Immigration in the United States, plus ça change
August 7, 2014 § 8 Comments
I am doing a bit of research into the Know Nothing movement of the 1840s and 50s in the United States. The Know Nothings were a secret society that eventually evolved into a political party, based on the premise that immigration was bad for the United States. In short, the Know Nothings, who also formed one of the bases of the nascent Republican Party in the late 1850s, were nativists. They believed in a United States for Americans only. We could, of course, note the irony of that statement, given every person not of Native American heritage in this country is of immigrant stock. But, we’ll leave that alone. They were called Know Nothings not because they were ignorant (as my students always suppose), but because, as a secret society and asked about the society replied that they “knew nothing.”
I came across this list of things that Roman Catholics hate about the United States from the Boston Know-Nothing and American Crusader in July 1854. The Know-Nothing and American Crusader was one of the main newspapers of the Know Nothings, and Boston was a major centre of the nativists. Boston was ground zero, in many ways, in the ‘invasion’ of Irish immigrants and refugees in the years of the Famine and afterwards. Here’s the list:
- They HATE our Republic, and are trying to overthrow it.
- They HATE the American Eagle, and it offends them beyond endurance to see it worn as an ornament by Americans.
- They HATE our Flag, as it manifest by their grossly insulting it.
- They HATE the liberty of conscience.
- They HATE the liberty of the Press.
- They HATE the liberty of speech.
- They HATE our Common School system.
- They HATE the Bible, and would blot it out of existence if they could!
- The Priests HATE married life, and yet by them is fulfilled the Scripture, to wit: ‘more are the children or the desolate, than the children of the married wife.’
- They HATE Protestants, and are sworn to exterminate them from our country and the earth.
- They HATE the name of Washington, because he was a Republican and Protestant.
- They HATE all rulers that do not swear allegiance to the Pope of Rome.
- They HATE to be ruled by Americans, and say “WE WILL NOT BE RULED BY THEM!”
- They HATE to support their own paupers and they are left to be supported by the tax paying Americans.
- They HATE, above all, the ‘Know Nothings,’ who are determined to rid this country of their accursed power.
The author of this wonderful list signed his name as “Uncle Sam.” Newspapers in general allowed correspondents to use anonymous pseudonyms in the 19th century, so this isn’t surprising. But the nom de plume of our correspondent is telling of the cause of the Know Nothings.
As I am doing this research, I’m thinking back to my experiences in June, when I was told by a table mate that the AP Reading I was at that I don’t belong in the United States because I “don’t love America” (I don’t “love” Canada, either, for the record). And, thenthen, on the way home, at a layover in Dallas, another traveller, watching the news, told me that all immigrants should be rounded up and deported (this one didn’t know I was an immigrant). And as I watch the drama unfold about the refugee children from Central America in this country, and see the horrible rhetoric coming from the right wing, I can’t help but think that, even if 170 years have passed since “Uncle Sam” published his list of things Catholics hate in The Know-Nothing and American Crusader, in some ways, nothing has changed. The rhetoric of “Uncle Sam” echoes that of some far right politicians, commentators, and regular citizens I’ve seen on Twitter in the past month.
Of course, the Know Nothings were never a majority of Americans, any more than those so violently opposed and hard-hearted to the plight of children today are even close to a majority. The overwhelming majority of Americans then and now do not have a problem with immigration and immigrants. But, then as now, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Nostalgia and Memory: The Long View
July 9, 2014 § 1 Comment
I was listening to Deltron 3030‘s recent album, Event II, the other day. Deltron is a project between producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del The Funky Homosapien and the turntablist, Kid Koala. Their first album, Deltron 3030, came out in 2000 and was a futuristic romp, whereas the new album is more of a dystopian view of the future. But. What struck me whilst listening to this and writing about nostalgia in Griffintown was, well, nostalgia. There is a funny skit in the midst of the album by the American comedy troupe, The Lonely Island, called “Back in the Day.” In it, two old men, “sitting on the stoop of the future” reminisce about how it was back in the day, a day that has yet to happen, I might add.
Nostalgia is a powerful force. I am also in the midst of reading Maria Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. In it, she discusses the Ummayad founder of the Muslim state in Iberia in the 8th century, Abd al-Rahman. He was a rather singular figure, he was the sole survivor of the massacre of the Ummayad’s by the Abbasids in Syria when he was 20. He escaped across Northern Africa, eventually making it to Spain, where he settled in Córdoba. He was overtaken by nostalgia in his exile, however, and even the Great Mosque of Córdoba is an homage to his lost homeland. As he got older, he got more forlorn, writing poetry evoking Syria and he pined for his homeland, even going so far as to re-create his family’s Syrian estate outside Córdoba.
That Abd al-Rahman should be nostalgic for his homeland is not surprising, as any immigrant knows. But I always find it interesting to think of nostalgia and remembrances in ancient times. Nostalgic yearnings run all through the Ancient Greek, Roman, and Persian works that we have today. Carthage was the site of great museums and libraries before the Romans destroyed it in the 2nd century of the Common Era.
Sometimes it feels like we in Western Europe and North America in the late 20th/early 21st centuries invented nostalgia and yearning for an imagined past. Clearly, we did not.
On Immigration, Redux
June 21, 2014 § 2 Comments
In response to my post on immigration and immigrants, my friends and I got into a discussion on Facebook, comparing the political rhetoric in the US, Canada, and the UK. Certainly, attitudes such as that expressed by my Dallas friend exist in Canada and the UK. And there are similarities and differences between the old Anglo-Atlantic triangle. Canada takes in more immigrants per capita than any other nation in the world (bet you didn’t know that) and the United States takes in more immigrants in absolute numbers than any other nation in the world (bet you did know that). Canada, however, while it does have some undocumented immigrants, does not have the same issues as the United States (which likely has the highest number of undocumented people in it) and the United Kingdom. The UK gets the undocumented through Europe and its former empire, as aspirants sneak into the nation, or overstay their visas (if you want a heartbreaking account of the undocumented in the UK, I point you to Chris Cleave’s Little Bee, or, as it’s called in Cleave’s native UK, The Other Hand).
But. There is one fundamental difference between the three nations. In Canada and the United Kingdom, the political parties that pander to racism and anti-immigration positions (and let’s leave the undocumented out of this for now, ok?) are not in the mainstream. Certainly, these types exist in Canada’s governing Conservative Party, but they are not in the centre of the party, at the cabinet table, etc. And in the UK, there are certainly a few in the governing Conservative Party that express these views, but they are also similarly on the margins, and the odious UKIP party is a fringe movement. Whereas, here in the United States, the Republican Party panders to this mindset. It doesn’t mean, of course, that the GOP does much about to tighten immigration laws when in power, but, it still gives credence to arguments such as my Dallas friend’s. It seeks the vote of the likes of him. So, ultimately, anti-immigration positions are very much nearer the mainstream in the United States than in Canada or the United Kingdom.
On Immigration
June 20, 2014 § 8 Comments
Earlier this week, I was told I shouldn’t be living in the United States because I don’t “love America.” Dismissing this comment was easy enough, it came in response to the fact I am not cheering for the US at the World Cup (France, Argentina, and then any underdog, if you must know). But. Yesterday, at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, a wealthy-looking, white, middle-aged man went on a rant about immigrants (not knowing I am one, he assumed because I was also white and middle-class, I must be American). Something was on FoxNews on the TV in the lounge, I wasn’t paying attention. I presume that’s what set this guy off. He told me that immigrants do not belong in the United States, that they do not bring anything to the country, that they’re a drain on the resources of “this great nation.” He opined that no immigrants whatsoever should be let into the country. He didn’t go so far as to suggest they be rounded up and deported, though I have seen that opinion expressed on Twitter a few times. At any rate, when I told him I was an immigrant, he looked a little confused for a second and then said, “Oh, I don’t mean you.” I pointed out he clearly did, he said “all immigrants” are a drain and that “none” should be let in. I walked away, leaving him looking like the idiot he was.
This unsettled me. It’s one thing for an idiot to get mad at me for not cheering for the US in the World Cup. That’s just knee-jerk idiocy. It’s another for a guy to have a well-formulated, if ignorant, argument about the cost of immigration. And before someone dismisses this as “well, that’s Texas,” let me point out that Texas is an immigrant-rich society, and not just Mexicans and other Hispanics, but also South and South East Asians. And, for the most part, Texas, at least the cities, have integrated cultures.
At any rate, I stewed over this the rest of the day and on the flight home to Boston. And then I got a cab home. My cabbie was from Guinea. He couldn’t be much older than his early 30s, and he said he’s been in the US for 11 years, and made sure to note he has a Green Card. We talked about the heat (it was hot here yesterday), the World Cup, and Montréal, and we spoke some in French. I was his last fare of the day, the end of a 12-hour shift, 6am-6pm. The end of a 6-day run driving a cab around Boston and the North Shore. Today, he was up at 3am to get to work at 4am, at Dunkin’ Donuts, where he worked 4-12, as a baker. Tomorrow, he’s back in his cab, 6am-6pm, but he is off Monday. He works 60-70 hours a week driving a cab, and another 8-16 hours baking at Dunkin’ Donuts for a very simple reason: he needs to take care of his parents, his brother, his nieces and nephews back in Guinea. He hasn’t been home in four years, but he keeps working to send money home. Meanwhile, he’s also got a son here in the States, who he gets to see sometimes when he’s not working, though he supports his kid.
We often talk about how tired we are, because we’re always busy, working, etc. But this guy was exhaustion personified. He had dark rings under his eyes, and though he was at least pretending to be happy, his exhaustion came through. And I thought, well, here is the face of immigration to the United States (or Canada. Or Britain. Or France. Or Germany). A guy working himself to the bone at two jobs, partly to get himself ahead a little bit, but also to take care of his son, and to take care of his family back home. He estimated if he just had to worry about himself and his son, he could quit Dunkin’ Donuts and only work 3-4 days a week driving a cab. But, he has responsibilities and obligations.
I enjoyed talking to him, though I feel horrible for him. But I respected his attitude, that he had to do this, it was his responsibility to his son, his parents, his brother, his nieces and nephews. This is the immigrant life. It is not, as my Texan friend claims, collecting welfare (immigrants can’t, just so you know, though refugees are entitled to some support), procreating, and being drug dealers, prostitutes, and terrorists.
Research Note: Playing hockey against priests in Griffintown
June 6, 2014 § Leave a comment
As I noted in yesterday’s post on Frank Hanley, we really do live in a different era today. In one of the chapters of The House of the Irish, I talk about hockey in Griffintown in the 1950s and 60s. I interviewed Gordie Bernier, an old Griffintowner, a few summers ago about his life and growing up in Griff and his thoughts on it today. The previous weekend, he was playing in an old-timers hockey tournament in Pointe-Claire, so clearly it was a major part of his life. I can relate.
Bernier recalled playing with the Christian Brothers who ran the School for Boys in Griff and who liked to play hockey against the young men:
Keep your head up. But the league we had, we were only young…I was only, I think 17 or so, and we were playing against men, so some of the guys were older. It was a good experience….You keep your head up [laughs]. We used to go there, I think 8 in the morning to the rink on Basin, I lived other on Duke, we used to walk with our skates on, by the time we get over there if there was snow, give us the shovels, we had to clear off all the snow, and we’d play from 8 in the morning ‘til closing time, 10 at night. We were still there, play hockey all day at the weekend. Walk back, your ankles [were all swollen and sore].
Don Pidgeon, a man who has done more than anyone to create the memory of Griff as an Irish neighbourhood, also remembers playing the Brothers, and smashing one over the boards of the outdoor rink on Basin Street Park in Griffintown, with a hip check.
The Brothers, obviously, played hard, and they played to win. And the lads of Griffintown were not about to give any quarter, as David O’Neill recalls, the Brothers were
great athletes, and a lot of them liked the rough stuff just as much as the boys, and the older boys used to try to establish themselves among their own friends, and there were a few of the priests who used to give and take as good, or better. That generated the respect from the local community towards the priests, and a lot of people respected the priests for their ability to give and take without any complaining. No punishment, except that you got decked back when you weren’t looking.
Certainly, then, this was a different era, when decking a priest, or getting hit back as hard, if not harder, was a means by which the young men and priests earned each others respect, and that of their friends and colleagues, and the wider community.
Research Note: The Legend of “Banjo” Frank Hanley
June 5, 2014 § 1 Comment
Frank Hanley, 1909-2006, in 1942
I met Frank Hanley a couple of times back in the early aughts, including one afternoon in Grumpy’s on lower Crescent St. He was holding court, drinking, I think, a club soda. He was, at this point, already in his 90s. But he was irrepressible. Even though he was 96 or 97 when he died in 2006, I was still surprised to hear the news. He got the nickname sometime back in the 1920s or 30s when he was a minstrel player in Montreal, or so he told me. He didn’t know how to play the instrument. Hanley is the kind of guy that doesn’t exist anymore, which is kind of sad. He was the city councillor for St. Ann’s Ward from 1940 until 1970. He was also the MNA for St. Ann’s from 1948-70. He didn’t belong to any parties, he was always an independent. He tended to side with ‘Le Chef’, Maurice Duplessis, in the National Assembly during the 1950s. But I just never could hold that against him. He also despised Jean Drapeau, Mayor of Montreal from 1954-7 and from 1960-86.
Griffintown was left to die in the 1960s whilst the other neighbourhoods of the sud-ouest were given makeovers, mostly in the form of slum clearances and the building of housing projects in the Pointe, Burgundy, and Saint-Henri. Griff got the rénovations urbaines part, but that was it. Nothing was built to replace what was torn down. And it was not because of the 1963 re-zoning of the area as ‘light industrial.’ All of St. Ann’s Ward was, as were other parts of the sud-ouest. Griffintown, quite simply, did not attract the attention of hôtel de ville and Drapeau’s team of rénovationistes as a site of investment. The only voice demanding Griff get some love was its councillor: Hanley. Local legend has it that Griff was left to die to hurt Hanley’s re-election chances, such was Drapeau’s enmity for him.
Anyway. Hanley was an old school populist politicians, his first real concern was his constituents. And his constituents tended to be poor in Griffintown and the Pointe. He raised money for an emergency fund to help out his constituents when they ran into trouble. Most of this money was raised from other constituents. Occasionally, of course, a few dollars would fall into his own pocket. While today we would shake our heads at this or perhaps bring Hanley up on charges of corruption, in his era, no one had any problem with that.
In the summer of 1967, Hanley ran into trouble with Revenue Canada. He had been handing out over $150 per week to his constituents in trouble for much of the past decade, maybe longer. And, of course, he took a bit for himself. So Revenue Canada threatened to take his house at 500 Dublin St. in Pointe-Saint-Charles. His constituents from Griffintown and Pointe-Saint-Charles had other ideas, and they showed up one morning in Hanley’s yard and proclaimed the ‘Republic of Hanley’ in his front yard.
In the end, Hanley and Revenue Canada reached a settlement.
Expensive Bikes and the sud-ouest of Montreal
June 2, 2014 § 4 Comments
I was in Montreal for a nano-second last week, in and out in 22 hours. As I sat Friday morning sipping a proper café au lait and a croissant amande at Pain D’Oré at Atwater Market, a woman kitted out in cycling gear pulled up outside the boulangerie. She took off her gloves and helmet, and then leaned her very expensive bike up against the shop’s window and came in to get her coffee and croissant. I thought to myself that things had changed in the sud-ouest of Montreal.
Not too long ago, in response to a post on this blog about gentrification, my friend Max, who is a gentrifier, and has bought a place in a gentrifying neighbourhood, chided me for being so dead-set against gentrification. I am not necessarily. But I think we need to problematise the process, to recognise what we’ve lost, and so on, to not simply jump into the future unquestioningly. But. He pointed out some benefits about gentrification in his neighbourhood: he could find a decent cup of coffee and he said hipsters, as annoying as they generally are, are safe. He doesn’t have to worry about his wife walking home at night.
I thought about that as I watched this woman leave her expensive bike outside the boulangerie, unlocked. When she came back out with coffee and croissant, she moved her bike to her table on the terrasse. I lived in the sud-ouest for the majority of my time in Montreal, mostly in Pointe-Saint-Charles, but also in Saint-Henri on the Last Ungentrified Block in Saint-Henri ™. The rue Saint-Ferdinand, north of Saint-Antoine remains ungentrified. I drove up it last week just to make sure. But the streets on either side of Saint-Ferdinand ARE gentrified, so, too, is the block on Saint-Ferdinand below my old one. So are large swaths of Saint-Antoine. And so on. The first place I lived in the Pointe wasn’t. There are housing projects on the block, and my place backed onto the asphalt back lot of a project (Montreal’s projects, I might note, at least in the sud-ouest are not great towering cinderblock apartments, they are usually no more than 3-4 story apartment blocks. They usually fit into their neighbourhoods). My second place was definitely gentrified, as, by that point in my life, I was no longer a struggling student, but a tenured CÉGEP professor.
And still. There is no way in hell I would ever leave an expensive bike outside a boulangerie at Atwater Market. I never left my car unlocked. Or my front door. I keep a close eye on my computer bag. Do I just trust people less? Or had I just lived in the Pointe longer than this woman? But, yet, her bike was completely safe, and not because I was sitting in the window. About 15 people passed it as she got her coffee and croissant. And no one even gave the unlocked, very expensive bike a second look.
Has the sud-ouest changed that much? Or was her bike simply in a high traffic area and safe? I can’t decide.
I should also point out, for American readers, that gentrification in Canada tends not to get caught up in questions of race like it does here in the US. Most gentrifying and gentrified neighbourhoods of Canadian cities are places where inner-city working-class white people lived. So while class is still a very prevalent issue, race tends not to be. There are exceptions. of course, such as in the traditional Anglo Black neighbourhood of Montreal, Little Burgundy, which is undergoing a massive shift right now. But, on the whole, discussions surrounding gentrification don’t centre around notions of race. Then again, few things in Canada do, at least publicly. But that doesn’t mean that race and skin colour aren’t central components to Canadian life.
The Out-Sourcing of Memory
May 27, 2014 § 2 Comments
Four or five years ago, we saw Josh Ritter at La Sala Rossa in Montreal. Sala is one of my favourite places in the world to see a gig. In fact, I’d rank it just below the legendary Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, with its bouncing dance floor. Anyway. We made our way up to the front which, frankly, wasn’t that difficult, Josh Ritter fans aren’t exactly scary people. But after Ritter took the stage with his excellent Royal City Band, something strange happened. The crowd around us became younger. A lot of early 20-somethings. And very female. They were cooing over Ritter himself, and his bassist, Zack Hickman. This had happened to me once before, at a Grapes of Wrath gig in c. 1992. The teeney-boppers at this all ages gig in Ottawa went nuts when the Grapes hit the stage and nearly mauled my companion to death. She required first aid.
Anyway. This Josh Ritter gig happened just after cellphones began to be equipped with decent phones. There was still some novelty in them. But all these 2o-somethings watched the gig through the lens of their phones, snapping picture after picture of Ritter and Hickman. It got incredibly frustrating, especially when they stepped on us to get a better shot. But I just felt sorry for them, their entire experience of Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band was mediated through their cellphone camera lens. They wouldn’t take any memories away from the show. Not that I really did, either. I remember getting stepped on and all the 20-somethings with their camera phones.
But photos aren’t memories. I recently went through some old photos for some reason I no longer recall. Included in these files (all photos are on the hard drive of my MacBook now, of course) were pictures of a trip to Tanglewood in the summer of 2006 with my then-girlfriend, now wife. I have very distinct memories of that day. It was the July 4 weekend, we went with her sister and her parents, to see Garrison Keilor and a live performance of A Prairie Home Companion. I had no idea what any of this meant, frankly, I’m Canadian and lived in Canada then. And avoided NPR and PBS like the plague (I’ve modified my stance somewhat since). But in looking at these photos, I found they didn’t necessarily match up with my memories. In fact, I think I’ve conflated two or three trips to Tanglewood in my memories of that day. I think this because I remember the night time stars and sitting with Margo by ourselves looking up at them hearing classical music. But that couldn’t have happened in 2006, it was the time we saw Yo-Yo Ma with the Boston Pops in 2008 or 2009, after we got married. But such is memory, it’s dynamic and our memories evolve over time.
Indeed, this is the point made in this article on NPR.org (so clearly I’ve modified my views of public radio in the US) today by a psychologist, Linda Henkel. She notes exactly that,
It’s also a mistake to think of photographs as memories. The photo will remain the same each time to you look at it, but memories change over time. Henkel likens it relying on photos to remember your high school graduation.
“Each time I remember what my high school graduation was like, I might be coloring and changing that memory because of my current perspective — because of new ideas that I have or things that I learned afterwards,” she says. “Human memory is much more dynamic than photographs are capable of.”
The larger context of the article is our addiction to taking photos on our cameras, due to its simplicity. No kidding. I have over 1,000 photographs on my iPhone. And I’ve probably deleted another 1,000, some because they’re bad, some because they’re not all that remarkable in the long-term. And this from a guy who probably took a grand total of 50 photographs from 1989-2006. We’re hyper-memorialising everything. I presume I’m not all that different than anyone else in how often I look at old photographs, which is close to never, unless I’m looking for something. And yet, every time I see an old photo, my memory of the events doesn’t entirely jive with the photographic record.
Henkel did an interesting experiment with her students. She sent her students to the university art museum and instructed them to view some items and photograph others. Then she gave them a sort of test when they got back on their memories:
[She] found what she called a “photo-taking impairment effect.”
“The objects that they had taken photos of — they actually remembered fewer of them, and remembered fewer details about those objects. Like, how was this statue’s hands positioned, or what was this statue wearing on its head. They remembered fewer of the details if they took photos of them, rather than if they had just looked at them,” she says.
Henkel says her students’ memories were impaired because relying on an external memory aid means you subconsciously count on the camera to remember the details for you.
“As soon as you hit ‘click’ on that camera, it’s as if you’ve outsourced your memory,” she says. “Any time we … count on these external memory devices, we’re taking away from the kind of mental cognitive processing that might help us actually remember that stuff on our own.”
And so I come back to those early 20-something girls at the Josh Ritter gig in Montreal on a cold, snowy February night four or so years ago. What do they remember from that night? Probably next to nothing, they outsourced it all to their phones. But, of course, the phones we had in 2010 compared to the phones in 2014. The camera in my two year old iPhone 4s is infinitely better than the camera that was in my then-state-of-the-art Motorola Razr. So, chances are, their photos are long lost. And they just have a vague recollection of a gig.
Compare that with an old friend of mine who, whilst bored and sick this week, attempted to reconstruct her entire concert-going life over the past 25 years. Relying largely on her memory, and aided by the internet and some photos, she did manage to reconstruct most of her concert-going life. Why? Because she didn’t outsource her memory to her phone. Largely because we didn’t have phones to take pictures on (or even digital cameras, for that matter) in 1992.
Race, Class, and Food Insecurity
May 21, 2014 § 5 Comments
When we lived in Pointe-Saint-Charles in Montreal, we lived about two doors down from a community garden in the shadows of the massive Église Saint-Charles. That community garden had been there as long as I could remember, it pre-dated my first residence in the Pointe back in 2002-4. The people who used it were the poor, working-class and marginalised Irish and French Canadians who lived in the Pointe. But, by about 2009 or 2010, the garden had been taken over by the gentrifiers, forcing out the old school urban harvesters. Many of these gentrifiers thought they were new and unique in gardening in an inner-city neighbourhood. Indeed, this is something I saw over and over again in Montreal, on the Plateau, Saint-Henri, the Pointe, and other neighbourhoods, as hipsters discovered the benefits of community gardens.
But they were hardly new ideas in old working-class neighbourhoods, particularly in the Pointe. The Pointe had long had community gardens. Aside from this one in on the rue Island, there was also a bigger one in the shadows of the railway viaduct along the rue Knox. And the problems arise when the original inhabitants of the Pointe were forced out of these gardens by the gentrifiers. The gardens were used to supplement diets, obviously. I also noticed something else when I lived in the Pointe in the early part of the past decade and when I was in Saint-Henri mid-decade. In both neighbourhoods, the local IGA (grocery store), both owned by the same family, the Topettas, opened new, glitzy stores. The IGAs in the Pointe and Saint-Henri had been in grotty store fronts, on rue du Centre in the Pointe, and rue Notre-Dame in Saint-Henri. When the new IGA opened in the Pointe c. 2002 and in Saint-Henri in 2005-6, I noticed a lot of low income families wandering around the stores with a slightly dazed look on their faces, complaining about rising prices. This was ameliorated some by the opening of the big Super C at Atwater Market, which generally had much lower prices than either IGA.
I was thinking about all of this as I was reading an excellent article on TheGrio about food insecurity and food gentrification. The article was written by Mikki Kendall, an African American feminists in the States, about the process of food gentrification. Kendall writes about having grown up poor and eating the more undesirable cuts of meat, like hamhocks, neck bones, and the like. She recalls her grandmother being an expert at turning “turning offal into delicious.” Kendall notes the gentrification of what I call poor people’s food. As haute cuisine chefs re-discover these traditionally less desirable foods and turn them into fancy dishes for the wealthy, it drives up the prices of these cuts.
[As an aside, I can’t help but wonder if the joke is ultimately on the wealthy eating these cuts of meat at expensive restaurants and I think of Timothy Taylor’s brilliant début novel, Stanley Park, which recounts, in part, the story of Jeremy Papier, a chef and restaurauteur in Vancouver. Papier favours local ingredients and culture and comes to rely on animals trapped in Stanley Park for his fancy restaurant on the border of the Downtown Eastside, the poorest urban neighbourhood in Canada.]
But to return to Kendall and the IGA and community gardens in Pointe-Saint-Charles: Kendall notes that with the rising cost of these traditional cuts of meat used by the poor comes an inability to purchase them:
Yet, as consumers range further and further afield from their traditional diets, each new “discovery” comes at the expense of another marginalized community. Complaints about the problem are often met with, “Well, eat something else that you can afford” as though the poor have a wealth of options, and are immune to dietary restrictions based on religion, allergies, access, or storage capabilities.
So, ultimately, the poor are left to eat processed food, which isn’t good for any of us. That is the only thing that is easily accessible. When I was student, I noted with deep and bitter irony that the cheapest meal option was often McDonalds. Or, if I went to the grocery store, aside from Ramen noodles (a processed food I cannot stand), the cheapest option was Kraft Dinner (or Mac & Cheese for you Americans), another slightly vile processed food (full confession: KD remains my comfort food of choice, I import large quantities of it from Canada).
And the end result of all of this bad, processed food is the toll it takes on the health of the poor, both in urban centres and rural areas. In the United States, African Americans are, on the whole, poorer than everyone else. In Canada, it is the aboriginals. It is no coincidence that food insecurity hits African Americans in the US hard. It is also no coincidence that rates of heart disease, hyper-tension, diabetes, and obesity are much higher in African American and Canadian aboriginal communities than in the rest of both nations.
We can and must do better.
Griffintown and the Importance of Urban Planning
May 12, 2014 § 6 Comments
This will be the first of a series of posts on Griffintown this week. I was in Montréal last week, mostly to finish up a bit of research on the Griffintown book, which, at least has a title, ‘The House of the Irish’: History & Memory in Griffintown, Montreal, 1900-2013. The last chapter of the manuscript deals with what I call the post-memory of Griffintown, the period of the past half-decade or so of redevelopment and gentrification of the neighbourhood. Griffintown was in desperate need of redevelopment, so let’s get that out of the way first and foremost. A large swath of near-vacant city blocks next to the Old Port, along the North Bank of the Lachine Canal, and down the hill from downtown, it was inevitable that it would attract attention.
My problem was never with redevelopment per se, then. My problem was with unsustainable development, willful neglect of the environment, of the landscape of the neighbourhood, and with blatant cash grabs by condo developers, and tax grabs on the part of the Ville de Montréal. And so that’s what we now have in Griffintown, for the most part.
In between conducting oral history interviews with my former allies in the fight for sustainable redevelopment, I wandered around Griffintown, Pointe-Saint-Charles, and Saint-Henri a fair bit. This was both professional interest and because I lived in the Pointe and Saint-Henri. I also had an interesting discussion with a clerk at Paragraphe Books on McGill College. Then there were the interviews.
Housing development, Copenhagen.
My friend Scott MacLeod says that many of the condos going up in Griffintown look like “Scandinavian social housing.” I think he’s onto something. This is a picture from a housing development in Copenhagen. It is quite similar to what’s going up in Griffintown, with one key difference. In Copenhagen, there is green space. In Griffintown, there is none.
Part of the genius of Montreal is an almost utter lack of urban planning on
Griffintown condos.
the grand scale. And in the case of Griffintown, the city has been almost negligent in its approach. During its overzealous attempt to approve any and all projects proposed by developers in Griffintown from about 2006 to 2010, the Ville de Montréal overlooked a few key components for the new neighbourhood: parks and schools. It was only after 2010 that the city thought that maybe it should earmark some land for, you know, parks. Schools? Who needs them?
Matthew Barlow 