Fondation

This article is a reflection on the experience of the soundwalk Marguerite: la pierre. Conceived by artist Émilie Monnet, Marguerite: la pierre retraces the life of Marguerite Duplessis, the first person to be enslaved and the first Indigenous person to have subsequently fought legally for her freedom in New France. On May 7, twenty participants gathered at the PHI Foundation in the company of Émilie Monnet and her invited guest, Mélanie O’Bomsawin, to do the soundwalk together. 

Duplessis once lived in Old Montréal, a neighbourhood built from stones that was founded by French settlers in the 17th century. Indigenous knowledge suggests that stones are our oldest ancestors and thus bear the stories of the land. Within this context, we walked through the streets where Duplessis lived, confronting the dark histories that are held within the stone facades. The walk was followed by commentary from Monnet and O’Bomsawin, who has explored the memory of stones in her multidisciplinary artwork.

There is an idea around the history of colonization that Canadians were “good colonizers,” suggesting that our history in Canada was not as violent as it was in the United States. While there is a well-documented history of slavery in the United States, most Canadians do not know that slavery existed in New France from 1629 to 1833. This comes as no surprise, considering this aspect of history is rarely mentioned in school curricula. In fact, there were often specific efforts to obscure this history. For instance, the English translation of Québec historian Marcel Trudel’s L’esclavage au Canada français, which caused a scandal when it was first published in 1960, was delayed by fifty years. [1]

According to Trudel, Québec’s enslaved people were approximately two-thirds Indigenous. Black slaves cost about double. Slaves were seen as a symbol of status and were more often domestic servants in the city than field labourers in the country. 

While walking through Old Montréal, now one of the city’s most prized tourist attractions, we were presented with a stark juxtaposition. The soundwalk conjured images of a story concealed by centuries of colonization. As we walked along Saint-Paul Street towards the location where Duplessis lived, the overwhelming smell of eucalyptus emanated from an elegant hotel. We passed tourists and business people eating sandwiches and sipping sangria, others taking photos of old buildings on their smartphones. Through no fault of their own, they are oblivious because the history of this place is disguised. 

At Place d’Youville, a stone monument stands about 25-feet-tall, celebrating early settlers. Meanwhile, Old Montréal’s sole record of Marie-Joseph Angélique and the abolition of slavery in Québec is a one-foot wide bronze plaque inaccessibly placed on Vaudreuil Street next to some garbage cans. Angélique was an enslaved Black woman who was tortured and executed after being accused of setting fire to her owner’s home. The soundwalk experience was both enlightening and heartbreaking in every way.

[1] Neale McDevitt. “The untold story of slavery in Canada and Montreal,” McGill Reporter (2017), https://reporter.mcgill.ca/the-untold-story-of-slavery-in-canada-and-montreal/. 

[2] Paulette Regan, “A Transformative Framework for Decolonizing Canada: A Non-Indigenous Approach,” paper presented at Indigenous Governance (IGOV) Doctoral Student Symposium (University of Victoria, Canada), 52.