Disappeared neighborhoods. Red Light, Faubourg à m'lasse, Goose Village

During the 1950s and 1960s, Montreal was a city that moved very quickly. There is a strong wind of modernization blowing there, fueled by the discourse of the Quiet Revolution and the feverish atmosphere of Expo67. This push for modernization is leading urban planners and political leaders – Mayor Jean Drapeau in the lead – to rethink the city's development, without hesitating to make a clean sweep of the past. This leads to a powerful wave of demolition of old housing, often justified by the need to eliminate slums considered unsanitary.

In this work composed of eloquent testimonies and extraordinary archive photos from the Montreal Archives (mostly unpublished), the reader will be able to plunge back into the life of three disappeared neighborhoods: Red Light, Faubourg à m'lasse and Goose Village. Born from the continuation of the exhibition of the same name and designed by the Montreal History Center in collaboration with the Montreal History and Heritage Laboratory of UQÀM and the Archives of the City of Montreal, Disappeared neighborhoods is intended to provide a photographic context for this important part of the history of the Quebec metropolis.