Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal's Public Memories, 1891-1930

Jeffrey J. Cormier is an assistant professor of sociology at Queen’s
University.

Alan Gordon has done an excellent job of bringing to light the often
neglected history that accompanies many of the public monuments
scattered around the Island of Montreal. Monuments and statues that we
walk past but hardly take notice of—such as the statue of Scottish
poet Robbie Burns or the monuments to the early French colonist Sieur
Dollar des Ormeaux, Father of Confederation George-Йtienne Cartier, and
Montreal founder Sieur de Maisonneuve—which are in fact lasting
testaments to Canada’s past. Yet these monuments do not speak with a
single harmonious voice about a continuous heroic past. Instead, Gordon
often reminds us throughout his analysis that, like Canadian history
more generally, the history of Montreal’s monuments has been
contentious and controversial, mixing elements of nationalism,
patriotism, imperialism, and elitism with concrete, steel, and bronze.

What is at stake, according to Gordon, is the power to shape public
memory. Whether it is a battle between the British imperialists of the
early 1900s and the countervailing forces of Canadian nationalists on
the English side over a Boer War memorial, or the struggle between
liberal or rouge nationalism and ultramontanism on the French side over
a monument to an 1837 patriot, the history behind Montreal’s monuments
is as diverse as the various social groups that were living in the city
between 1891 and 1930. These included groups usually excluded from
public monuments (i.e., the Irish, the Jews, Native Canadians, women,
and the working class). Power to define what counts as public memory,
says Gordon, is often directly related to social and political power.

Making Public Pasts is a book as much for the general reader interested
in Montreal history as it is for someone specializing in the field of
nationalism.