Permeable Boundaries: Negotiation, Resistance, and Transgression of Street Space in Saint-Henri, Quebec, 1875-1905

Abstract

In late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Saint-Henri, the street was a contested space. The local elite's municipal management of public space conflicted with the popular social use of the streets, both in the design and promotion of the main commercial street, rue Notre-Dame, and in the moral regulation of street behaviour. Political negotiation was limited to male property owners, for restrictions on the municipal franchise in a bourgeois liberal democracy excluded most women, many tenants, and all street vagrants. Mounting public debt resulting from the promotional politics of expropriation and bonusing incited popular resistance and, in 1905, led to annexation to the city of Montreal. The local elite directed the use of public space in ways that conformed with their private perspectives. Local by-laws and policing efforts largely succeeded in eliminating or displacing criminal and disruptive behaviour on rue Notre-Dame by day, but nightly disturbances and illicit activities were common on adjoining residential streets, in hidden areas, and in the neighbouring community of Sainte-Cunégonde. A wider range of primary sources, including photographs and sketches, are crucial to disclosing the class and gendered nature of street life.

Research methods in visual and comparative analysis: transportation and sociability in Saint-Henri, Quebec and Lowell, Massachusetts, 1905–45

“…Third, primary visual sources, such as photographs and sketches, are invaluable in that they play an essential role in revealing the nature of street life when viewed critically. Promotional photographs, for instance, usually present class harmony, yet the historian must rely on newspaper accounts and sketches, as well as on municipal archival documents and popular literature, for depictions of class conflict and crime (Lord, 2005). Baldwin employs promotional photographs, such as a postcard view of Main Street in 1899 (1999: 41) and people lingering on residential streets such as Charles Street in 1906Street in (1999, Gold Street in the 1890s (1999: 72), and children playing in State Street in 1906Street in (1999 without an analytical approach.…”

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

“…However, the idea expressed in the Toronto Globe editorial excerpted at the beginning of this article—that streets were places for business, not demonstrations—was opposed by older but evolving popular traditions of parading and protesting, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not 5 . The legitimate use of public space was highly contested in nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century North America, and collective violence was not uncommon (Goheen 1994, 430; Ryan 1997; Heron and Penfold 2005, 4–27; Lord 2005, 17; Fyson 2009). While disciplined parades of striking street railway workers on city streets stayed well within the legal boundaries of the streetplace order, raucous gatherings of strike sympathizers that prevented streetcars from running over rights‐of‐way granted by municipal authorities clearly did not; nor did those who committed violent attacks on street railway property or on replacement workers who operated the cars during a strike.…”