Cette these propose une interpretation de l'histoire du centre culturel montrealais, la Place des Arts, depuis les origines du projet en 1954 jusqu'a la nationalisation de l'institution en 1964. L'analyse qui en est offerte privilegie l'etude des fonctions politiques attribuees au centre culturel pendant cette periode. Elle montre comment cette institution culturelle a servi de catalyseur et de symbole pour nombre d'acteurs sociaux implique dans les changements radicaux qui caracterisent la Revolution Tranquille. Elle dresse ainsi un tableau des grandes forces ideologiques, sociales et politiques presentes au debut des annees Soixante en s'appuyant sur l'etude de cas de la Place des Arts dont l'histoire particuliere est mise en perspective avec des tendances plus structurelles de la societe quebecoise. / L'etude de ces differentes dimensions de l'histoire de la Place des Arts confirme le caractere profondement politique que peuvent revetir des institutions dont les fonctions originales se limitent en apparence a des activites artistiques. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Golden Square Mile is well known as the historic domain of Montreal's anglophone elite. Its idyllic setting on the mountainside, overlooking the city and the St Lawrence River, was a natural magnet for wealthy nineteenth-century families, just as it had been in the days of fur traders such as James McGill. As an urban environment, however, the Golden Square Mile was far more complicated than the sum of its mansions. Despite a long history of habitation by gentlemen farmers, the "GSM" took shape only as of mid-century, accompanying the rise of capitalist institutions and the middle classes. Furthermore, it was the result of a considerable amount of planning and salesmanship, which made fortunes for some landowners and speculators even before the first mansions appeared. The anglophone, Protestant character of the area also had to be encouraged, reflecting a growing cultural dichotomy within Montreal society. This thesis considers the Golden Square Mile within the context of urban history: it is a study of town planning, land ownership, architecture, and social geography. It also considers the built environment as a venue for broader social and cultural change.

During the language debates of the 1960s, Montreal's Italian community found itself in the middle of a conflict between Anglophones and Francophones. Forced to chose, the Italian community aligned itself with Anglophones. / The portrait which has been cast by numerous authors evokes the image of an Italian immigrant used as a pawn in a fight which generally was not his and which he could not understand. / An examination of the Italian press gives us a different image. St. Leonard represented more than a fight over the language issue. It was as much a dispute over the status of ethnic minorities in Quebec as it was over the language question. This study examines the immigrant's "Italianita" and how it helped shape his response to the ethnic tensions in St. Leonard.

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The everyday life of people on the street has not received the attention it deserves in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Quebec. This dissertation joins a small number of recent studies which redress this omission. It makes a significant contribution to existing examinations of North American cities and Canadian social history through the use of categories which are rarely employed and questions that are seldom posed in investigations of working-class history during the period of industrialization. A holistic treatment of Marxist philosophy provides the theoretical underpinnings for a sensitive engagement with daily street life in an urban milieu. As a site of intense sociability, Notre-Dame Street, the main street of the industrial suburb of Saint-Henri, offers a unique perspective on the intricate use of public space and its relations to social space. This thesis covers the period between the years of town incorporation in 1875 and annexation to the City of Montreal in 1905. / Notre-Dame Street underwent significant transformations in this period. A main street of a small town on the outskirts of Montreal became the principal commercial street of a bustling industrial city. The 1890s was a decade of particularly marked shifts, characterized by significant population growth and dramatic changes in physical form. Class and ethnic tensions intensified as a result. A 1891 labour dispute at Merchants Manufacturing, a textile factory, took to the streets, and the local elite contested George A. Drummond's refusal to pay municipal taxes in 1897. Resistance to monopoly control of utilities was evidenced by the use of petitions and protets or notarized letters. Workers' parties, journalists, and municipal reform leagues increasingly challenged the hegemony of the local elite whose persistent practices of overspending resulted in a substantial debt and annexation. / The study of a local street in an industrializing community demonstrates the prevailing social and political distribution of wealth and power. It reveals significant differences between the various class ideologies which were played out in the management of the public space of the street. An economic liberal ideology was instrumental to the development of the modern Western city through the creation of divisions between public and private spaces. Social usage, the visible presence of the working and marginal classes and women on city streets, suggests a different reality. A reconstruction of daily street life from a diversity of written and visual sources indicates that women, men, and children inhabited and frequented homes, shops, and offices, travelling to and from work, and various places of recreation. The rhythm of everyday street life was punctuated by unusual events of a celebratory, criminal, and tragic nature, which emphasize the connections between spatial structures and subjective experience. / The local management of public space thus involved class antagonisms, characterized by negotiation, transgression, and resistance. This dissertation argues that the politics of this public space benefited the class interests of a grande bourgeoisie of Montreal and a local petite bourgeoisie, to the detriment of the working classes. These conflicting class interests were played out in a variety of different ways. The exclusion and appropriation of social and symbolic spaces were characterized by distinct property ownership and rental patterns. An anglophone grande bourgeoisie of Montreal owned vacant and subdivided lots. A francophone petite bourgeoisie dominated property ownership, and a majority of renters lived in flats on the main street and on adjoining streets. The shaping of the physical infrastructure was distinguished by the growth of monopolies and minimal local intervention. The civic manifestation of the ordered and ritualistic celebration of the parade emphasized a Catholic identity. Attempts to impose an appropriate and genteel code of behaviour on city streets led to the moral regulation and social control of criminal behaviour.

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