Kévin G. & Fanny R.

It is while discussing with Isabelle P., whom I had made an appointment with at Le Goût des Autres (The Taste of Others) for another article of this series, that I made acquaintance with Fanny and Kévin. It was the Monday after Halloween. Isabelle and I were talking about the Haunted Alley, a neighborhood Halloween collective project. Fanny, who had gone through that alley with her preschool-age kids, spontaneously joined the conversation. As young parents, she and Kévin – who arrived later after errands and deliveries for the business - had much to share with Isabelle and real affinities.

Kévin and Fanny are the owners of Le Goût des Autres. They offer online catering services and operate a take-out shop on Sauvé Street, just east of the Metro station. The shop is also a tasting bar with tables for a dozen people. You can order the daily dishes to enjoy on the premises or at home.

As they both worked in the restaurant business, an area where people are very mobile, it is naturally in a restaurant, the Bistro L’Enchanteur in Villeray, that they met. Although still young, they both have good experience in cooking and nutrition.

Kévin is a native of Bourges, France. After graduating, he perfected his restaurant training in fine establishments in France, London and Edinburgh, a city that deserves to be better known. It was in that city that he met a Quebecer with whom he came to settle here. In Montreal, he worked his way around, from the kitchen of classy restaurants to neighborhood bistros. He thus gained a good knowledge of Quebec recipes and local ingredients. His last job, while Fanny was pregnant with their first child, was at Milano, an Italian deli on St. Laurent Boulevard near the Jean-Talon Market. There he cooked prepared meals to take out.

Fanny for her part was born in St-Philippe-de-La Prairie, an area where vegetable crops are produced on a wide scale. She worked in a market in La Prairie, in a grocery store and studied nutrition in CEGEP for a while. She later turned to the restaurant trade.

They both have lived in Ahunstic for the past ten years.

It is with the help of the CDEC and program named SAJE (a French acronym for Support to young entrepreneurs) that they are started their business.

Le Goût des Autres was first operated from sublet kitchen facilities, reaching people by relying on their contacts, advertising, the Internet and word of mouth. Both of sociable and friendly nature, they appreciate having direct contact with their customers, something that could be difficult to establish in jobs that would tie them up in the kitchen. It’s while talking with a client that they learned that their current premises, which already housed a catering business, was available. They are at their current address since 2014 and have already made renovations that show the expression of their personality.

That Monday, the vegetarian chili simmering smelled delightful. When I returned the next week, at a time when they could breathe a little, I took home a portion of a fine grilled vegetable terrine. The couple offers a menu for all tastes, which also includes dishes that are suitable for vegetarians. Kevin makes sure that the menu offers both quality and variety. He mentioned that a well written infomercial was put online by the Yellow Pages. You will find a link at the end of the article if you want to know more about their offer.

While we were chatting, I mentioned that my wife has been cultivating a diversified vegetable garden for several years. Fanny then told me that she would like to transform the irregular lot of unused land between the street and the neighboring property into a collective garden for people in the neighborhood. As this space is owned by the city, this could be an interesting pilot project. Since they already buy produce for the preparation of their dishes, she is also considering the possibility of adding fresh vegetables to the current offer of their shop.

Now residents in the vicinity, they display strong will and lots of energy to develop their business while raising young children. I wish them great success: the neighborhood needs people like them!

Fanny and Kévin in front of their shop on Sauvé Street East of the Metro

Stéphane T.

At the monthly luncheon of a Montreal-North retirees’ association, I had bought, from the hands of its author, the book "Montréal-Nord raconte 100 ans, 1915-2015 ". It included a bookmark announcing an activity of the Montreal North History and Genealogy Society taking place the following Monday at the Charleroi Library. It was a conference entitled "Let us tell you about Montreal-North."

I went to the library on that day and attended the event with a group of roughly seventy-five citizens. This is where I met Stéphane.

Author of this conference, he is an historian by training. Stéphane completed his baccalaureate at UQAM. He is a storyteller, as well as lecturer, columnist, guide and facilitator in History. Much of the audience was made up of white haired folks who had lived through a significant portion of the centenary of the municipality. At the back of the room, a group of youths was also present at the initiative of the local Centre Jeunesse-emploi.

I quickly realized that Stéphane was well known to the senior part of the public and that he could not pass them any inaccuracies on the local events of the past 50 years. He could, however, afford some familiarity with them and switch between gruffly and humorous attitudes tinged with irony and bonhomie. The conference took place smoothly with many verbal exchanges with participants, who overall, were captivated and attentive. Stéphane even managed to maintain the interest of the younger crowd.

His lecture began with the first visits of the French to the Island of Montreal in the sixteenth century. He presented the outline of the Sault-au-Récollet village and parish history, from the French regime until the partition of a section of its territory called "Bas-du-Sault” (Lower Falls) which became the City of Montreal-North. For those who do not know, the Rivière des prairies allowed to move further upstream around the Island than the St-Lawrence River did. The Sault-au-Récollet historic village core is located at the foot of the rapids, where canoers where stopped by the current. Since the parish’s houses, mostly occupied by farmers, were scattered along what is now the Boulevard Gouin, a greater number of buildings from the French regime remain in this area of the Island than in Old Montreal. In the historic center of Montreal, the proximity of the buildings has meant that many of them were destroyed by large fires or were victims of real estate development and road construction.

Stéphane is a native of Montreal-North. He attended primary school at St-Vincent-Marie Strambi. He grew up in a family of four children. Their home was located near the Forest Shopping center, the first of the municipality, built in 1957. However, he spent his teenage years on the other side of the river, in St-Vincent-de-Paul, a neighborhood where his father, a contractor, owned land. He has been living for several years in the Plateau Mont-Royal, but maintains ties with the neighborhoods where he grew-up. He collaborates to the activities of various historical societies in the north of Montreal, in Laval and the North Shore. His activities range from storytelling evenings to guided tours of heritage buildings. Some of you may have heard him during activities organized by Cité Historia or private groups.

If he held some jobs as facilitator and mediator in cultural institutions, such as the Chateau Dufresne Museum for example, he quickly realized that he was not meant to operate in a rigid framework. If I understood correctly, the gruff side he showed at times during his talk was not entirely faked. He can sometimes be bad-tempered or, at best, hard-headed. Being self-employed for many years now, he has a preference for activities requiring direct contact with the public and some acting skills.

For eight years, he has co-produced a radio program entitled "Dans les griffes du loup” (In the claws of the wolf) at CISM 89.3 FM. The show focused on history and folklore. At one time, he recruited, with the help of social workers, some street youths to speak or hold roles in skits for the show.

Stéphane addresses audiences of all ages. He regularly does animation for school groups. The difficult negotiations between government employees and the Liberal government, which is determined to impose its austerity program, leaves him in a difficult position this fall as school visits are suspended for the time being.

Until the situation is clarified, you can track his activities on his website. This fall, he is hosting a series of storytelling nights at the ancestral Brignon-dit-Lapierre house, a historic residence on Gouin Boulevard, just east of the Pie-IX Bridge. Some evenings, he will even be the storyteller himself.

Don’t hesitate to go. It will surely not be boring!

Two sides of Stéphane

Jocelyne D.

As I have regularly been to the Maison de la culture this November, I noticed that a group of ladies of various origins gathers there to knit on Saturdays. I could not help but ask to take a group portrait of them in action and to find a brave one among them who would agree to face the camera lens alone. It was Jocelyne who was designated.

It turns out that she is the organizer of this informal group that does not require registration or fees from the participants. Originally, Jocelyne had simply showed up at this leisure activity featured in the Café de Da program. To the dismay of the knitters present at the second meeting she attended, the leader of the workshop announced that she was quitting and that there was no one to replace her. As Jocelyne was the most experienced knitter in the group, she became de facto the new volunteer facilitator. For nearly a year thereafter, the ladies have been meeting every Saturday. Each time, they put a few tables together according to the number of participants, which ranges from four to twelve. Roughly twenty different women have joined the table over that period.

Jocelyne has always lived in Montreal, with the exception of a one-year stay in the country that confirmed that she was a city girl. Until recently, she had been living in Ahuntsic. Last year however, she gave up her large ground floor duplex flat to her daughter and grandchildren, who needed more space than her. She has since moved in a condo in nearby Villeray.

As we chatted, I learned that she has taught cinema for some thirty years, mainly at Cégep St-Laurent, but also at university level. She taught almost all the curriculum, from photography to production, through editing and photo processing. This explains why she was watching me go about with my camera with a critical look.

Over the years, she has volunteered in various activities, including a feminist book fair, and Silence, Elles tournes, a competitive festival showing films and videos by women. Sadly, she was president of the organization at the time it had to shut down as a result of significant cuts in its public funding.

Believing she had done her part as a teacher after all these years, she decided to retire on the day of her sixtieth anniversary, rather than at the end of the session. She told me that on that day, she showed up with a bottle of champagne and shared a toast to her health with all people around her! Over the following years, she wrote a handbook on the logistics of film shooting. A notice to interested publishers: it remains unedited to this day.

Subsequently, she has devoted a lot of time to her family and grandchildren. Now, she wants to take more time for herself. Knitting is a form of yoga for her, its practice leaving her mind free. Besides, the group’s labor serves a useful purpose. Their autumn production will be sold by the Sisters of Providence who, with the money generated by the sale of the items, will buy new wool. Their Sister’s hope is that the profit will give them extra wool so they can knit more items for the people they help.

I believe careful attention should be paid to these tranquil ladies. Could there be among them some Yarn Bombers, these graffiti-knitting activists who decorate trees and street furniture with their colorful work?

Jocelyne at the Café de DA

Julie L.

Among the people whom we should get to know better for our own benefit are our neighbors. If now and then I had spoken with her parents, Alain and Lucie, I knew nothing about Julie, apart from the fact that she doesn’t have the use of her legs. A friend of mine, Danièle, who has followed my Quartiersnord.photos project this summer, sent me an e-mail encouraging me to meet her. She had met Julie at the Champagnat Centre when she was working there as a specialized teacher. This is where Julie is completing her high school.

Now a young adult, she continues to learn there at her own pace. This way, she can follow courses at different levels depending on the subject. I thought Julie had difficulty expressing herself. Actually, if her speech requires a bit of attention, her linguistic level is excellent and she expresses her ideas clearly. French, her mother tongue, is also her favorite subject. After graduating from high school, she hopes to study in communications at CEGEP level and specialize in social media. As a second option, she is also considering social work.

She will soon be speaking at the CEGEP du Vieux Montreal in front of an audience of special education students. In addition, she often represents the Society for Handicapped Children in fundraising activities.

I have seen her a few times in her powered wheelchair on the street during her outings with her favorite accompanist and friend, Venyse. She goes quite regularly to Le Petit Flore, a restaurant on Fleury Street that is easily accessible to her, since there are no steps at the entrance. She makes a reservation beforehand and Stéphanie, the owner, who always receives her well, has a table prepared to accommodate her.

Because of the potholes and the unevenness of the sidewalks, she is somewhat fearful to go out alone. However, when she has the opportunity to be accompanied and if there is a subway station with elevators in the vicinity, Julie travels around town. She actually prefers public transportation because it gives her more latitude in her schedule than adapted transports do. By subway, she managed to go to the fireworks, to visit Place Émilie-Gamelin and, like any other young woman, to spend time on some terraces.

Previoulsy, she studied at the Joseph-Charbonneau School, which welcomes young people with serious mobility challenges. Some of them also have significant intellectual disabilities. While she was a student there, she had the opportunity to swim in the school’s pool thanks to the Espace Multi-Soleil program. Since she can only move her arms, she needs help to stay afloat. In the water, she is most comfortable on her back. She explained however that as she will grow older, her movements will become more difficult. In the mean time, she studies Pilates at home. She shares the same professor as her mother from M Studio Pilates on Fleury Street, but her program is adapted to her capabilities.

It was when she was a student at Joseph-Charbonneau that she did her biggest trip. Accompanied by her father, she went to Bretagne, in the north-west of France, with her school group. They were received by students from a school in the Lorient region and stayed together in a summer camp in Concarneau.

At this school, as well as at Champagnat Centre, students come from all over Greater Montreal and even from as far as St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. This explains that most of her friends live outside our borough. Despite her disability, she has a good dexterity and can type on a computer keyboard to communicate with them. I told her jokingly that she probably makes less typing errors than I do. In fact, it is quite likely. Thank goodness there are text correctors!

She appreciates Ahuntsic where she has lived since her childhood, because she feels relatively autonomous. With her motor chair, she has sufficient autonomy for a ride to the riverside. Perhaps one day you will come upon her in a park or on Fleury Street. If so, take the time to say hello. Julie is a very nice girl, just like her parents!

Julie