL PROBLEMS BUT WE ARE STILL HUMAN BEINGS” with a picture of a homeless Native, in hopes to grab a passerby’s attention. I left three USB keys on the benches in the metro and two keys on the windowsill before exiting the metro station. On the USB keys I had uploaded files to be read or listened too in a specific order:
The explanation of the project- bringing awareness concerning the aboriginal homelessness epidemic in the city of Montreal along with the articles mentioned above.
YouTube links to all the songs and the lyrics attached to be read and listened to simultaneously with highlighted parts mentioning the mistreatment of the Native by the white man.
The problematics and the facts of aboriginal homelessness in Montreal.
I gave the reader information on what they can do to help, where they could donate or simply assist the aboriginal community in Montreal.
Lastly, I kindly asked whom ever picked up the USB key to pass it on to someone else.
The goal of my project was to bring awareness to Aboriginal homelessness in Montreal and to educate some on the reasons as to why there are a staggering number of homeless Natives in Montreal. I chose music as my medium as it speaks to people is a way a document or a pamphlet ever could. Music has a way of sending powerful messages through melodies and rhymes which I find very important and lastly, I chose music as it is a very important element in Native cultures. It is very powerful to see white men and women speaking out on issues outisde their own cultures and utilizing their platforms as performers/entertainers to spread important messages and problematic situations in our society. My identity throughout the project remained anonymous. My name was not mentioned nor was the university as I wanted this project to simply bring awareness to this epidemic in the city that we seem to be ignoring and overlooking. If the native voices cannot be heard, it is up to us to bring change and assist those less fortunate then us.
If you are reading this in Montreal, you are on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. If you are reading this anywhere else in North America, you are on unceded indigenous land, too.
All public space is contested space and Cabot Square is no exception. Located in Montreal’s Shaughnessy Village on the block bordered by Atwater Avenue, Saint-Catherine, Lambert-Closse, and Tupper Streets, the park was first established in 1890. In spite of the obvious continuities of the space, it has undergone many changes and has been the site of various conflicts, ranging from competing nationalisms, to sports riots, to fraught relations between homeless and the police. In the last thirty years, it has become a gathering place for Indigenous people in downtown Montreal, offering a central location for community outreach programs.
My interest in Cabot Square lies in its design. Through my research I learned that many landscape architects have been involved with its transformations over the last 100 years. It may seem obvious, but parks are designed spaces. Every urban park design contains within it the desire to control behaviour and to order space and nature. Every tree in Cabot Square was planted by a human hand as part of a careful plan.
With this in mind, I wondered how the lines and values expressed in Cabot Square over the years participate in a colonial discourse. As a settler-Canadian artist, I wanted to call attention to the actions of settlers on unceded indigenous land. My interventioncolonial by design: unsettling postcards of cabot squareresponds to this history of urban park design in North America.
Postcard ca. 1915. Source: BAnQ 0002733037Postcard ca. 1915 Source: BAnQ 0002733038
Part of this project also involves critiquing the absence of Indigenous recognition in the heritage document for Cabot Square, which starts with the development of the land for a park space by Sulpician priests in the 1860s. Inspired by postcards of Cabot Square (formerly Western Square) dating from the early twentieth century (see above), my project consists of four hand-drawn postcards. These postcards aim to unsettle the discourse of Cabot Square by engaging with some of the hard truths of settler-colonialism.
The four postcards, entitled handscape, unseated, people watching, and revisions destabilize the narrative of Cabot Square as it has been written. All four designs are intended to be uncomfortable or ‘off’ in some way. This is my attempt to disrupt the linear and comfortable narrative of the park perpetuated by municipal documents.
postcard #1: handscape (2016)
The park’s canopy has gone through many changes over the last hundred years. This postcard underscores the many hands at play in the square’s design and the overall man-made nature of the park. The arm-trees dwarf and decenter the Cabot monument. The largest hand represents an elm tree in the park that is one of the largest remaining Elm trees in Montreal’s public domain.
postcard #2: unseated (2016)
Park furniture such as benches emphasizes the park as a site of performance – of sociality and class – as well as the objectification of nature. Like its earliest iteration, the recent redesign of Cabot Square maintains benches. This illustration emphasizes the designed object and underscores how the park’s design controls behaviour. The title ‘unseated’ is a play on ‘unceded,’ referencing how Canada is 100% unceded indigenous land.
postcard #3: peoplewatching (2016)
The idea of control is also relevant to the park’s redesign because it is more open to the streets that frame it. Although more secure in a way, it also brings up questions of surveillance. The new design, in making the space more open, in fact encourages citizen vigilance. I played with the form of the map here because mapping is a technology of colonialism. These lines are representative of a desire to control behaviour and represent an ordered, segmented world.
postcard #4: revisions (2016)
In this postcard I annotated the City of Montreal’s “important dates” on Cabot Square’s heritage document with concurrent acts of dispossession and oppressive policy. These amendments clarify the other activities of the Sulpician Priests and situate the localized history of the park within a broader colonial and national context.
On April 20th, 2016 I did an onsite intervention in Cabot Square, placing the postcards in the earth. I also held postcards in front of various sites, such as the Cabot monument and neighbouring condo developments. After documenting these interventions, I handed out my postcards to passersby in the park and engaged in some enriching conversations about gentrification and urban wildlife.
Here are photos from that intervention:
Here I held the ‘people watching’ postcard in front of a new condo development bordering Cabot Square, a symbol of rapid gentrification in the area.
Here I left the same postcard on the scaffolding encasing the condo development in the previous photo.
Here is another building development about block away.
*** I would like to acknowledge artists Jeff Thomas and Basil Alzeri, whose works planted seeds in my consciousness a few years ago, no doubt influencing the execution of this project.
Breitkreutz, Sara. 2014. “Stories of Place: Urban Community and Contested Space in Montreal’s Cabot Square.” MA Thesis, Concordia University.
Brück, Joanna. 2013. “Landscapes of Desire: Parks, Colonialism, and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland.” International Journal of Historical Geography 17.1: 196-223.
D’Andrea, Giuliano E. 1989. “When Nationalisms Collide: Montreal’s Italian Community and the St.Leonard Crisis, 1967-1969.” MA Thesis, McGill University.
Goeman, Mishuanna. 2013. “Introduction.” In Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations, 1-39. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: SAGE Publications.
Nagam, Julie. 2013. “Charting Indigenous Stories of Place: An Alternate Cartography Through the Visual Narrative of Jeff Thomas.” In Diverse Spaces: Identity, Heritage and Community in Canadian Public Culture, 188-207. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
As befitting a young nation, where the romantic myth of a vast country united by railway and internationally connected through the port of Montreal, Charles Comfort’s bas-relief friezes [1] for Montreal’s Central Station (completed in 1942) were commissioned as an integrated artwork extolling the history, resources, technology and culture of Canada. Images of indigenous people figure within the context of a national narrative of Canada’s history and future, but in the case of Comfort’s mural they are not depicted as active participants in the cultural and technological imagery of a modern Canada. There are only three images of indigenous people in the two murals that are located at each end of the station’s concourse. They are depicted as historical and exotic figures. These are modernist images of “primitive people in civilized spaces,” [2] are not depicted in the segments of Comfort’s mural that depict industrial, technological, scientific or culture activities and achievements. These images of remain on the margins of the murals – and on the margins of a modern Canada.
Comfort’s mural is a cultural artifact of nation building, the act of a creation though integrating ideology, creation of an integrated society, and the creation of a functioning state apparatus. This cultural artifact (i.e. Central Stations mural) is one that reduces the images of the citizenry of Canada into a homogenized art deco universal style, a stylized visual mythology of nationhood. The images of indigenous people identify here as primitivism carved out in the streamlined surfaces and contours of white stone,
These images of mural people filtered through the stylistic tropes of modernism and Art Deco are images of ambivalence, as “ colonial signifiers of authority.” [3] The reductive and modernist image of the indigenous person within this culturally Euro-centric tableau is consigned to history, and is visually erased from the mural’s (and hence, the nation’s) “present” and future even
[1] Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture. (London: Routledge, 1994), 153.
In considering how to enact an intervention with Comfort’s mural, and the imagery of one Innu and one First Nations figure – or barely do, problematically – in the context of the murals “cultural work” as a public work of art of nation building, I plan to make a modest intervention which will take the form of a simple infographic distributed or surreptitiously inserted into the free newspapers, and left randomly found the benches and cafes in Central Station.
The station is essentially an ambivalent and interstitial site for commuters, the platform access situated in stairwells leading to the underground platforms of inter-city and suburban trains. The mural, if noticed at all due to its high location, is probably viewed in fragments. The opportunity of actually altering the mural itself is slim, if not illegal or would require a time consuming amount of gaining approval. My intervention will take place at concourse level, thus something tangible that will be experienced by the people who move through the station My intervention flyer incorporates a diagram of the murals with the scant images of aboriginally and highlight their minimal presence in the mural points out the lack of presence of indigenous people and of how our historical public artworks of nation building have neglected to represent all Canadians.
[1] Designed by Charles Comfort and executed by Montreal stone carver Sebastiano Aiello.
[2] James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 197.
Clifford here is quoting Coco Fusco, a Cuban-American artist and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a Chicano artist Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West. The performance was created in response to the quincentenary anniversary of Columbus “discovery” (quotation marks mine) of America. In their performance they dressed in improvised “primitive” clothing and performed a pastiche of what would be considered primitive activities and rituals.
[3] Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture. (London: Routledge, 1994), 153.
The aim of our intervention is to call attention to the lack of Indigenous representation in McGill University’s Redpath museum. Claiming to represent world cultures, it neglects to reference a culture so connected to Canadian heritage. What makes this intervention pertinent lies in the fact that the museum is situated on contested Mohawk land, and calls to evict McGill from this location by the residents of Kahnawake have been part of a recent discourse on colonialism in Canada. We wish to incorporate a permanent display filled with objects that a committee of Indigenous representatives believe best illustrate their culture. Since First Nations peoples in Canada are diverse, we aim to recognize them all, while emphasizing Mohawk culture due to the location of the museum. In order to disrupt the “museum effect” and give life to Redpath, we will also invite members of First Nations communities to visit the museum and use these articles, successfully evading the stagnancy that accompanies trapped objects. After drawing on scholarly discourse concerning Indigenous self-representation and exhibiting cultures in post-colonial museums, it is our hope that Canada’s, and particularly McGill’s, colonial past will become a discursive topic that incites recognition for those that have been wronged and overshadowed.
Jacques Cartier Fountain (Monument à Jacques Cartier) Commissioned by: Eugène Guay Artist: Joseph-Arthur Vincent (1852-1903) Inaugurated: 14 June 1893 Restoration/Reproduction: 1992 Height: 9 metres Location: Corner of rue Saint-Antoine and rue Agnès in Parc Saint-Henri (then Village des Tanneries de Rolland, present day quartier Saint-Henri)
The Monument à Jacques Cartier is situated in the Saint Henri neighbourhood of the South West borough of Montreal. At the time of Jacques Cartier’s arrival the land was unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory and used mainly by the Mohawk community for fishing and hunting along a significant body of water that, now altered and mostly covered due to a public health threat from industrial waste, was once the St. Pierre river. By the time of the monuments erection the Saint Henri municipality was 15 years old, growing out of the Village des Tanneries that began the development with tanning workshops that grew to large scale production facilities. In 1890 the city was offered a piece of land on which they would build a park to please the surrounding local bourgeoisie that inhabited the area. At its center the monument was erected, commissioned by the city and placed in a basin, functioning both as a decorative fountain and commemorative piece. With the turn of the century Saint Henri underwent a sudden surge in industrial development and by the late 1940’s the South West borough had become the leading industrial center of Canada, bringing blue collar workers and their families to the area. In 1992, due to weather damage that it suffered through the years, the monument was moved to the Métro Place-Saint-Henri station and placed in a light shaft drawing the attention of the many residents using public transportation for their daily commute. Today, the mostly residential neighbourhood shows traces of Saint Henri’s changing demographic through the years. Now experiencing the effects of gentrification the neighbourhood is receiving a flood of young professionals as well as students seeking once affordable housing close to downtown and university campuses. The Victorian row houses that encircled Saint Henri square at the time of the monuments inauguration still stand and remind us of the neighbourhoods history, but what of the land and lives of the people who came before Jacques Cartier?
This intervention was born out of a lack of contemporary critical discourse regarding the monument, especially in regards to its restoration and the subsequent replacement in 1992, receiving an Orange Prize from Sauvons Montreal for its supposedly significant contribution to preserving Montreal heritage. Our project aims to draw attention to the colonial implications of glorifying Jacques Cartier in occupied unceded territory and the colonial history that has been erased and rewritten as a valiant act of development and enlightenment.
We are challenging the narratives asserted by the symbolism inherent in the monument and those implied through the city-sanctioned narratives online and in print. We are calling attention to the missing narratives and asking you, the viewer, to determine the political and social motivations for their exclusion. We hope to facilitate better access to these narratives through highlighting previously overlooked details in written and symbolic white washing by providing additional resources and mimicry.
“A Jacques Cartier né à Saint-Malo le 31 décembre 1491. Envoyé par François Ier à la découverte du Canada le 20 avril 1534. J’étant l’ancre, le 16 juillet de la même année dans l’entrée du Saint Laurent, il prit possession de tout le pays au nom du roi son maître, et l’appela la Nouvelle France”
Jacques Cartier is placed at the top of the monument dressed in attire appropriate and fashionable for his time period pointing west wards. The statue at its tallest is 9 meters high. He is standing on a tree stump atop an ornamental four sided pedestal briefly describing his biographical details as well as his having taken “possession” of the country in the name of France. Directly below the pedestal are fountain spouts as well as 4 presumably Iroquois heads, stereotypical long hair and adorned with a vague headpiece, from whose mouths water also spouts. Between them are laurel leaves painted in gold and at the base cattails grow seemingly from the basin accompanied by 4 beavers.
The inscription operates as a method of reinforcing European Terra Nullius narratives and notions of “discovery” rather than theft and genocide with regards to Canada’s settlement history. Using vocabulary that blatantly asserts Jacques Cartier’s taking possession of the land normalizes the act and redresses it as a valiant act of discovery and conquest, replacing the history of the indigenous groups to whom the land belonged. This narrative is further emphasized with the symbolic resonance of Jacques Cartier’s likeness pointing west and standing upon a tree stump. The Bureau d’Art Public, Ville de Montreal official site still today describes this as symbolizing a “country to be cleared”. This continues the narrative that prior to French arrival, the land was unclaimed, uninhabited, primitive, profane and therefor free for the taking. Beavers, the Canadian national emblem, refer to the fur trade initialized by Jacques Cartier upon his arrival in Chaleur Bay, one of the earliest examples of contact between France and the Micmac people. Laurel wreaths signify victory in regards to his achievements, being placed directly below the text. It indicates his success in possession as the inscription tells the reader he sought out to do. Alongside the wreaths are the floating bodiless heads of First Nations, essentially being stood on by Jacques Cartier, conquered and suppressed. Furthermore, as part of the fountain’s functionality, the heads were designed to spout water from their mouths, none too subtly reinforcing the damaging colonial perspective of First Nations’ as ‘savage natives’ needing taming. By juxtaposing the symbol of martial victory alongside the spouting disembodied heads the historical as well as contemporary erasure of First Nation’s people is encouraged. It does this by systematically portraying the hugely diverse and populous community as vague and remote, focusing instead on Jacques Cartier and his conquest. That this “history” continues to circulate without notice or questioning by the members of the surrounding residential community, even with the brutal way in which the heads have been functionally incorporated, is an attestation to the continued legacy of colonialism today.
As a result, our intervention aims to critique and refute these Terra Nullius narratives and propose a counter-narrative, disseminating it at the site of the restoration (Saint Henri Square), the location of the original (métro Place-Saint-Henri) as well as in pamphlet form at tourist information centers, local businesses and cultural centers. The metro station intervention would include a plaque visually identical to the one presently in place, as well as a pamphlet rack with our pamphlets, mimicking the exact layout, format and aesthetic as the city sanctioned pamphlets. At the monument a plaque would also be installed with a similar emphasis, one in which the text would urge the audience to consider the effects of language and narrow historical ‘truths’ on the past and living First Nations individuals and communities. All of the intervention texts would be in English, French and Mohawk.
Lastly the web component of our intervention includes the recreation and exact mimicry of city web pages, subverting the notion of ‘official’ knowledge, authority and perspective by posing as it. As a complimentary project an online gallery would subsequently be created (Digital Histories Gallery) which would serve both as a digital location for the documents relevant to our intervention, its primary source materials which would ideally be derived from the First Nations communities narratives, as well as documents such as Jacques Cartier’s diaries (as well as those of his contemporaries) all accompanied by critical observations pertaining to the documents in order to encourage problematization of established discourses. The gallery could eventually grow to also include maps, a word-cloud and an application from which the audience would be asked to include their own questions, comments and reflections.
Reproduction: Corner of rue Saint-Antoine and rue Agnès
Original: Métro Place Saint-Henri
Intervention by:Carmelina Imola, Misty-Dawn MacMillan, and Ari Isensee
In 1870, Cabot Square was opened upon land gifted to the city from the Sulpicians. Initially, the space’s central feature was a fountain, but in 1935 a statue of explorer John Cabot – donated by the Italian community – replaced it.
The portrayal of Cabot is problematic; using tropes of monumental sculpture, it perpetuates a narrative of European explorers discovering a “new world”. Cabot’s image is thus meant to remind the viewer of the official version of Canadian nation-building, while marginalizing alternative perspectives; most notably those of Indigenous peoples.
Ironically enough, in the decades that followed Cabot Square became a gathering site for urban Indigenous peoples from across the country; the space is especially important to many homeless Indigenous of Montreal, who often lack the ability to articulate their identity in the urban setting due to both economic and symbolic disenfranchisement.
To facilitate this process, the city also launched the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy (RÉSEAU). The organizations’ objectives were to present a portrait of Cabot Square from the point of view of the Indigenous community located there, as well as the development of solutions to improve safety and wellbeing through a “collaborative and coordinated approach”.
In practice, once the Square re-opened after many months of renovations, there were a few significant additions to it. The Indigenous-operated Roundhouse Café was opened in the rotunda on the west side, and 2 outreach workers now have an office on site. The space also began to host events such as International Indigenous Day celebrations and weekly soapstone carving workshops.
Notably, there is a tension evidenced by all these interventions; the planning policy of city had on one hand sought to “clean up” the park and focused its objectives in security terminology, while on the other hand devoted its resources to promoting a sense of community in the space.
The fact that the Cabot Statue—a symbol of colonial authority—should remain the central focus of the Square even after the renovation seems inconsistent with RÉSEAU’s goal of empowering Montreal’s Urban Indigenous community. The problem of a colonial monument presiding over a gathering space for Montreal’s dispossessed Indigenous peoples remains unaddressed. The intervention we have imagined engages with this problem, and aims to situate itself within and contribute to the outreach already being done in the space by advancing a discussion of the historical narratives present in Cabot Square.
The first component of our proposed intervention is a community led planting of vines at the base of the Cabot monument. Over the course of a season, the vines would grow to form a living wall which would cover the statue entirely. Cabot’s figure would be obscured, but the form of the monument would remain in the landscape of the park, symbolizing a challenge to the authority of the historical narrative implicit in the statue. The aim of the living wall is to dispel the notion that any common or universal historical understanding is possible in a space as nuanced as Cabot Square, undoing the work of the State-sponsored colonial monument.
The second component of our intervention is a collection of oral testimonies, gathered from interviews with people who have lived and gathered in Cabot Square. The testimonies will be accessible online via smartphone, through a QR code that will be installed on a placard near the newly-covered monument. We will employ existing community networks such as RÉSEAU to seek participants. The audio component emphasizes the importance of oral tradition, suggesting a continued detachment from authoritative knowledge systems. A central theme of our intervention is the deference of historical authority to a living voice within the Montreal Indigenous community, and as such we will allow their testimony and narratives to shape our project, including whatever broader questions of colonial relations it might imply.
