New book commemorates former Montreal neighbourhood bulldozed for Expo 67 | CityNews Calgary

MONTREAL — There is nearly nothing to recommend that the combination of parking tons and industrial lands close to Montreal’s Victoria Bridge was as soon as a vibrant residential neighbourhood. 

But earlier than it was demolished in 1964 to make manner for a sports activities venue for the Expo 67 world honest, kids performed on the stoops of Victorian row homes in a small assortment of streets referred to as Goose Village, the place successive waves of immigrants labored, lived and raised households. 

Now, the story of the neighbourhood and its folks is being revived in a brand new e book by Concordia University affiliate pictures professor Marisa Portolese. Published in English and French, “Goose Village” makes use of archival images, interviews with former residents and trendy portraits to chronicle the day-to-day lifetime of the working-class neighbourhood within the metropolis’s southwest earlier than its 350 buildings have been demolished in what politicians of the time portrayed as city renewal. 

Portolese describes Goose Village as a small neighbourhood of six or seven streets that includes modest rowhouses and an elementary faculty, in addition to eating places and household companies. While its inhabitants weren’t well-off and needed to deal with challenges like foul odors from close by slaughterhouses, she says they fashioned shut ties and plenty of nonetheless keep up a correspondence to at the present time.

“People knew each other,” she mentioned in an interview. “From what they tell me it was a very wonderful place to live where everyone looked out for one another, and a lot of people describe it as a very supportive community.”

Working on the e book was a private expertise for Portolese, whose household had deep roots within the neighbourhood. Her father, Domenico Portolese, and her mom, Pina Albanese, started their married life collectively in Goose Village as a part of the wave of Italian immigrants who got here to Canada after the Second World War. 

Portolese mentioned they have been solely the most recent group of newcomers to settle, following the Ukrainians and Poles who got here after the primary World War and, earlier, the Irish who landed on the banks of the St. Lawrence in typhus-infested “coffin ships” within the mid 1800’s. Many of the primary houses there have been constructed for these Irish staff who survived the journey and went on to assist construct the Victoria Bridge to town’s South Shore, which was accomplished in 1859.

Portolese says the motivation for her e book was, partly, an effort to reverse “a complete erasure of our patrimony, of local heritage.”

“There’s no sign on site that alludes to the fact that there was once a neighborhood, an important neighborhood,” she mentioned. 

In the e book, photos taken by metropolis photographers within the early Sixties present vigorous scenes, with kids dancing and taking part in on streets and in backyards and ladies chatting on doorsteps of two-or-three storey brick row homes. Another collection of images taken simply earlier than the demolition in 1964 is extra grim, displaying the within of deserted residences, with discarded furnishings and papers scattering the ground.

The e book additionally options Portolese’s personal images of the realm in recent times, displaying parking tons overgrown with weeds and flowers, in addition to portraits of former residents, together with her father, within the vacant tons the place their houses as soon as stood.

In addition to gracing the quilt, Portolese mentioned her father was additionally an integral a part of the four-year creation course of, a lot of which happened through the COVID-19 pandemic and concerned monitoring down former residents and sorting by some 1,600 archival images that got here with no index, she mentioned.

Goose Village, which was also called Victoriatown, was demolished within the spring of 1964, forcing1,500 residents to maneuver to surrounding communities that usually charged larger lease. The sports activities stadium constructed on the positioning, referred to as the Autostade, was in use for lower than 10 years after Expo 67 and was demolished within the late Seventies.

Portolese believes her mission is very related at the moment as rents and housing costs rise in cities throughout Canada, giving solution to a brand new wave of gentrification and displacement.

Today, the realm the place Goose Village as soon as sat is once more being eyed for growth, with competing proposals from builders who hope to construct tons of or 1000’s of items within the long-underused space.

Portolese says she hopes that no matter mission is retained features a good quantity of social housing, in addition to nods to the previous.

“I would like some sort of sign in that neighborhood that explains that there was once this village that lived there, that there was once this place that existed, so that it’s not completely erased,” she mentioned.

This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Nov. 5, 2023.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press