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

Félix M.

I met Félix in the Gouin Park, the green space along the river behind the Sophie-Barat School, where he had just completed high school. He worked there for the summer at the site of the Association Récréoculturelle Ahuntsic Cartierville (ARAC). I talked to him while he was busy servicing rental kayaks. He is an active young man who loves outdoor sports like rafting and canoeing, as well as winter camping that he has practiced in the Lac St-Jean region. I spontaneously thought that his family had a cottage near a lake where he would have developed this passion, but this was not the case.

He also plays tennis in his spare time in the neighborhood. This is how I found out that we have a common acquaintance, another Félix who teaches the sport in Nicolas-Viel Park.

When I will publish this photo taken in July, Félix will have begun his studies in Gaspé at theCEGEP de Gaspésie et des Îles in the Adventure Tourism program to become an outdoor activity guide. Amazing for a young man who was born and lived until this day in the city in the district of the Sault-au-Récollet! This choice stems in part from the fact that Felix had chosen the outdoor’s option for his physical education classes, where, as you may guess, most activities take place outdoors. Seeing his natural interest in these activities, the physical education teacher told him about the program for which he clearly seems to have the right profile. Although he does not know what job awaits him when he graduates, he boldly told me he is sure he made the right choice.

To think of it, what would be more natural than a lifelong island resident to introduce neophytes to aquatic activities? After all, Montreal is an Island in a major river that eventually flows into the sea.

Félix on ARAC's summer kayak rental site, along the river behind the Sophie-Barat school



Celya B.

It’s my neighbor Clément C., a music teacher at Collège Regina Assumpta, ideaman and founding president of the Ahuntsic en Fugue festival  who put me in contact with Celya B .. She currently oversees the media relations and social media communications of this young festival organized “to create a concert space dedicated to chamber music” in Ahuntsic. We then met on the forecourt of the St-André-Apôtre Church, site of the 2015 edition’s first concert.

Celya and her older sister were born in Algiers. Their father was a journalist and radio host. The family fled the country in the first half of the black decade, fearing that the public statements of the father would imperil them. After a brief stay in France, where the prospects seemed unpromising, they arrived here when Celya was only two-year-old.

Her parents have done pretty well here, but not in the type of professions they occupied in Algeria. Celya is also doing well, having finished high school at Regina Assumpta and completed a CEGEP diploma in health sciences. However, she realized that this field was not for her. After a first year of university studies in industrial relations that, she considers, have made her more mature, she will begin a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sherbrooke in the Fall 2015. She expects to live some degree uprooting in this town. Indeed, when I asked what Ahuntsic meant to her, her response was "family". Still, she intends to continue talking every day with her older sister, who is a pharmacist in the neighborhood.

Celya is also involved in the FestiBlues held each summer in the Ahuntsic Park. After a first presence as a volunteer in 2010, she was hired as staff in 2011, then as human resources coordinator for the 2015 edition.

She is also involved in the organism Seize Your own Future, which "aims to transform the young women of today into leaders, encouraging them to develop their leadership and make informed choices in their lives and their careers." She writes on the organization’s website and promotes it through social media.

In addition to all these activities, she is coach of a good level synchronized swimming team at R2P Aquatic Club. She had previously practiced this sport at the Club Aquatique Pirahnas du Nord (CAPN) based at the Sophie-Barat swimming pool.

Although she is solidly rooted here and very involved in the community, and despite the fact that she has not visited Algeria much, she realized that her ties to her birth country are still strong because her best friends of the moment are also of Algerian origin. Will that change after a few years in the Eastern Townships?

http://www.ahuntsicenfugue.com/page-accueil.html#concerts

Celya B.

Vincent G.

Up-date, January 5th 2016

As some of you may have deducted it while reading the final article of the 2015 edition of Quartiersnord.photos about Ahmed B., it is possible that the shut-down of Cité Historia is only temporary. The museum could resume operations after a consolidation of its finances and restructuring. Vincent Garneau recently told me he has received a notice of a temporary lay-up. He and his colleagues would be glad if such was the outcome.

Furthermore, the founding of the Société d’Histoire d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville (SHAC) has no direct relation to the situation at Cité Historia. A group, of which Vincent is part, has voluntarily worked since spring 2015 towards its establishment motivated by the conviction that such a body was necessary.

Original text, July 21st 2015

As some of you may have deducted it while reading the final article of the 2015 edition of Quartiersnord.photos about Ahmed B., it is possible that the shut-down of Cité Historia is only temporary. The museum could resume operations after a consolidation of its finances and restructuring. Vincent Garneau recently told me he has received a notice of a temporary lay-up. He and his colleagues would be glad if such was the outcome.

Furthermore, the founding of the Société d’Histoire d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville (SHAC) has no direct relation to the situation at Cité Historia. A group, of which Vincent is part, has voluntarily worked since spring 2015 towards its establishment motivated by the conviction that such a body was necessary.

On a sunny day, I knocked on the door of Cité Historia, an organization that has the status of recognized museum, asking if any member of the staff lived in the area and would be willing to answer some questions and to be portrayed in photo. It was Vincent, historical development director, who volunteered a few days later.

Native Montrealer who lived and Hochelaga, and, among other parts, in Pointe-aux-Trembles, it is through a summer job at Cité Historia in 2008 that Vincent became acquainted with the borough of Ahunstic. He was initially a welcome agent while he completed his MA in history at UQAM. Little by little, he held various jobs in Cité Historia, including Project Manager for the renewal of the exhibition at the maison du Pressoir. Although the preparation of the new exhibition was prepared by a consulting firm, Vincent and his colleagues acted to have their say in the development of content.

His personal field of study is the record of the historical changes stemming from citizen action. He bore a strong interest to the 60’s and the role of the citizen’s action committees in the neighborhoods of the East and South-west of Montreal at the time.

Not knowing Ahuntsic-Cartierville on his arrival, he has since learned to appreciate this neighborhood that many people of the central districts associate to the suburbs. He stressed in particular the presence of three types of territorial organizations here: the persistence of the village cores of Sault-au-Récollet and Bordeaux, the neighborhoods typical of the city with a higher population density that appeared before 1950 and more recent developments that are structured around the car and actually have more to do with Laval than with the Plateau. He also expressed disappointment that a place like the Nature-park of the Ile-de-la-Visitation is associated on some tourist maps to the Greater Montreal rather than the city itself. Cité Historia’s premises: the maison du Pressoir, which houses the exhibition rooms, and the maison du Meunier, before which he is photographed, are located at the entrance of this important park.

Today, Vincent, who lives in the Ahuntsic district has great reasons to enjoy this environment. He met his girlfriend here and they are now parents of a child only a few months old.

In my notes, I see that told me Cité Historia has projects related to the living memory. If you meet him at work, he will surely be willing to tell you more.

 

Vincent G. in front of the maison du Meunier