The next annual general meeting of the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard will be held on Wednesday evening, 15 March 2017, at the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Come hear Yves Desjardins’s talk on the municipal elections of 1934, have a bite to eat and meet other friends of the Main.
Waiting room of the Seigler (Laurier) Clinic, 1933.
Archives de la Ville de Montréal, VM94-Z97
Mile End Jewish history: the election of 1934 in Laurier Ward
Talk by Yves Desjardins
Spring 1934. The Great Depression of the 1930s is at its worst. Camillien Houde is about to take back the mayoralty of Montreal. His supporters and opponents combat fiercely in the city’s districts.
One of them is exceptional: Laurier Ward, i.e., the southern part of today’s Mile End. A “national unity” candidate, Omer Langlois, is running against the incumbent Jewish councillor, Max Seigler. The campaign is impassionned and violent. A recently opened municipal medical clinic (corner of Mont-Royal and Henri-Julien, now occupied by Jeunesses musicales du Canada) is the focal point of the storm.
Yves Desjardins is an urban history researcher and a member of the board of Mile End Memories. His book Histoire du Mile End will be published by Septentrion in May.
This talk was previously presented by Mile End Memories in April 2016.
- Wednesday 15 March 2017, from 5:30 pm
- Talk at 6 pm – followed by the annual general meeting of the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard
- Museum of Jewish Montreal, 4040 Saint-Laurent Blvd., Montréal (corner of Duluth Av. – 55 bus)
- Free, no reservation required
- Presentation in French, discussion in English and in French