Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighbourhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighbourhood that is home to the city-s English-speaking Black community, face each other across Montreal-s Lachine Canal, once an artery around which work and industry in Montreal were clustered and by which these two communities were formed and divided.
Deindustrializing Montreal challenges the deepening divergence of class and race analysis by recognizing the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles, and racial inequality. Fundamentally, deindustrialization is a process of physical and social ruination as well as part of a wider political project that leaves working-class communities impoverished and demoralized. The structural violence of capitalism occurs gradually and out of sight, but it doesn-t play out the same for everyone. Point Saint-Charles was left to rot until it was revalorized by gentrificatio
