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An Analysis of Building Occupations in MontrealAnonymous Comrade writes "The Préfontaine and Overdale Squats I have mixed feelings about the Overdale and Préfontaine squats, which is no doubt the case with many people who squatted or who supported the squats. There were delightful As with other North American cities, in Montreal squatting is illegal. It does take place but is clandestine. In the 80s several anarchists occupied a vacant school and attempted to do a A couple of years ago, the idea of doing a political squat was revived by the Comité des sans emploi (Unemployed Peoples Committee). Members of the committee come from a number of In the Summer of 2001, anti-gentrification posters produced by the Committee began to appear on Montreal walls. "Come and support the opening of a squat" they invited, giving a date On a pleasant late July evening, people began to gather in a small square. It quickly became apparent that the demo would be a big one by Montreal standards. After a couple of speeches A sound truck pumped out a good selection of different types of political music. I danced along close to the truck, invigorated by the high energy of the crowd and the knowledge that we The procession moved into the downtown core, going past chic watering holes. At an intersection people crossed the street and began to run across a parking lot on the other side. A In recent years the Montreal vacancy rate has plummeted and is presently at under one percent. A full-blown housing crisis was the backdrop for the squatting action. I walked across the parking lot and joined the people milling around the building. A man began to remove a board in order to break in. Standing on the front lawn, two cops who had People were now on the second floor and were knocking out the planks used to board up the building. Montreal Food not Bombs set out some victuals. Later, a corn roast took place. Alcohol appeared and people began to party. The cops, meanwhile, were attempting to contact the owner of the building. "If he says they can stay they can stay," Police Commander Paul Chablot was quoted as saying. "But if he signs As I biked through downtown toward the squat the next day, I wondered if the police had intervened. This was not the case and the site was bustling with activity. Tables, sofas and On the second floor, a general assembly meeting discussed problems which had occurred. Complaints were voiced about music played late at night and about drunk people attempting to "We intend to keep the place as long as possible," a spokesperson for the squatters, Marie-Claude Goulet, said in an interview in a local daily. In another interview she described the During the next two days repairs and renovations continued. A gig took place at the squat with music by Fred Alpi from France and Jeunesse Apatride (Stateless Youth), a band affiliated The building was inspected by fire department personnel. "There is no immediate danger," an inspector stated, although several aspects were not in accord with building code norms. On A decision was made by the squatters to send a delegation to meet the mayor. Several of the representatives were squatters and the others were among the original organizers of the A fire department representative declared the building unsafe. The upshot, the City informed the squatters, was that they could be relocated but could not remain where they were. The At an assembly the City's offer was debated and rejected. To gain time to better secure the building, it was decided that a new meeting with the City would be proposed to request At the meeting, the municipal government representatives proposed that the squatters' delegation visit a four-story city-owned building. They accepted and were driven to the building. A At the squat a heated debate took place about the City's offer. The people who had seen the building touted its possibilities. Some of the seventy people present denounced accepting Quickly an agreement was worked out with the City about the conditions. They stipulated that no expenses would be paid at the new location (rent, electricity or heating). The squatters In an interview Marie-Claude Goulet hailed the agreement as a "big victory" while Bourque termed it a "positive outcome." "From the beginning we hoped for a peaceful solution," a police On the evening of the move on August 1, I visited the Préfontaine building, the squatters' new digs. The 19th century four-story structure boasted a huge front lawn and beautiful old I checked out the building and joined people who had gathered in the back yard. The mood was relaxed and festive. One of the organizers of the Overdale occupation asked me what I "Frightening Neighbours" "Frightening Neighbours" screeched the title on the front page of the Journal de Montréal, a tabloid which claims a readership of two million. The title referred to an encounter at the Marie-Claude Goulet intervened during the encounter and assured residents that the squatters intended to respect them and the neighbourhood. She asked them to talk to the Mayor Bourque said that the Préfontaine project was temporary. The squat was "not a precedent and there would be no more squats in Montreal," he said. The move to Préfontaine would be accompanied by a change in media coverage of the project. During Overdale the media had been indulgent: the action was treated as a colourful On the day following the community garden encounter, the squatters invited the neighbours to a corn roast. A sound system was set up on the front lawn and visitors were given a tour A stove and fridge had now been installed at the squat. People proceeded to fix the place up. At a general assembly that I missed, a number of committees were set up such as food and Many of the Préfontaine squatters had been at Overdale. Others arrived only at the beginning of the Préfontaine project. The squatters were a disparate group. There was a punk There was also a sizable group of support people who participated in meetings or assisted in different ways. Although probably a majority of those involved in the project were anarchists, Free meals were served at the squat on a daily basis. If meat was served there would also be a vegetarian dish. Money for food came from people's pockets and from the sale of bottles. Twenty-four-hour-a-day security was set up but this lasted only a few days. Subsequently, security was more haphazard. Often when I arrived at the gate no one was there. I did shifts to Several local radical groups held some of their internal meetings at the squat. Cinema nights took place on squatting and the Spanish Civil War. A talk was given by representatives of a At the first general assembly I attended, the issue of whether to have rules was re-debated. One person argued that there should be no rules and that people should simply respect one The ban on drugs other than pot would be widely ignored. Coke, heroin and PCP were consumed and a couple of people sold PCP. Alcohol would get some residents and visitors into On August 6 the first meeting took place between representatives of the squatters and the City. Armand Fichaud, the city bureaucrat handling the Préfontaine file, said that the project Weird Shit I biked or walked to the squat every couple of days or so. Typically, several clusters of people were working or relaxing on the grounds. Other residents and visitors would be in the Usually the atmosphere was convivial. But Préfontaine was a place where you never knew what would happen next. For example, once as I was approaching the building a chair came There were more sinister aspects in evidence as well, such as sabotage, provocations and police infiltration. Several days after the opening of Préfontaine an attempt to torch it took place Rampant theft was a problem from the outset. An incomplete list of things stolen included a half dozen bikes, CDs, the common room's sound system, a knife, a cell phone, someone's pot, A visitor dressed as a punk at one point started to sieg heil and to sing songs by Screwdriver, a neo-nazi band. He was thrown out. A visitor who had been drinking suddenly started to A youth received a proposition from the police that charges from a coke bust would be dropped in exchange for an agreement on his part to infiltrate the squat for several days and The squat was also infiltrated by a young Journal de Montréal reporter posing as a sympathiser from out of town. He stayed for two nights and wrote an exposé two tabloid pages long. During a public event at the squat, Béranger Lessard, who in the past had run unsuccessfully for office for Mayor Bourque's party, offered to give the squatters a thousand dollars apiece The General Assemblies At both Overdale and Préfontaine, the general assembly was the primary decision-making body. At Préfontaine there were also residents' meetings at which internal squat matters were Compared to most contemporary social structures, the general assembly is egalitarian and participatory. There were numerous problems at the Préfontaine general assemblies, however. Dealing With the City In accepting the deal offered at Overdale, the project had evolved from an illegal to a legal one. Relations with the City, however, remained far from clear. The squatters had been In an interview published on August 22, Armand Fichaud called the Préfontaine project temporary but said that no evacuation date had been set. Three-quarters of the people at the At a meeting with the squatters the next day, Fichaud was heavy and in a bad mood, according to a person who was present. He complained that he had been treated in an unfriendly That the project should take on a legal form as an OSBL, another of Fichaud's reiterated concerns, became the subject of two special general assemblies. Some argued passionately against On August 30 the third meeting between the City and the squatters' representatives took place. Fichaud said that the Préfontaine project had come to an end and people would have to An assembly that was immediately called rejected the City's offer. Relations with the City were effectively severed. For his part, Fichaud now referred to the squatters as "intruders". The project had now regained an openly conflictual relationship with the City. For me personally, this made supporting it easier. The squatters called a press conference the next day and said they didn't intend to leave. The City announced that it was setting a deadline of 9 o'clock a.m. on September 4 for the squatters to vacate. In response a "Festival of Resistance" was organized. During the afternoon At a general assembly it was decided that resistance to the eviction would be organized by affinity group. There was a reluctance to discuss this further, in part because of fears of At 9:00 a.m. on D-Day the cops failed to materialize. Instead, a press conference took place at the squat by groups supporting the project. Claiming he was against "any form of violence," the mayor said he was not going to use the police to evict the squatters -- at least for now. A city employee, however, contradicted this. He The mayor said the City intended to "use all legal means" to remove the undesirables. In practice this translated into further inspections in an attempt to find a technical reason that could A crack in a wall, the City hoped, might be a reason that could be used to oust the squatters. An engineer visited the building and recommended that a section be sealed off. As a large By October 1 some squatters felt that the City's campaign of administrative harassment had failed and that people would be able to stay, at least through the winter. A representative of a On October 3 further inspections of the building took place. According to a squatter who accompanied the inspectors, some of the screws on the six sealed-off rooms had been removed The City finally had its excuse. The squatters would be evacuated ... for their own safety. At 9 a.m. the next day, the police entered the grounds through the community garden and stormed into the building. A number of squatters were roughed up and a man was shot twice That afternoon a squatters' assembly took place at a nearby school. A demo was called to protest the eviction. Shouting slogans denouncing the cops and the media, several hundred demonstrators marched toward City Hall the following day. Speeches were made by squatters on the steps of City That evening ten of the squatters ended up in the basement of a Catholic church. A priest welcomed them, opining during his speech that violent protest was unwise. The atmosphere A meeting attended by twenty squatters or supporters was held but no concrete decisions were made. An event looking back on the squats subsequently took place at a community Evaluation With so many different kinds people involved in the squats, there are a variety of evaluations of the project. Some found that hard drug use was a major problem, while others felt that the Some squatters have said that the experience was a radicalising one and one they would not forget. At times the squatters were able to win the day, putting the authorities on the At Préfontaine, though, things quickly got bogged down in the day-to-day running of the squat. Although the idea that another squat should be started was brought up at meetings, Heavy media coverage of the squat has meant that anyone in contact with any kind of Montreal media has now heard of squatting and has some kind of image of Overdale and Préfontaine. There is talk of a new squat but energies appear at a low ebb. The recently elected mayor, Gérald Tremblay, has criticized former Mayor Bourque for caving in to "civil disobedience," so For people like myself who disagreed with concessions such as becoming an OSBL, the challenge is to find ways to pull off squat projects that will not be immediately shut down by the |
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