Abstract
The sounds that we hear, or remember, contribute to the construction of a sense of place and of self. Historians dealing with the auditory world of the past have already established the historicity of sounds by exploring their meanings in the everyday lives of the people. This chapter explores the changing soundscape and the resulting sound politics in a largely deindustrialised and now gentrifying Montreal neighbourhood. In many ways, Point Saint-Charles is ground-zero in Canadian debates around urban poverty, renewal, job loss, community activism and gentrification. For our interviewees, the sounds of the still passing trains are a treasured vestige of the industrial past that once enveloped the neighbourhood. For others, the trains make unwanted and unhealthy noise that detract from the quality of life of residents today.
Do you know my most beautiful memory? It was New Year’s Eve. To celebrate the new-year there were traditions. One of my mother’s traditions was she would open the door at midnight. All the surrounding factories would sound their whistles, the sounds of the factories. All the whistles would go off together, all the CNR trains and all the boats, the boats would go “Mmm.” And it would make a mysterious sound. And the trains going ‘gueding, gueding, gueding’. It created a very mysterious atmosphere. I can’t really describe it any other way. We were fascinated by the sounds. All the sirens, the firemen, all sorts of sirens would go off at midnight. A real celebration that was my neighborhood.
—Élise Chèvrefils-Boucher1
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Chatterjee, P., High, S. (2017). The Deindustrialisation of Our Senses: Residual and Dominant Soundscapes in Montreal’s Point Saint-Charles District. In: Holmes, K., Goodall, H. (eds) Telling Environmental Histories. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63772-3_8
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