GOOSE VILLAGE

The former Goose Village, also known as Victoriatown, was a working-class neighborhood built in 1860 near Griffintown in the South-West borough of Montréal. Located between the Lachine canal and Pointe Saint Charles, this neighborhood was home to Irish immigrants in the second half of the 1800s, then to Italian immigrant families after 1900. Before it became known as Goose Village, the neighbourhood was called Windmill Point. Between 1847 and 1848, it was the main site of quarantine sheds that were erected for typhus-infected Irish immigrants to receive medical treatment. A memorial known as the Irish Commemorative Stone or The Black Rock was built in the middle of traffic lanes on Bridge street to pay tribute to the Irish newcomers who struggled with their lives to reach Montréal. Today, it is difficult to imagine how this site went from a vibrant community of diverse immigrant and working-class communities to an empty and dusty parking lot. The expropriation of the neighborhood’s 305 families in 1964 by the City of Montréal is a story of complete erasure: if nothing is left today of the 6-street Victorian-style area that was once the heart of a closely-knit community, the sense of belonging of the communities was deeply shaken. Marisa Portolese, a descendant of Goose village former inhabitants, qualifies this episode of local history as ‘truly the death of an entire community’.

The municipally-backed move to modernize and develop the area in preparation for the World Fair of 1967 was the main motivator to expropriate Goose village residents and demolish their homes. While this site was dubbed an ‘embarrassment’ to the city by the then-mayor Jean Drapeau, local newspaper the Montréal Star associated the area with ‘slum areas’, while the Montréal-Matin qualified it as ‘a neighborhood without doctors’. This narrative of a decrepit neighborhood was used to justify the call for development and modernization that viewed this piece of land as an important entry point into the temporary world exhibit of Expo 67. Visitors needed to see something more aesthetically pleasing than a working-class neighborhood, which was in the way of the city’s attempt to put itself on the map. The price tag of an elevated expressway, a parking lot, as well as a football stadium, was deemed higher than a few schools, cafés, an iconic bus line and convenience stores. To date, however, no reparations were considered to compensate for the losses incurred by the neighborhood’s residents. The history of the Goose village remains one of a collective struggle of working-class communities for a better life. The current efforts of former residents and their descendants to share stories and remember their lives as Goose Villagers are proof that memory and cultural identity carry on despite the loss of space.