The history of our home
The Mile End has become the creative ecosystem of Montreal. Its history is one of fabric and hard work. Its future is digital, and being built right now.
The neighbourhood in which our office is located is a fascinating story in time. If it were possible to scroll through the years frame-by-frame, an amazing transformation would be seen. The fertile fields and forests of this plateau in the middle of Montreal Island would start to show signs of industry in the early 1800s with the appearance of tanneries and the odd tavern. Scroll further, and new roads would start to stitch their way across the landscape as waves of immigrants landed, and rural French settlers moved to the big city.
As the years passed, those small tanneries of the nascent Mile End would grow into the base for Canada’s textile industry. Jewish immigrants would land in the area and shape it further, along with the Greek, Irish, Portuguese, and others. Many churches would be built and Montreal-triplexes erected. The neighbourhood’s infrastructure would culminate into the large textile warehouses and factories hugging the Outremont Spur train line (one of these buildings we now call home).
Clothes were manufactured and then shipped across Canada during the heyday of department stores in the 1960s and 70s. During those years, from the view in the Mile End of the working-class quarters, beautiful churches, massive industries and busy train yard just behind, it would have seemed like a perfect system, humming along.
And then everything changed
It would neglect history to think that things remain unchanged when they reach a certain critical mass and stability. The Mile End, like Montreal, suffered a series of blows from the 1970s onward. The city began to lose a preeminent position as the economic and manufacturing engine of Canada. Toronto “the Good” rose up with protestant fury, fuelled by waves of immigrants who were after an English version of opportunity in North America. The issue of Quebec sovereignty in the 1970s scared the owners of industry, and businesses fled.
As for the Mile End’s textile industry, after this period of flight, the defeating blow came from international competition. In the 1980s and 90s, the developed world was moving towards free trade. At first, it was American and European wears being allowed to be imported at low tariffs that chipped into the Canadian garment industry. And then in 2001, when China was introduced to the WTO and fell under the same open tariff scheme as developed nation-members, the Mile End and Montreal could no longer expect to compete with the prices Chinese manufacturers were able to work with. Slowly but surely, wholesale clothing buyers switched over; the entire industry was no longer viable at the scale it had grown into.
Le Champ des Possibilités
Just outside the windows of our office is Le Champ des Possibilités, an empty field where the train stockage yard for the garment industry was once located. Its name — Field of Possibilities — speaks as much to the past as it does to the future. For now, it remains trapped in transition: the train tracks have been removed, but the lands have not been reimagined.
The buildings surrounding this field have been reimagined, however. There is a new textile being woven in their locales; the fabric is composed of 1 and os. Caravan is among a whole new ecosystem of companies that have moved into the lofty mega-blocks where jeans and blazers were once stitched.
There’s a ‘circle of life’ aspect to it all. The accomplishments of days yore have laid a foundation to build on, and a new class of entrepreneur is redefining vibrancy in the Montreal economy. The garment towers along Casgrain and de Gaspé now look strangely like processors on a circuit board. Almost amazingly, it is as if these buildings were built for not only what was needed at the time, but what would come next.
Where the past meets the future, on the axis between French and English Montreal
One of the overarching forces that has shaped Montreal is the divide between its French and English denizens. It has traditionally been said the north/south-running Boulevard St. Laurent is the demarcation between the two, with Montreal becoming more English as you head west, and more French as you head east. Boulevard St. Laurent is the trunk of the Mile End, its multiculturalism as an immigrant neighbourhood contained within a context of Montreal’s “Two Solitudes.”
In many ways, the Mile End has been the heart of what makes Montreal great. It is where the blending of cultures occurs, in a type of neutral zone between long-engrained cultural identities. These are exactly the type of conditions that spur creativity and progressive thought.
Many immigrant families remain in the Mile End, grounding it with a sense of appreciation and hard-fought success. At the same time, this neighbourhood, made famous by artists like Arcade Fire and Mordecai Richler and recently by companies like Ubisoft Canada and Frank & Oak, has welcomed hipsters, techies and entrepreneurs from all walks of life. It would seem that worlds blend a bit more easily in the Mile End then they do in other neighbourhoods across North America. There is a historical precedent here, and more reasons now than ever for embracing this nature of the neighbourhood.
We feel lucky
We are always standing on the shoulders of giants in this modern world. Our progress is bit-by-bit, built upon the existing blocks of technology and infrastructure. For the 20th century, progress was very much charted along a type of linear expansion outwards. It was a time of plenty for the taking. The world has entered into a different phase, where more circular thinking is useful to address pressing issues. Sustainability is a matter of increasing importance, and growth may be most relevant when it is inwards.
Occupying the concrete lofts of the Mile End, looking out over the Field of Possibilities, it’s easy to feel like such growth comes naturally. It is being accomplished here every day by people who love where they are and what they are doing. That is the energy that has been reestablished by the tech entrepreneurs of the Mile End, and at Caravan we are proud to be contributing to the vibrancy of one of Canada’s most storied and adored neighbourhoods — one that fell on hard times, but has not been forgotten.
