A “funeral” walk held for “missing cultural places” in Montreal

In Montreal, dozens of people braved the heat on Sunday to participate in a “funeral walk” organized in order to highlight the memory of “missing cultural places”.

The goal: to denounce the closure of independent performance halls, a phenomenon that the organizers of the march associate, among other things, with the SUVGGEUM and the current debate on the regulations about noise.

This march was organized on the occasion of the Festival Suoni Per Il Popolo – which this year celebrates its 25^e Birthday – by the collective Reverberations of a crisis: a sound survey on housing in Montreal.

It is more than time to defend the cultural specificity of Montrealslices this group in a press release.

The walk therefore stopped in front of the places of old rooms like the Divan Orange, boulevard Saint-Laurent, the time for musical performances.

These deceased spaces participated in offering a space for original and diverse and diverse expression, meeting and creation for entire communitiessays the collective.

The cugibi was also visited. Kabane77 (a multidisciplinary cultural place project carried by Montreal artists who has not succeeded) and the reverse (a loft created and managed by musicians) were also from the route.

Different people from the cultural environment intervened during the walk, including Sergio Da Silva, co -owner of the Turbo Haus and the Blue Dog, Geneviève Gauthier, Saxophonist and Ivan Bamford, drummer and percussionist.

Between the houses of culture and the district of shows

According to the collective, the municipal administration abandons performance halls for the benefit of more local initiatives or very large -scale projects.

The City of Montreal, it looks like, organized its cultural policy so that there are things that happen in neighborhoods in the libraries and houses of culture or if not in the district of showsjudge Hubert Gendron-Blais, member of the collective.

But between the two, having a more independent, more underground cultural life, to present music sometimes a little less popular, it seems that it is no longer possible.

Hubert Gendron-Blais thinks that this phenomenon has consequences not only for the public but also for local artists.

It is as if we were told: “Wait in being big enough to play the jazz festival or [Francos]and then if not, practice in your room. ” [Mais le groupe] Arcade Fire, he had to play in small rooms like that to make himself known. You have to leave somewhere.

The case of the tulip

During the last year, the case of the La Tulipe performance hall, in the borough of the Plateau-Mont-Royal, made a lot of noise, thus highlighting the situation of cultural places in general.

A judicial turmoil between the managers of this room and the owner of the adjacent building has lasted for a few years, the latter complaining about the noise from the sound appliances of the room and its customers.

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In September 2024, a judgment of the Court of Appeal which ordered the Tulip to stop causing noise that could be heard in the adjacent building caused the (perhaps temporary) closure of this performance hall.

The city had then promised to act. After a few months of waiting-and impatience for certain citizens and traders-, the arrondissement of the Mont-Royal plateau announced at the beginning of the month that it would allow the performance halls to emit more noise outside their walls.

In March, the City of Montreal held public consultations on a nightlife policy project, the objective of which is to attract tourists and invigorate the local economy. Thus, the municipal authorities wish Allow the opening hours of shops to optimize the commercial offer and to stimulate economic activity in the animated neighborhoods at night.

With information from Marie-Christine Bouillon, Marie-Josée Paquette-Comeau and The Canadian press