Art in the City of Saints
Montreal anthology blends travelogue with memoir
Cities are in a state of constant flux, and unpredictable economic shifts will often have far-reaching reverberations on urban geography, immigration, and housing. The sector which seems to get short shrift by most urbanist assessments — but which experiences these effects no less acutely — are the beleaguered arts industries trying to survive.
“There was still a feeling that making art was possible when I moved here five years ago,” Madi Haslam says during our conversation about the changes Montreal has undergone. “Of course, everybody will tell you that you’ve missed the true iteration of the city by the time you arrive.”
Haslam moved to Montreal in 2017 from Halifax and took a factchecking position at Maisonneuve, the Canadian periodical that describes itself as the New Yorker for a younger generation of reader. The magazine has become something of a bellwether for determining the future careers of CanLit luminaries, but it’s most famous calling card might be its “Letters From Montreal” column. Shepherded into existence by then editor-in-chief Drew Nelles in 2011, the conceit of the column remains elegantly uncomplicated — writers, artists, musicians and journalists pen laconic letters reflecting on some facet of their lives unfolding within the historic city.
Those letters have now been released in an anthology overseen by Haslam, who is now the outgoing editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve. Featuring a remarkable array of talent — Correy Baldwin, Sejla Rizvic, Sara Black McCulloch, Jason Freure, Ziya Jones, Cason Sharpe, Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt, Will Keats-Osorn, and André Picard are but a small fraction of the fortyseven writers assembled — the letters attest to the micro and macrolevel upheavals its various contributors have endured.
Whether exploring the colonialist history of Ville-Marie/Tiohtià:ke, historical and contemporary language tensions, or Bill 21, the contentious religious-neutrality law in Quebec, “Letters from Montreal” contains unforgettable writing about city life in the tradition of Robert Walser’s “Berlin Stories” and Rudolph Wurlitzer’s “Hard Travel to Sacred Places” (such books blend the travelogue with the memoir, and examine how the psyche is influenced by the specificities of a location). As Haslam writes in her introduction, the authors in the compact anthology “are on the verge of something: a new relationship, a bitter breakup, a big move, or aprofound loss. They make sense of those changes by watching how their inner lives refract against their surroundings.”
Haslam believes that there is a shortage of urgent writing in Canada that also does not take itself too seriously. “These letters are grappling with some monumental moments in people’s lives, but there’s a feeling of lightness and transience that carries through it,” she says. “There are also political threads that are present in an accessible way to readers who normally encounter them through headlines. They get to see the way those issues play out on the ground.” In one letter, the pandemic shutters a queer safe space, but its clientele find novel ways to maintain contact; another piece describes the 2012 Quebec strikes against austerity measures in more vivid detail than news coverage of the event might have otherwise captured.
Haslam commissioned 10 new pieces for the collection that were “representative of the exciting, new generation of voices that are currently shaping the literary scene in Montreal,” and include poignant reflections by Heather O’Neill, H Felix Chau Bradley, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, Eva Crocker, and Tara McGowan Ross.
“I wasn’t really trying to sneak any philosophical message,” Haslam notes about her curation of the letters. “Certainly, the noticing of the patterns comes after the fact. One of my favourite parts of editing magazines is seeing the way the pieces inadvertently speak to each other.”
The decision was made to organize the letters in the order they were published in the magazine because a distinct story was organically emerging about how the city was gentrifying. “We are in a rental crisis and it is having an impact on our culture,” Haslam says. “It’s no coincidence that it’s mentioned in multiple letters.”
The letter that embodies this sense of uncertainty the most is Rosie Long Decter’s “The Shape of a Scene,” a rumination on how art and culture are built from the ground up within urban centres. “Prioritizing cultural and social capital over economics opens up space for alternative modes of art and care,” Decter writes, before recognizing that it can also “foster competition and betrayal” and that “hierarchies emerge; abuse goes unchecked; patterns of marginalization persist.”
Decter ends her musings on a tenuous note, describing how art is built around surplus energy that cannot be otherwise channelled into professional or domestic spaces. “Scenes are shaped by material circumstances,” she writes, hopeful that artists will continue to find a way to exhibit their creations even if they live in economically trying environments.
Haslam shares many of these concerns, and believes that Toronto and Vancouver are facing even more accelerated versions of these struggles. What makes the case of Montreal’s current growing pains unique is that its historical affordability had meant that people flocked to the city to have all-consuming creative practices.
“Art making and Montreal are inseparable in terms of city life, and not hidden away,” Haslam reflects. “We’ve held onto that longer than other cities in Canada, but studio spaces are disappearing, independent venues and galleries are closing. The city has become more hostile to everyone. We’ll see less great art being produced if this continues.”