Programming

Sub-event of

Mémoire vive

31 May — 22 September 2002

Initiated by DARE-DARE in collaboration with the Centre d'histoire de Montréal, Mémoire Vive provided a framework for reflection that brought together artists and stakeholders in the heritage field.

Histoires oubliées (Forgotten Stories), aims to evoke humble stories and to awaken great or lesser emotions in order to open the doors of memory to those who have lost it, in places where memory has been erased. The intervention sites she chooses border Masson Street (former village of Côte-de-la-Visitation). Four stations that can be visited together or separately, at the random of daily activities. Four breaks close together but touching different people according to the time of day: the square of a church, a community center, a park and a community garden. Through the presence of archival images recalling the history of the neighborhood and a game of writing around mailboxes installed for the occasion in each location, she dialogues with the residents of Old Rosemont. A public writer is also invited to accompany passers-by in writing their memories.

Mireille Cliche is a poet and librarian. In her work as a writer, she triturates her memory, invents and deconstructs it to reconstruct herself. As a librarian, she preserves the collective memory and transmits it. She feeds a heritage little by little, without judgment, in anonymity. For her, a memory that is not shared is a lost memory. As part of Mémoire vive, Mireille Cliche is interested in an old working-class neighbourhood, the Vieux Rosemont.

Press Release

A church, a garden, a park, a community center bordered by a vacant lot.

The church hides another, the garden bloomed on a car graveyard, the park was born from an abandoned quarry. Somewhere nearby, the first residents of the island walked in silence. Somewhere nearby, a lion roared. A lion? A lion, arrived by train.

So we go, like places and things, from one transformation to another.

Do you have memories of Masson Street and its surroundings? Do your eyes retain the outlines of a past memory? Share them. At any time from July 2 to 28, drop them in the Forgotten Stories post boxes. Signed or not, they will be exhibited at the Rosemont-Petite-Patrie borough office in the fall of 2002.

Martin Thibault, poet, playwright and, for the occasion, public writer, will guide the pen of those who wish to do so at each of the designated stations:

At the community gardens located between Masson Street and Place Basile-Patenaude
Thursday, July 4, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. (in case of rain, the next day);

At the Saint-Esprit Church (corner of Masson and 6th Avenue)
Sunday, July 14, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (in case of rain, on Sunday, July 28, at the same time) ;

At Le Pélican Park (corner of Masson and 1st Avenue)
Wednesday, July 17, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (in case of rain, the next day) ;

At the Masson Centre (2705 Masson Street)
Wednesday, July 24, from noon to 3 p.m. (postponed to the next day in case of rain).