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| St. Elizabeth, just south of de Maisonneuve, now demolished for a parking lot for the poor |
I find them quite hard to look at, as it's really tragic to see such entirely viable areas crashed down for feeble reasons. There was undoubtedly some element of corruption that was lurking behind the nonsensical deals to eradicate these homes and businesses.
The sets include one not-great set of pics from Goose Village, an area I've discussed at length on this site and even did a post-graduate essay on.
There's another one from the Red Light, the somewhat slanderous name given to a perfectly good area outrageously knocked down for the dumbtastic Habitations Jeanne Mance. (The photo above shows how a neat little street was demolished so that poor people can now park their cars downtown for $5 a month).
Then there's the Molassesville/ Quartier de melasses area, what's basically the area that was demolished for the ridiculously oversized CBC building and Highway 20's Ville Marie Expressway.
I suspect demolishing a nice francophone neighbourhood for the CBC wasn't exactly a great way to curry favour for the Canada brand in Quebec.
That last set is possibly my favourite, as it really shows the life of an area that hasn't really been discussed much. The area has workshops, a church, cool little stores and kids running around.
The only feature article I read about that area prior to its demolition focused on the fighting tradition of the area, something that won't surprise you when you see the glares of some of the residents towards the camera.
Surely if there had been a famous hockey player or politician that emerged from any of these neighbourhoods they'd be more celebrated.
Thankfully the tradition of knocking down entire neighbourhoods pretty much came to an end when some hippies took on the developers in the Milton-Park conflict, which still ended in about half of the intended area being razed for the La Cite project.
The photos posted by the Montreal archives are the result of the city's Vanished Neighbourhoods, a name which is a whitewash, because these neighbourhoods didn't vanish at all, the residents were forced out and the homes demolished.