4000 ST-PATRICK

Located in the heart of the Cabot Industrial sector in the southwest part of Montreal, this second world war shipbuilding structure is found right in front of the Canal Lachine. The building is fenced out, but after walking around we found an alternative way to enter. The first room we visited was full of graffiti, the roof was falling apart and water was leaking everywhere, so we decided to keep our face masks, concerned by contamination. We were not sure if we could get in trouble by being there; later on, we encountered other people wandering around, and it was clear that this was a hang-out place for different crowds. In another life, this space employed close to 1400 employees, of which 30% were female, who worked extensive hours building boats and airplane parts to support the global struggle against nazism in WW2 Europe. Home to the Canadian Power Boat Company, the building had a direct connection to the Lachine canal, making it easy for boats to go straight from the assembly line into the water. After the World War, the building became a toy factory for a few decades until the late 1980s, when its last owner decided to rent it to different businesses.

Before their eviction in 2011 by the city of Montreal, the building hosted around 150 artists who had their studios, workshops, and shops in the space, as part of a vibrant anglophone and francophone artistic community. In the words of Quebec-based artist Paul Machnik, who had his printmaking studio in this building until he was forced out by the city, “we had a great interaction between all the ateliers in the building, it became a little community, an unofficial incubator”. A community of artists was born organically from sharing this heritage building, they would work as a family, collaborate professionally, and contribute to the cultural diversity and identity of the neighbourhood. With the attempt of using the strategic location of this building as part of the revitalization of the South-West borough, the city decided that the level of soil contamination and the lack of proper maintenance were reasons enough to push all the tenants out. To demolish this historical infrastructure and to re-build also allows for better profit for real estate developers, according to the logic of some municipal officials. Paradoxically, the city is attempting today to replicate what already existed in the building and capitalize on its revitalization. While looking at the 4000 St Patrick street building, one can easily picture the entire process through which a building is abandoned as the result of expulsion, then demolished, and re-built into an institutionalized artistic and cultural space that can generate monetary gains for the city; and in the process of reconstituting what has been forcibly removed, city officials sacrifice the socio-cultural heart of a space and disregard the immaterial value left behind by the communities that once lived and worked there.