Steven High, Deindustrializing Montreal. Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022)

Steven High’s latest book represents a substantial contribution to North American urban history. In it, he offers a cross-study of two industrial neighbourhoods in Montréal’s southwest, Pointe-Saint-Charles and Little Burgundy, exploring their evolution from the 1950s to the present day. These are case studies that he uses to explore different important debates on deindustrialization and gentrification, two phenomena that he links intimately, but also on the way in which race and class interact in such a framework. This study mobilizes fairly traditional sources for the study of such neighbourhoods, but also, and above all, an impressive corpus of 150 interviews with the inhabitants of the two neighbourhoods, as well as with various economic, social, and political actors who have had the opportunity to intervene in one way or another in their development.

High’s proposed research approach is original in many respects. On the conceptual level, the way in which he articulates class and race to conduct his analysis is particularly fruitful and makes it possible to overcome the limitations of analyses that too often focus on one of these two categories at the expense of the other. The cases studied lend themselves very well to this, as the socioeconomic, racial, and linguistic borders of these two neighbourhoods changed significantly and in complex ways during the decades studied. This also allows High to situate the case of Montréal within a more broadly North American framework, clearly demonstrating that Québec’s metropolis is not immune to some of the dynamics that cross the rest of the continent, and in particular racial discrimination and segregation, but that these dynamics often manifest themselves in unexpected ways given the particularities of Montréal and, more broadly, of Québec society during the second half of the 20th century.

High’s proposed research approach is also distinguished by its active nature, in every sense of the word. From the start, working with oral sources almost necessarily implies greater empathy – even sympathy – for one’s object of research. More broadly, Deindustrializing Montreal is the result of fifteen years of research carried out in the context of a variety of projects, meetings, workshops, or educational activities involving residents of the two neighbourhoods studied. And, if that wasn’t enough, the author became part of the story he tells himself, having taken up residence in Pointe-Saint-Charles in 2011. One of the tour de force of the book is certainly Steven High’s way of communicating to us this high degree of commitment to this project, to the neighbourhoods studied, and to their inhabitants, while demonstrating rigour and a critical distance that never disappear and intervene at critical moments of the analysis.

The author’s demonstration is thematically structured and follows the parallel destinies of these two neighbourhoods that, while adjacent to one another, have very different characteristics and trajectories. The book has three main sections: the first is devoted to the creation of an industrial culture in these two districts; the second focuses on the major disturbances caused by the beginning of the deindustrialization of the sector, the various urban renewal projects that are being deployed there, and the beginnings of gentrification; finally, the last section emphasizes the local mobilizations and resistances that these disruptions arouse. It is impossible to do justice here to the whole of the analysis proposed by High. Nevertheless, let me highlight some of his main contributions. Thus, the chapters devoted to Little Burgundy offer in themselves a precious contribution to the history of the black community of Montréal in the 20th century, but also a reflection on the dangers of confining this history to this single district. High’s study also highlights how the disastrous urban renewal of this neighbourhood informed the actions of community groups and activists in Pointe-Saint-Charles. The last sections of the book also offer an incisive and effective analysis of the ways in which the industrial past of Pointe-Saint-Charles and the musical heritage of Little Burgundy are exploited by politicians and promoters at the turn of the 21st century, at the expense of other, more central but potentially conflictual, aspects of the history of these two neighbourhoods. Finally, High dwells at length on the often insidious nature of the process of gentrification in these spaces.

This book is a welcomed addition to the history of working-class and industrial neighbourhoods in Montréal. It makes an original contribution to this already popular field, in particular by integrating the question of race more fully into its analysis. High’s study also largely avoids the trap of a certain idealization of life in these neighbourhoods – unlike some of his witnesses – or, on the contrary, of an excessive demonization of the suburbs that contributed significantly, starting in the 1960s, to their devitalization. That said, Deindustrializing Montreal is a reminder that these suburbs, as well as other areas of the city during this period, remain a blind spot of urban history during this period. That said, High’s book offers an open and very fruitful dialogue with North American historiography on the subject, even if we can deplore the much more discreet place of Québec’s francophone historiography on the subject. For example, there is no real dialogue with historian Gilles Lauzon, who devoted a book to Pointe-Saint-Charles, and there is no reference to the work of Dale Gilbert, quite similar to that of High, on working-class neighbourhoods of Québec City.

Finally, let’s add that High’s book is magnificent. Having the format of a coffee-table book rather than that of an academic monograph, it is printed on glossy paper and richly illustrated. This iconography, which combines old and much more recent photos, is used very effectively by the author to illustrate his analysis. Whether it’s various glimpses of everyday life in these neighbourhoods, the large industrial complexes of the Lachine Canal (and their ruins), or activities related in one way or another to High’s research project, these images considerably enrich the book’s demonstration. There are various windows on the near and distant past, but also – which is rarer – on the research process carried out by the author and his team. I particularly appreciated the brief analysis that the author devotes to these well-known photos taken by officials of the City of Montréal in preparation for the destruction of apartment buildings, workshops, and businesses in Little Burgundy. (157–160)

Deindustrializing Montreal aims to better understand the “prolonged agony of deindustrialization ‘half-life’ in these two neighbourhoods: its causes, effects, and legacies.” (21) This is a goal that has been largely achieved. High’s research approach is deeply rooted in the field. It is a work in which the voice of the researcher is clearly heard and which has much to offer readers who want to better understand the history of these neighbourhoods and the city in which they are located. It is a study that also sheds light on many aspects of the history of Québec and, more broadly, of North American urban history.

Harold Bérubé

Université de Sherbrooke

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2023v92.0016.