The planned anti-racism and anti-Loi sur la laïcité march was held in Park Ex on Sunday afternoon despite the relentless chilly rain.
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Kate
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Kate
Besides the Jean Drapeau archives, the major history thing this week, Radio-Canada looked at the use of computers in its election coverage starting in 1963. There’s also a piece about the appearance of video arcades in the 1980s.
The Gazette’s retro-specs looked at the 1995 pro-Canada unity rally, among others.
The Centre d’histoire piece this week is about the Indians of Canada pavilion at Expo 67, which, as they note, would not be called by this name now. The totem pole still stands over on the island, but the teepee-inspired pavilion is long gone.
On a different indigenous theme, the city’s Centre d’histoire page looked recently at what we know about the way of life of the St Lawrence Iroquoians, the longhouse dwellers Jacques Cartier encountered when he first landed on the island that would become Montreal. The Wikipedia article about this culture makes it clear that their identity is an educated triangulation made by anthropologists, linguists and others, as they left few traces and we don’t know which groups either absorbed them or killed them off.
Anonymous
Holy shit did I waste my youth in the arcades along Ste-Catherine. I walk down there now and think about how every other storefront used to be an arcade or stripclub (which looked the same and was very confusing to me as a child).
Kate
I spent time in the arcades too, playing those old Konami and Sega games, with occasional breaks for pinball, which they also had. Some of the arcades eventually added peep shows, which brought in a clientele that created a nasty atmosphere for a young woman, so I lost the habit.
Pinball had only stopped being illegal here a few years before the era mentioned in the article. But that’s another story.
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Kate
The SPVM numbers homicides based on the island of Montreal, but here’s another way to look at it: 16 deaths blamed on organized crime in the urban area so far this year – this includes the whole agglomeration. There were 21 such killings clocked up last year.
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Kate
I was mistaken in a recent post: Archives de Montréal already has the Jean Drapeau archive online, and journalists must be sifting through it. One nugget so far is that Drapeau oversaw a response to the Malouf report, made by judge Albert H. Malouf to report on cost overruns during the 1976 Olympics. The 300-page response has not been seen till now, and includes a copy of the original report with marginal notes by Drapeau.
Another nugget is the details of Drapeau’s obsessive desire to build a tower. He wanted to bring the Eiffel tower to Montreal as early as 1963, a notion turned down by the French. After that he wanted a tower for the city’s 325th anniversary in 1967, which didn’t happen either. I’d be willing to wager that Roger Taillibert got into Drapeau’s good graces at least partly by promising to include a tower as part of the Olympic site.
Michael Black
A few years ago there was a story about a McGill librarian who visited the Montreal Antiquarian Book Fair and came across some binders of material be!onging to Drapeau. I thought that’s what you were talking about the other day, but I looked and found it was separate. The main archive was left by Drapeau on the condition it not be voewable until 30 years. The binders, including a Malouf report with capacitors mkents by Drapeau, went to McGil, where it was on public display and now available for study.
Michael
Kate
The Drapeau archive wasn’t meant to be seen till 20 years after his death. I had not heard about the McGill discovery.
Alex L
Here for the McGill archives: https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/fr/article/mcgill-dans-la-ville/des-archives-personnelles-de-jean-drapeau-luniversite-mcgill
Thanks for the info Michael, I didn’t know about it either.
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Kate
The SPVM put up a few roadblocks this weekend and found several drivers under the influence. Seems they want to make it clear this is not only done during the Christmas season.
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