Montreal Gazette
Peggy Curran
Clarence Epstein loves churches.
It may not seem immediately obvious that the Jewish son of a Sephardic mother from Morocco and a Canadian-born father from the Ashkenazi sect would pen a book about Montreal’s church architecture dating from the British colonial period.
But talk to Epstein, director of special projects and cultural affairs at Concordia University and the author of Montreal, City of Spires, and it all becomes clear.
After all, this is Montreal we’re talking about.
“I was a Montrealer and I wanted to learn about my city,” said Epstein, who argues that growing up Jewish made him at once an insider and a perceived outsider.
“The city is filled with so many different microcosms of cultural and religious and linguistic experiences. Quite luckily, because my mother is francophone and my father is anglophone, they came from different cultural backgrounds themselves… I have always been juggling with all kinds of different notions of what is important in family and important in community.
“Then when you get brought up in Montreal and finally reach an age where you are now able to independently look at things beyond your parents viewpoint…You walk around and say ‘why are there so many churches here?’ And nobody really has an answer for you.
“They will resort back to some kind of cliché answer, or a Mark Twain quote — (“This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn’t throw a brick without breaking a church window”) — or something about the Catholic Church. But there is much more to it as I found out.
For one thing, Epstein learned “you can’t research purely the architecture to understand the architecture.” You have to understand who the players were, who the important clerics were and the dynamics of the many sects — Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptists and Jewish – which settled in the colony after the British conquest.
“There are waves of migration which in Montreal are the way you track growth of the city. Those migratory trends are reflected in the architecture and what they built, their residences and industries. By tracking that social history, you get a better understanding of our architectural history.”
Take, for example, Montreal’s Jewish community. The first small cluster in Montreal were of Sephardic background, arriving from Britain, as early as 1768.
Here as in Europe at the time, Epstein says Jews “were accepted and tolerated in societies but they could not emphasize their place in overt ways.”
So Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in Montreal, was nothing if not discreet. ” It doesn’t have a tower and it doesn’t have a presence on the street that says ‘We’re here.’ It’s more like a lot on a main street that doesn’t look like any different from other building along side it. And that is something that is typical of synagogues in the 1700s in Europe. Of trying to be anonymous but still on a principal street because they are part of that larger community.”
Despite their small numbers, that first small group made an impression on Montreal, setting up theatres, restaurants, taverns and shops. As they became more successful, some began to lend money.
“When the new Notre Dame Church is commissioned, they go to the Jews of Montreal for a loan…When Nelson’s column is built in Place Jacques Cartier, the Jews make a donation.”
In writing his book, Epstein says he tried to weave the stories of Montreal’s religious communities together.
“There are overt gestures of mutual support that are part of the dynamic of Montreal at that time that are not threaded together,” he said.
“Although the Jewish community wasn’t large, their presence here dates back earlier than people realize. And why do we have a character in Montreal that has a certain Jewishness like New York has? It’s not necessarily because of the number of Jews that were here back then but it was their impact on the community.
“That’s what drew other Jews to come here. Because naturally that is how communities grow as more people from one religion come to one area, they tell two relatives and so on.”
Montreal, City of Spires: Church Architecture during the British Colonial Period 1760-1860 is part of the Urban Heritage series, published by Presses de l’Universite du Quebec.
pcurran@montrealgazette.com
Twitter:
peggylcurran
Categories: Montreal
Tags: Brooklyn, Churches, city of spires. Clarence Epstein, Jewish, Jewishness, landmarks, Mark Twain, Montreal, Nelson’s monument, Notre Dame,Peggy Curran, Place Jacques Cartier,
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