Curating and celebrating Montreal memories at the MEM Centre

The Centre for Montreal Memories — also known as The MEM — inaugurated its permanent exhibition MONTRÉAL, which invites residents and visitors to discover the history of the city in a new light.

The interactive exhibition offers a cross-section of views and hundreds of oral and video testimonials, showcasing the many different identities that make up Montreal throughout the decades.

Numerous objects from everyday life, photos, and archived audiovisual documents have been curated, offering up multiple visions of a vibrant and constantly changing city that’s inclusive to Montrealers of all backgrounds.

Catherine Charlebois is the chief curator for the MEM.

She described the new exhibition as a trip down memory lane about the history of Montreal.

“It was important to not just exhibit the traditional narrative of Montreal, something that you learn in your school books,” said Charlebois. “It was really a way for us to tell a history about diversity, about inclusion and accessibility about this year of Montreal, to have different people talking about their life and their history in the city.”

The exhibition aims to showcase the people who form this city’s identity and what makes it so vibrant and unique. Ranging from individual snapshots to collective history, the museum tour highlights the diversity of civic experiences and takes a lucid look at our collective memory. It reveals all the different ways of being a Montrealer.

“It’s an opportunity to actually explore Montreal in different ways. We wanted to have not just text and images, but something a bit more vibrant and active, so you can actually discover history in a more playful manner,” she said.

City councillor Ericka Alneus, responsible for culture, heritage, gastronomy, and nightlife at the city’s executive committee, was on hand for the inauguration. She expressed pride in an exhibition she says both “resembles us and brings us together.”  

The exhibition, said Alneus during the press conference, “is the result of rigorous reflection and deep desire to share the beauty and uniqueness of the people of our city, reviving our feeling of belonging.”

Approximately 10 citizen and scientific groups collaborated on the interactive exhibition.

“It was really, really important to have multiple voices that will give multiple stories about the city because there’s just one story, there’s millions of stories about Montreal. So, it was a way for us to exhibit the diversity of the city of Montreal,” noted Charlebois.

Visitors are also invited to add to the exhibition by testifying to their own vision of Montreal.

School programs will also be implemented to accommodate tours for elementary and high school students.

“It’s really a gift that we’re giving to Montrealers to explore their city in ways that they didn’t think existed. So there’s a lot to discover,” concluded Charlebois.