How are Montreal women's shelters taking action in the face of the housing crisis?
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When one Montrealer left an abusive partner, the financial strain of paying her ever-rising rent brought her to a breaking point.
But thanks to a new long-term housing project for women and their children run by a women's shelter, she feels like she can finally breathe.
In this episode of This is Montreal, we'll hear how, in the midst of a housing affordability crisis, Montreal women's shelters are taking matters into their own hands and building housing, despite all of the challenges they can face getting projects off the ground.
Do you have a question about Montreal? Host Ainslie MacLellan is determined to help find the answer. Whether it's a story that's disappeared from the headlines, a curious landmark in your neighbourhood, or a quirk of Montreal life you've been wondering about, we're on it. Let's learn about this place together.
Your Montreal questions, answered weekly. Nothing too big, too small or too weird. What are you wondering? Send us your question here.
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Montreal Gazette
01-06-2025
- Montreal Gazette
Dunlevy: Montreal documentary hunts for stolen indigenous masks that inspired surrealists
The repatriation and restitution of art and cultural materials is a hot topic these days. A prime example is estates trying to reclaim objects taken by the Nazis or sold by Jews under duress as they fled Germany. But there's another example closer to home. Montrealer Joanna Robertson and Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond's absorbing new documentary So Surreal: Behind the Masks explores what happened to Yup'ik and Kwakwaka'wakw ceremonial masks taken from these indigenous tribes in Alaska and British Columbia's northwest coast more than a century ago by traders, government officials and collectors. The masks were brought as far as New York, where they inspired some of the great European surrealist artists, who were living in exile mid-century, and eventually made their way to auction houses, world-famous museums and private collections. Leading us on an investigative journey to learn the significance of these masks, the circumstances of their removal and where they ended up is Diamond. He appears on camera throughout the film as an unassuming, intrepid protagonist, pushing the narrative forward with playful determination. He has done the same in his other films, including 2009's Reel Injun, which examined the problematic portrayals of Native Americans in Hollywood westerns, earning him and co-directors Catherine Bainbridge and Jeremiah Hayes three Gemini Awards and a Peabody Award. 'I've gotten quite comfortable (on screen),' Diamond said recently, over coffee with Robertson at Outremont's Croissanterie Le Figaro. 'Sometimes I forget the camera's rolling and I just act real goofy.' 'I think people appreciate it,' Robertson said. 'You bring a lot of humour to these (potentially) doom and gloom situations.' One amazing shot in the documentary shows Diamond puffing on a cigarette as he rides a bicycle down the middle of the road in the bustling Champs Élysées, with the Eiffel Tower behind him, and ponders his next move. Inspired by their subjects, the filmmakers take a surrealist approach to the storytelling as they weave together disparate clues and different ways of seeing the situation. On the one hand are Yup'ik tribe members who are happy to see their masks being preserved and showcased under the same roof as the Mona Lisa: One magical moment finds Yup'ik artist and storyteller Chuna McIntyre singing and dancing joyously as he approaches one of his tribe's masks on display at the Louvre, during an after-hours visit. On the other are members the Kwakwaka'wakw and their allies, who are in a continuing fight to see their masks — including many stolen during Canada's Potlach ban in 1921 — come home. At the heart of the intrigue is a quest to locate a mystical Raven Transformation Mask and possibly converse with its current owner about its eventual return. Somewhere in the middle are the wild surrealists — Max Ernst, André Breton, Roberto Matta, Enrico Donati and Joan Miró — and their friends, including famed French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who were endlessly stimulated by the otherworldly dreamscapes evoked by these masks. The extent to which they were aware of how these artifacts were obtained is unclear. 'I'm grateful we're able to shine a light on these stories, which are so fundamental to our understanding of who we are — of colonization and also the importance of Indigenous storytelling and culture,' Robertson said. 'The surrealists saw something — they lived through war after war after war — and they saw something in these masks, however problematic, as a reminder there's another way of being, and of seeing the world.' She expressed hope their film can foster empathy toward indigenous communities and all that they have lost. 'Yeah,' Diamond agreed, 'because if you lose your culture, you have nothing else.'
Montreal Gazette
21-05-2025
- Montreal Gazette
Actor Jay Baruchel only too happy to provide all of the voices for Bread Will Walk
Movies And TV By Jay Baruchel didn't need any arm-twisting to agree to lend his voice to the brand-new National Film Board animated short Bread Will Walk. In fact, he was so into this extraordinary 11-minute film that he agreed to do all 10 voices in the short film! 'Number one, it's just gorgeous and wholly unique,' said the former Montrealer in a recent phone interview from his home in Toronto, explaining why he agreed to jump on board the film created by Montreal director Alex Boya. 'I can't explain its look or tone to anybody, which is a rare thing,' said Baruchel, who has appeared in the films Goon, Knocked Up, BlackBerry and Million Dollar Baby. 'It's like nothing meets nothing. I don't know how I would possibly describe what Bread Will Walk is and in 2025 that's a rare special thing to be treasured. There is not one piece of phoney inside of Alex Boya. There isn't a phoney bone in his body. He's as authentic an artist as I've ever worked with and I felt it watching it. When I saw this f---ed up Grimm's Fairy Tale, it reminded me of the scariest stories my mother would read to me as a kid. Then on top of that I really liked what he had to say about the food industrial complex and the inherent predatory nature of free-market capitalism.' Bread Will Walk is kind of a reverse zombie-apocalypse movie. The zombies are peaceful beings made of bread and it's the hungry living who're trying to eat the zombies! It's not The Walking Dead. It's The Walking Bread! Like in any zombie flick worth its salt, the setting is a world on the verge of collapse with a little social critique thrown in for good measure. It's about hunger, nasty food multinationals and a media world gone mad. The basic story is simple: An older sister is on the run with her younger brother who is indeed made of bread. Bread Will Walk is set to have its world premiere on Thursday in the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. 'It started off with a dream,' said Boya, on the phone from Cannes. 'I had a dream many many years ago about a man who was faceless, who had a jet turbine on his head instead of a face. In that world you also had a scene where someone pulled my hand, I was trying to get away from this industrial wasteland, and someone held on to my arm and then my whole arm was ripped off. But it wasn't an arm. It was a baguette and there were crumbs everywhere.' It took Boya four years to make the film using paper and 2D animation mixed with digital collages. It's built around 4,000 ink-on-paper hand drawings. Baruchel does 10 different voices in the film, using styles of voice that range from a guy who sounds like an older Louisiana man to someone who sounds like a BBC announcer. He also sings the jazz standard All of Me. 'It appealed to my hubris,' said Baruchel. 'He said: 'Do you want to do the work of 10 people?' And I'm like: 'Yeah! Absolutely I can'.' Doing voice work is old hat for Baruchel. One of his highest-profile roles on the big screen was voicing the character Hiccup Haddock in the How to Train Your Dragon movies, but even that was far from his first experience doing voices in animation. 'I have spent years at a microphone figuring out a way to make my voice suit an animated story,' said Baruchel. 'When I started my career, when I was 12 or 13, I worked at Astral Tech a lot on Ste-Catherine St. near Fort (St.). I would dub French TV shows into English, live action and animated. That was like boot camp for voice recording. So that put me in a good place to do How to Train Your Dragon, which turned into three movies and eight-plus years of a TV series. It is now a place in the world that I am as at home in as anywhere else. 'I'm plus à l'aise in doing a voice because nobody's looking at me and it's devoid of vanity. I'm not worried about my complexion or my hairline or my posture or any of these things. All I'm doing, in a pretty pure way, is just creating with no ego, no sense of personal aesthetics. When you take away a camera, you take away a microscope and any superficiality, which is a necessary evil of being a person who gets makeup put on their face and stands in front of a camera and lights. So it becomes this really pure almost childlike channeling of your imagination.'
CBC
19-03-2025
- CBC
Patrick Watson and Charlotte Cardin's sublime duet, and 4 more songs you need to hear this week
Songs you need to hear is CBC Music's weekly list of hot new Canadian tracks. Scroll down to discover the songs our producers are loving right now. Gordon in the Willows, Patrick Watson feat. Charlotte Cardin "It's been a long, long time," Charlotte Cardin gently sings, inviting us into a new and exquisite collaboration with fellow Montrealer Patrick Watson. The artist, recently named Global Woman of the Year by Billboard Canada, last partnered with Watson for the song Next to You, off her 2023 album, 99 Nights, and this time they've gathered for Watson's new project. Gordon in the Willows is the second single from an upcoming album, inspired by a recent time when the pianist and composer lost his voice, unable to speak or sing for nearly three months. "A few months ago, Patrick played me a piano piece — just the music, no words — and the moment I heard it, it felt like the whisper of an old friend," Cardin explained in a press release. Cardin's voice and Watson's piano lace together like those old friends finding each other after years apart — and if it doesn't make you too cold, you can watch their live performance on Mount Royal on a snow-covered February night. — Holly Gordon Something Over Nothing, Jesse Gold and Katie Tupper Over the past year, Toronto crooner Jesse Gold has been releasing videos of himself singing off-the-cuff, acoustic covers of songs by Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Kings of Leon and more. At the start of March, he dropped one with Katie Tupper, singing Natasha Bedingfield's Pocketful of Sunshine. It was a treat to hear their voices melding together, and not even two weeks later they released an official duet, Something Over Nothing. The downtempo, guitar-led R&B number is a plea for affection from someone whose feelings aren't reciprocal: "Just to know how it feels, even if it's not real/ I take something over nothing every time." The two singers trade verses, coming together on the chorus, the round smokiness of Tupper's voice a sonic complement to the clear brightness of Gold's. — Kelsey Adams DM BF, Eliza Niemi Eliza Niemi's latest single, DM BF, poses the question, "Do you get lonely?" But as the song moves through its gentle, grooving melody, one starts to wonder who that question is directed toward: someone Niemi is yearning for, or perhaps herself. The title itself stands for "Dogman Boyfriend," a strange ode to what is assumed to be the 2023 Luc Besson thriller and not the children's graphic novel series of the same name. In a Talkhouse essay where she wrote about this track, Niemi explained: "I felt connected to him. I thought of how love can feel like this — like being connected to something that might not even exist, or might just all be in your head." Niemi's vibrant sense of humour is balanced by a sincere exploration of what it means to be alone and the relationship one has with oneself. It's all wrapped in a dreamy soundscape complete with airy flute accents and a billowing guitar riff that feels like the beaming sun Niemi sings about. DM BF is the perfect song to listen to as you enjoy the first warm days of the year. — Melody Lau TMTK, Ardn Ardn's first release of 2025 is TMTK, a boisterous jazz rap song about tinted whips, Parisian women and designer silks. Having no time to kill (because he's too busy being successful) is a timeless hip-hop trope, and the Edmonton rapper gleefully leans into the canon, boasting about having his wealth and attitude on lock: "Spending my penny wise, came from the sewer," he raps before spitting, "I am legend, surname is Smith." It's playful and flows easily over a looping hook. However, it's not simply his flow, which sweeps along and draws out each line to tell the story of his come-up, but also Ardn's steady cadence that gives the song its oomph. He slightly mirrors the rhythmic stylings of rapper Isaiah Rashad — there are a few similarities to From the Garden — with his bouncy delivery over TMTK 's twisting beats. On each listen, he sounds more and more self-assured. — Natalie Harmsen AMPM, Luna Elle On her latest single, AMPM, Luna Elle is insatiable. The Toronto R&B singer's voice is buttery and rich, as she begs to be completely wrapped up in her lover: "I want you in the AM, PM/ weekday, weekend/ all day, all night/ don't turn out the lights." As she shared on Instagram, this is a song "for lover girls and lover boys" who just can't seem to get enough of the objects of their affection. Luna Elle's voice floats over a shimmering groove, and although she makes it clear she wants that 24/7 kind of loving, the song feels perfectly suited for the coziness of dusk. AMPM is her first release since September's Halfway Broken, a song that nabbed the artist a Juno Award nomination for traditional R&B/soul recording of the year. — KA
