We’re pleased to invite friends and members of Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard to our general meeting, which will be held on Saturday 15 June 2024, 4 pm, at Parc du Portugal. We will have pastéis de nata to eat.
Apart from presenting a report of activities, we will be voting on a proposal (see below) to merge the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Mile End Memories, an organization with a similar mission to ours. This merger, which has been approved by both boards of directors, also requires the adoption of revised by-laws.
Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard is a non-profit organization incorporated 25 June 2003 with the mission to support the community in projects of broad consensus that highlight the points of interest of boulevard Saint-Laurent, all the way from the Old Port of Montréal to Jean-Talon Street. The organization’s founding, on the initiative of the Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL), followed on from the designation of the 6-km stretch of the boulevard between the Old Port and Jean-Talon Street as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996.
Mile End Memories was, at its foundation in 2003, an association; it became a non-profit organization by incorporation on 26 May 2011. Its mission is to work towards creating awareness of and promoting the heritage, history and culture of the Mile End district and its environs; to encourage and facilitate links between individuals and organizations interested in these subjects; to encourage and carry out research projects on the area; to organize activities of commemoration and recognition; and to design, produce and distribute useful information on the heritage, history and culture of Mile End and its environs.
Since 2006, the two organizations have always had at least one person in common on their boards of directors. Over the years, several activities have been organized in collaboration (in particular, walking tours and the creation of the historical panel series “The Main, Always in Tune”). The two organizations’ web sites and accounting have long been handled by the same person. The culture and the vision of the two organizations have evolved together and have always been very similar.
It is proposed to request letters patent of amalgamation for the two organizations.
The organization resulting from the amalgamation will be called Mémoire du Mile End et de La Main / The Main and Mile End Memories. A new mission statement has been written, combining and clarifying the existing missions.
The merged organization will continue to use one, the other, or both of the existing names, Mile End Memories and Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, along with their logos and graphic signatures, in its communications, according to their nature, for at least five years after the amalgamation.
The web sites memoire.mile-end.qc.ca, amisboulevardstlaurent.com, and mainaudioguide.ca will be maintained at these addresses for at least five years, and probably indefinitely thereafter. Their management will be combined.
The merged organization will make efforts to propose activities covering the territory of the National Historic Site of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, both inside and outside the municipal electoral district of Mile End, and to promote the visibility of the National Historic Site.
The memberships of Mile End Memories will be maintained: among others, in Fédération Histoire Québec and the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. The organization will remain a partner of the Laboratoire d’histoire et de patrimoine de Montréal at UQAM.
The merged organization will continue the collaborations that its two constituents have developed with SDCs and commercial associations, with local history societies, with other community groups, and with municipal instances.
The Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard wish you a happy new year 2021 and invite you to discover with them the history and the oddities of the Main
