Pierre G.

It was after a lady had read on Facebook a word from my son about this blog that I met Pierre. He is her boss at the Carrefour Jeunesse-emploi Ahuntsic-Bordeaux-Cartierville (CJE-ABC). This is how encounters happen sometimes today!

On the rainy day when I met Pierre, he shared his little office with the bike he rides every day for much of the year to commute between his home in the Plateau and work.

Pierre knows the social fabric and the various stakeholders in the district very well, since he has been working in the area for nearly 25 years. A native of Thetford Mines, where he spent his youth, he studied at CEGEP Lionel-Groulx and completed a degree in sociology at UQAM. A job he held, while still a student, at the Bureau de concertation jeunesse in Villeray, was to have a significant impact on the rest of the course of his professional life.

It is thanks to this experience that he was selected as the first salaried employee of the Centre des jeunes St-Sulpice by a group of women seeking to help young kids living in low-income housing projects. Pierre contributed to the development of this youth centre. This organization’s goal is to promote social integration and academic success of young people whose horizon often seem limited to a radius of a few blocks outside of which they feel excluded.

After a few years in this position, he was among the first members of the staff who put together the Carrefour Jeunesse-emploi (CJE). At the beginning of the mandate of Jacques Parizeau as premier, a will had emerged at the highest levels to duplicate in government agencies the operation models of popular action groups to deal with social problems. The reality was naturally more complex than the fine principles suggested. It was quite a challenge to start base-up and learn to speak a language the officials who held budgets would understand and accept!

The CJE was still able to make its way. Having acquired organization and management skills during this process, Pierre is now General Manager of the CJE-ABC. The organization's mission is to support young people in their efforts to find work and go back to school. Like many other public funded organizations however, its mission must be renegotiated with each change of government and each restructuring wave.

Pierre finds his motivation to persevere in community service for 25 years in the success of young people. He mentions the case of a boy he knew from the age of six at the Centre des jeunes St-Sulpice. Having met him recently, he was glad to see he had become, at thirty years’ old, a physical education teacher and a full-fledged resident of the borough.

Pierre at the CJE

Alexis B.

It was just after passing the gates to the site of the Festiblues site that I met Alexis with his partner Charlotte. Alexis was in command of the BBQ and the couple was waiting for the first spectators of the evening.

Alexis, who will probably have to keep grooming his characteristic mustache for quite some time as it may very well become a trademark, is a master butcher. With Charlotte and some associates he, opened Ça va barder, a gourmet butcher shop, on Fleury Street West this spring. The investment and the necessary steps for starting it left him "absolutely terrified" before the doors opened. But now, after only a few months in business, the shop already employs sixteen people.

Alexis lived in Outremont until the age of 14. Like many people I met to date, he then moved around through several neighborhoods in Montreal. However, he did not know Ahuntsic until recently. It’s while seeking the ideal location for Ça va barder that he discovered the neighborhood. In a few days, he and Charlotte will also become residents.

Alexis worked his way around in the restaurant trade. He worked both in the kitchen and as a waiter. He also studied and practiced the art of sommelier. However, he soon realized that he preferred knowing about wine to the actual sommelier profession, which did not make him as happy as he had imagined at first. It is therefore with the belief that one should go to work whistling that he decided to start his own business.

He is also a musician in his spare time. He mainly plays percussion, which led him to spend two years in Africa. He told me that he knew many African musicians in Montreal.

Standing between the BBQ and the butcher’s shop truck, he told me with assertiveness that one should not eat more than one pound of meat per week, but also that it must be choice meat. Considering meat cutting as a craft and having been trained by master butchers, this man knows what he is talking about!

I saw him again the following week. I went to get my bike that had been repaired in a neighboring shop. As I was just a few steps away, I dropped in his store to say hello. He greeted me warmly and proudly gave me a tour of the premises. We went down to the basement where he showed me the smokehouse, the fridge with meat parts labeled from their farm of origin, and another one where store-made sausages were maturing.

He speaks of his products with such warmth and conviction that I would not be surprised to see him on TV regularly if one day he is given the opportunity to do so. When I mentioned that to him, he told me that, as a matter of facts, he would be seen shortly in Maria Orsini’s show on Radio-Canada.

Something tells me he will keep on whistling for a long time!

Alexis on the site of Festiblues 2015

Patricia G.

When I arrived to the Tolhurst Park Picnic Wednesday, I saw a sympathetic group of people sitting together behind a table filled with Mexican dishes. I was quickly informed that all were either family of Patricia or friends coming to give her a hand for the evening. Like her, they were mostly from the city of Mexico or otherwise of the region of Aguascalientes.

Patricia is a baker.

It is as a member of the new SDC Quartier FLO (as in Fleury West) that Patricia can offer her products to Wednesday picnickers. Patricia arrived in Montreal with her husband and children nine years ago. After working briefly as assistant educator in a day care, she and her husband opened a bakery and pastry shop (Boulangerie-Pâtisserie mexicaine Patricia) seven years ago just west of Tolhurst Park. The couple had operated the same kind of business in Mexico City.

Their counter at the Wednesday Picnic offers different dishes every week. You may find a full meal on the table. That day, there were tacos dorados and paella, plus pastries and watermelon cubes served spicy or not. The first time I visited their table; there was pollo con mole poblano (chicken in a typical cocoa sauce).

If the business was mostly known to some Mexicans in its early days, the customer base has grown and diversified over the years. The house specialty is the "pastel de tres leches" (three milks cake).

Today, Patricia and Luis believe they get by at least as well as in their good years in Mexico City. Despite preserving strong roots – as their "Viva Mexico" caps showed –,  they consider themselves permanently settled here. Their children have already started making their way. It must be said that at the speed at which this small neighborhood changes, they are already veterans! Indeed, the opening of their bakery preceded somewhat that of St-Urbain restaurant that turned heads to what is now known as FLO.

Patricia au Parc Tolhurst

Denise P.

I became acquainted with Denise recently during an opening at the Maison culturelle et communautaire in Montreal North. I was struck by the warmth and the conviction with which she presented the artist exhibiting there for the summer 2015. It is however at a subsequent meeting on the site of the Moulins on l’Île-de-la-Visitation that this resident of Ahuntsic and I talked about the course of her career.

Ninth of ten children of a modest family, with a father who worked at the CNR, Denise remembers walking, as a child, from the family residence on de Lille Street near Charland  to the river. The riverside at the time was left uncultivated, she notes, and did not announce the beautiful park we know today.

As a teenager, she was passionate about life and the city, and despite her young age, she aspired to be hired within the team preparing Expo 67.  To achieve this, she bought a suit and asked repeatedly to meet with the Mayor of Terre des Hommes, Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien. Through determination and persistence, she got the appointment and a modest job in the team. The following year she worked as a hostess at the Quebec Pavilion during the Expo. Like many people who worked there, the experience was exhilarating and opened many doors for her. The following year, she traveled to Britain to learn English and found employment at the Canadian Embassy as a receptionist. In 1970, she was hired at the Quebec Pavilion of the Osaka international exhibition.

It is with this autonomous woman background that she became a mother. Married to an academic at once mathematician and economist with whom she had three daughters, she followed him with the kids to California, where he completed a doctorate. Determined to remain independent, she taught French conversation to academics without holding a degree herself. Back in Quebec, in Rimouski, where her husband returned to a teaching position at UQAR, she worked for the local Radio-Canada station before completing a degree in communications at Laval University. 

After holding different temporary positions in the Accès-Culture network in various districts of Montreal, she finally obtained her permanency two years ago as a cultural agent in Montreal North, at an age when many have already retired. She is making significant efforts to bring people in this community and artists together. Amongst other things, she organized an exhibition of artists from the urban art gallery Fresh Paint and presented the intercultural show "Des Mots sur mesure" and a series of Blues shows. She is currently preparing cultural mediation activities for the fall 2015 inauguration of the public art project "La Vélocité des lieux” (The velocity of places) by the art collective BGL.

Passionate about culture, she plans to keep on sharing her artistic crushes for many years to come.

Denise P. in the Ile-de-la-Visitation Nature-Park