Montreal’s Missão Santa Cruz turns 60, cultural hub for Portuguese community

Montreal’s José d’Almansor library is celebrating 60 years as cultural hub for the city’s Portuguese community.

The Portuguese library in the Plateau will now stock between 6,000 and 7,000 Portuguese language books, thanks to donations from the Université de Montréal, and funding from the Caisse Portugaise Desjardins branch on Saint-Laurent Blvd.

The José d’Almansor library is located in the Santa Cruz Mission community centre, and plays a central role in the community, hosting roundtables and welcoming literary works from Portuguese communities across North America. 

The library also works to guarantee the Portuguese culture and language is passed on. On Saturdays, the Santa Cruz Mission offers language classes to children of Portuguese descent.  

“I would like it if all the parents of the community encouraged their children to speak Portuguese, because it’s such an important language, such a fascinating language, a Latin language,” said Deolinda Xavier Cabo, 81, who moved to Montreal in 1986. Her poetry anthology “Versejando” (loosely translated as versifying or composing verses) was self-published in Montreal and is among numerous works by Portuguese authors at the library. 

Last year, Canada celebrated 70 years of Portuguese immigration. Over that time the Little Portugal neighbourhood has become home to restaurants, stores, associations, monuments, and this library.

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Portuguese immigration to Canada has slowed considerably since the 1980s as Portugal has become more developed. As the Portuguese-born community grows older, the library is looking to future generations and others to share the culture and language. 

Diane des Autels came across the Portuguese library when she was looking for European Portuguese language classes after visiting Portugal. “I just got in and fell in love with the courses, the teachers. And my teacher Maria João told us that there was a library here, and I just offered to volunteer, and she agreed.” Des Autels now volunteers on a weekly basis to organise the library. 

The Jose d’Almansor library stocks copies of books by Portuguese-Canadian authors and others from across the diaspora, and doubles as a resource to record and keep alive the memory of immigration. 

“There’s certainly an immigrant narrative genre in Canadian literature that has produced much of Canadian literature”, said immigration historian Gilberto Fernandes. He added that literature and artistic expression brings together Canadians from all immigrant backgrounds,  “In many ways, Portuguese-Canadian literature is very Canadian literature.”