Montréal had a gloomy outlook when I was growing up there in the 1990s. An economic recession, political uncertainty around separation from Canada, and a brain drain of young Anglos and immigrants (including me) to Toronto and the U.S. made urban decline seem certain. A lot of big, vacant, derelict buildings came to define Griffintown at the time. In that neighborhood to the south of downtown and west of Old Montréal, mostly Irish immigrants once worked in the Lachine Canal-side... Read this story
