Michèle Dagenais

L’attraction qu’exerce l’eau sur les citoyens de Montréal, ville sise au centre d’un riche bassin hydrographique et enserrée entre le Saint-Laurent et la rivière des Prairies, est facile à comprendre, autant l’eau consommée au quotidien que l’eau polluée par les activités humaines et industrielles, que l’eau vive. Cet attrait pour l’eau est aussi alimenté par une certaine nostalgie à l’égard d’un passé idéalisé où les populations urbaines auraient vécu en harmonie, voire en symbiose avec l’eau.L’historienne Michèle Dagenais aborde ici l’eau dans sa globalité et sous ses diverses formes, en examinant ensemble les cours d’eau qui ceinturent l’île et l’eau qui coule dans les réseaux souterrains. L’eau est considérée dans ses dimensions concrètes et tangibles, comme élément physique qui se transforme avec le développement de Montréal en même temps qu’il y contribue. L’eau est aussi examinée sur le plan socioculturel, comme une composante cruciale dans la production et la transformation de l’espace montréalais.L’auteur examine les principaux aménagements dont l’eau a fait l’objet au cours des deux cents dernières années. En somme, elle nous raconte l’histoire de Montréal dans ses rapports avec les éléments naturels, au premier rang desquels se trouve l’eau.

Une histoire environnementale

Montréal et l'Eau

Irene Maver

Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City considers the roles played by local institutions and particular processes that shaped the urban fabric. It rediscovers from models and maps the constituent dynamics of cities since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and demonstrates how patterns evolved in the way services and locations were organized; how urban transformation was underpinned by structural development, and how the municipal workforce became an integral part of the agencies of change. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City suggests that municipal experiences are central to the development of urban studies. Its focus of analysis ranges across Europe and the Americas from high-ranking bureaucrats to firefighters, engineers to accountants, and town clerks to public servants. Each essay provides detailed information on how change was formulated or resisted within the administrative apparatus, offering insight into a sector of the 'white-collar' class and the degree of commitment to public values often at times of social and political upheaval. They explore the course of relationships between local and central government, and the shifting bounds of municipal interventionism over a broad period; whilst incorporating a social history approach to interpret the day-to-day responsibilities and routine of administration.

New Historic Approaches

Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City

Stéphane Castonguay

One of the oldest metropolitan areas in North America, Montreal has evolved from a remote fur trading post in New France into an international center for services and technology. A city and an island located at the confluence of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers, it is uniquely situated to serve as an international port while also providing rail access to the Canadian interior. The historic capital of the Province of Canada, once Canada’s foremost metropolis, Montreal has a multifaceted cultural heritage drawn from European and North American influences. Thanks to its rich past, the city offers an ideal setting for the study of an evolving urban environment. Metropolitan Natures presents original histories of the diverse environments that constitue Montreal and it region. It explores the agricultural and industrial transformation of the metropolitan area, the interaction of city and hinterland, and the interplay of humans and nature. The fourteen chapters cover a wide range of issues, from landscape representations during the colonial era to urban encroachments on the Kahnawake Mohawk reservation on the south shore of the island, from the 1918–1920 Spanish flu epidemic and its ensuing human environmental modifications to the urban sprawl characteristic of North America during the postwar period. Situations that politicize the environment are discussed as well, including the economic and class dynamics of flood relief, highways built to facilitate recreational access for the middle class, power-generating facilities that invade pristine rural areas, and the elitist environmental hegemony of fox hunting. Additional chapters examine human attempts to control the urban environment through street planning, waterway construction, water supply, and sewerage.

Michèle Dagenais

Books

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