The Living Past Of Montreal

The Living Past of Montreal is a history of the city and its community, brought to life by fifty-seven specially commissioned charcoal and ink drawings of Old Montreal by R.D. Wilson. Beginning with the establishment of the first permanent settlement in 1

Montreal's history - from Indigenous life before contact with Europeans to its present-day bilingual and multicultural urban region.

Montrealers have come and gone like snowflakes floating down onto Mount Royal, then melting and flowing into the mighty St. Lawrence. Those countless lives are only sometimes recalled by headstones and fancy-dress photos inadequately noting lifetimes full of passions, dreams and appetites. This book aims to get to know those forgotten Montrealers by flipping the rock up on where they ate, slept, danced and created some crazy messes. The Paris of North America, The Queen of River Cities, Vegas with Icicles, The City with 100 Steeples, Sin City and The City of Saints: Montreal has been all of those things and has uneasily withstood the chaos involved in reconciling its contradictory tendencies and competing ambitions. This book is a time machine that transports you to wonderlands of the past. These words aim to slam you like a John Kordic uppercut and bring you on a runaway bus ride down the bald face of Mount Royal.

This book tells the fascinating story of Montreal, Canada, from prehistoric time through the 21st century. From the Iroquoian community of Hochelaga to the bustling economic metropolis that Montreal has become, this account describes the social, economic, political, and cultural forces and trends that have driven the city's development, shedding light on the city's French, British, and American influences. Outlining Montreal's diverse ethnic and cultural origins and its strategic geographical position, this lively account shows how a small missionary colony founded in 1642 developed into a leading economic city and cultural center, the thriving cosmopolitan hub of French-speaking North America.

Eli searches for his ex-lover Lilia after she disappears one morning from his Brooklyn apartment, but he discovers surprises about her childhood after going to Montreal on a tip from a source who says that Lilia may be there.

During a time of significant demographic, geographic, and social transition, many women in early nineteenth-century Montreal turned to prostitution and brothel-keeping to feed, clothe, protect, and house themselves and their families. Beyond Brutal Passions is a close study of the women who were accused of marketing sex, their economic and social susceptibilities, and the strategies they employed to resist authority and assert their own agency. Referencing newspapers, parish registers, census returns, coroners' reports, city directories, documents of Catholic and Protestant institutions, police books, and court records, Mary Anne Poutanen reveals how these women confronted limited alternatives and how they fought against established authority in the pursuit of their livelihoods. She details these women’s lives not only as prostitutes but also as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who reconstructed the bonds of kinship and solidarity. An insightful history of prostitution, Beyond Brutal Passions explores the complicated relationships between women accused of prostitution and the society in which they lived and worked.

Gordon shows that while individual memory is crucial to establishing and maintaining identity, public memory is contested terrain - official customs and traditions, monuments, historic sites, and the celebration of anniversaries and festivals serve to order individual and collective perceptions of the past. Public memory is therefore the product of competitions and ideas about the past that are fashioned in a public sphere and speak primarily about structures of power. It conscripts historical events in a bid to guide shared memories into a coherent narrative that helps individuals negotiate their place in broader collective identities. The contest over public memories involves an exclusiveness that packages "others" according to the ideological preferences of the dominant cultures. Gordon shows that in Montreal ethnic, class, and gender voices strove to stake their own claims to legitimacy. Rather than acknowledging a single past, Montreal's many publics made and celebrated many public memories.