Marie-Hélène Poitras. Griffintown, Montréal, Alto (“Coda” series), 2013.

Commented by Pascal Brissette, director (November 2020):

The mental map sketched by Griffintown, as well as the history of the novel’s subject neighbourhood, draws on Montreal’s geography and history but does not depend on it. Poitras’ Far West exists first in relation to the East, which begins at Berri Street, and in relation to downtown, which stands at the end of McGill Street, on Viger Avenue. To the south, there is the Lachine Canal and, on the other side of it, Pointe-Saint-Charles. However, there is more to the west than the Far West. There is notably Verdun, described as a “dry” district, or a neighborhood where “no business is allowed to sell alcohol,” in contrast with Griffintown, where the Saloon Hotel doles out its delicate “horse piss.” It is not, therefore, because of its geographical position that Griffintown is called “Far West” in the novel, but because it is a deserted territory following its own laws: a place where you can still ride a horse without being looked at sideways, where you can walk with a rifle to settle your disputes without being bothered by the police.

The anchoring of the plot in a no-man’s land allows the author to inscribe the story in a broader framework, that of the American myth of the West’s Conquest, and to effectively create irony from the parallels between the novel’s cast and the familiar spaghetti western tropes: comical situations (a corpse kept for too long in a freezer), colourful characters, outdoor duels, the coupling of the cowboy and the ingenue (leaning against a horse, please), etc. As in any self-respecting western, there are real villains: faceless, faithless and nameless, known simply as “the ones from the city” and “the men with black hats”. There is also gold, or, at least, there are characters looking for it: “Rumor has it that there is still gold [in Griffintown].” (p. 23) One understands that the real estate developers and the underworld are the only ones who, having made the old world of the coachmen disappear, will put gold in their pockets. [Read more on the blog The Urbanologist.]

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