For over 400 years, Jesuits and their colleagues have had a presence in Canada.  Today they work coast to coast –  from Vancouver to St.John's.  In this series igNation invites you to join us as we travel across Canada stopping at cities where there are Jesuit apostolates to read personal reflections about the city and the work being done there.  Today we visit Montreal, Quebec.

My Montréal is a people city.  It is a great place to meet people, to greet people, to eat great meals with people, to visit and pray in historic churches with people, to browse through museums with people, to go to great concerts with people, to join people on a walk, run or ski on Mont Royal, or simply to chill at a café with people.  I’m sure that one could say the same thing about any number of other Canadian cities but one thing that makes Montréal unique is that one can do all these thing while speaking French or English or both at the same time.    You can identify a true blue Montrealer by his or her facility in switching back and forth between the two official languages.

Having learned French while doing my master’s degree in Québec City, I was a natural fit in the Montréal ‘bilinguistique’ scene.   Another important trait of ‘le montréalais véritable’ is the acknowledgement of the majority Francophone environment of the city.  Hence the importance of having a good knowledge of French.  Still, Montréal has always been a city that refused to be labeled, which itself is a challenge for the Francophone Montrealer who resists the bilingual nature of the city. 

For example, in the music world where I worked, people switched back and forth between French and English with little thought of political correctness or nationalistic rigidity.  I remember particularly enjoying rehearsals with l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and its Swiss born conductor Charles Dutoit.  Dutoit, a polyglot, reveled in the global diversity of the musicians with whom he worked.  Not only was he one of the world’s great conductors but he used his facility with language to move the rehearsal along by making jokes and sly remarks in French, English, German and occasionally other languages from his sizable repertoire.  

I made my MSO debut in a performance of La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz singing the role of Brander.  At one of the performances, just as I was about to sing my solo, a comic song about a rat, Dutoit whispered to me in English: “I want you to make me afraid.”  He then proceeded to flash a rat-like grin to the whole orchestra as he said in a stage whisper:  “Qu’on les fait peur, nous aussi.” (We’ll make them afraid too). 

Given the relaxed mode of my life in the music world, little did I know of the existence of another Montréal.  Specifically, the western part of the city that had long been the domain of English speakers, but which, by the time I arrived in 1983, was on its way to becoming a veritable ghetto for Anglo-Montrealers who had decided to stay in the province following the 1980 referendum.  These folks could be roughly divided into two camps: those who chose to stay because of the richness of the city’s cosmopolitan and multicultural fabric, and those who were loath to leave their home but who were also resistant to embracing the French speaking cultural reality of post-Quiet Revolution Québec. 

History is complex as are the cultural entities that fit into it and Montréal is one of the most interesting examples to be found anywhere.  Very briefly, the city was originally a French foundation established at a convenient location that had been frequented already by the native peoples for centuries.  Next, following one of the many wars between England and France, New France was renamed and became a British colony with Montréal as its financial and cultural centre.   The French speaking inhabitants were allowed to keep their language and religion under the tutelage of the Church.

 In the 19th century the city became a booming Anglophone metropolis where the power brokers were the wealthy Scottish entrepreneurs who called the shots while with the francophone majority were second class citizens in their own land.   By the mid-20th century however, the majority began to flex its wings and in the quietest revolution in history they took charge.  The rest is a history that is still unfolding.

How does the Jesuit mission fit into my Montréal the people city? To what degree did the Jesuit mission fit into the historical fabric?   As far as Jesuit works go, it is very important to note that when the Jesuits returned to Canada in the 1840s one of the first things they did was to open a college in Montréal, named Collège Ste. Marie.  It was designed to accommodate both French and English speakers (mainly those of Irish descent) in a liberal arts program.  The college thrived for more than a century but was closed and eventually demolished in the 1970s. 

The chapel, now known as l’église du Gesù, was saved.  The Gesù is one of the most beautiful of Montréal’s many downtown churches and it functions as a church and an arts centre, complete with a fully function theatre (completely renovated) that dates from the foundation of the college in the 1840s.   Spirituality and the arts provide a wonderful foundation for bringing people together to reflect more deeply on the meaning of art in all its forms and how it relates to the flourishing of the human person.  Indeed, the Gesù strives to be a people place where the universal languages of art and spirituality are the primary modes of communication and more and more it is opening up to the contemporary reality of Montréal. 

In a number of ways, the Gesù can be seen as an important historical, spiritual and cultural centre for the Jesuits of Canada.  It has historical links with two of the most iconic Montréal institutions: Concordia University and the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.  Concordia was founded through the union of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University in the 1970s.  Loyola High School, a child of this same historical lineage, is alive and well and serving an increasingly diverse student body that is representative of the multicultural and multilingual reality that is Montréal.  The TNM was birthed in the amphitheatre of the Gesù and it is the most prestigious of Montréal’s professional theatre companies.

As the English and French Canadian Jesuits move towards becoming a new province, the city of Montréal is well placed to embrace the new bilingual reality of its members.  Already, not dissimilar to rehearsals from my music days, our Jesuit meetings are beginning to move comfortably back and forth between French and English. 

 Among the other Jesuit works, the Villa St Martin spirituality centre is catering increasingly to the multicultural fabric of the city.  For example, I have enjoyed offering bilingual Taizé retreats there for the past few years.  The Centre Justice et Foi is embracing a modern Quebec and Canada that needs to be more and more attune with issues as wide ranging as mineral rights and immigration.  The venerable Collège Brébeuf, which educated Pierre and Justin Trudeau among many others, while independent of the Jesuits has shown in the past few years a desire to deepen the Jesuit principles of education and social justice.

So come and visit this historic and vibrant ‘people city.’   Learn a bit of French before you come or pick it up when you are here.