Total Eclipse of the Spirit, at Montreal's Place Royale
"I wanted a collective experience, a unifying moment I hoped would reset my hermit spirit. Turns out, I got more than what I bargained for."
Like many people you’ll meet over the summer, I can’t and will not shut up about the eclipse.
Not in an obsessive way of like, turning it into my personality, but, seriously, that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Astronomy is not something that particularly draws my attention. But I do get obsessive about things sometimes. So when I heard that Montreal’s view of the eclipse was to be particularly exceptional, I started queuing dozens of podcasts and online articles to understand the what, when, and why.
Unlike my roommate who wanted to spend the afternoon alone in a faraway park, I yearned for a collective experience, a unifying moment that I hoped would reset my hermit spirit.
Since the general advice was to head south, I decided to make it to the Science Center in the Old Port. According to their Facebook event, Cirque du Soleil was scheduled to have a performance, and experts were supposed to live comment on every celestial move.
But, by the time I got there, it was clear that the crowds were the show.
Quickly, I had to pivot.
Fortunately, my second location was only a few hundred meters away.
A Royal Square with a History
Between St. Paul Street and Rue de la Commune West stands one of the most emblematic spots in the city: Place Royale.
Originally Montreal’s first Place d’Armes in the 1600s, it was later rebranded as Place Publique, an identity it held for two centuries during which public markets were organized, and vessels from all over the world unloaded their cargo right at its feet.
It was again baptized in May 1892, this time to its current name to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Ville Marie.
By then, the plaza had already been functioning as a customs hub for fifty-six years after the construction of the Neoclassical Old Customs House originally designed by the architect John Ostell. At the time, another moniker for the square was Place de la Douane.
Today, quaint and unassuming, the site is hyperlinked to Point-à-Callière, Montreal’s archaeology and history museum founded in 1992 to celebrate 350 years of settlement.
I think it’s fair to say that the plaza has lived its nine lives. Each iteration is as important as the previous one.
As a place of commerce, it would be impossible to imagine the Montréal or Québec of today without its place throughout history. In the same line as the agora in Greece, or the mall in the 1990s, in this public space, the most popular currency is the human gaze.
People not that different from us have always roamed these four corners looking for connections, or maybe a personal revelation. Some simply stumble upon it.
Symbolically, it is a well of public memories, a portal to the local past. It wasn’t until reading about the infamous fire of 1734 in Afua Cooper’s The Hanging of Angélique, that my engagement with the space started to change.
Under the Wax-Coated Sun
Upon arriving at the plaza, it was delightful to see that people still abode by the rules of social distancing.
Twenty minutes to go, I picked my corner, unfolded my blanket, removed my shoes and sat waiting. From the bus doors, hordes of tourists erupted. Behind me, a couple from the US looked up in silence.
People drew while others played behind their binoculars and telescopes. Under the unusually warm April sky, I feared for those who’d brought their laptops.
Despite all odds, everywhere, people seemed giddy; tulip-scented airs of excitement.
To my left, a large family from Latin America was in effervescent conversation: the young woman who appeared to be the oldest sibling fought with the youngest, reminding him not to look up without wearing glasses. The grandma, loud in her body talk, conversed with the one who seemed to be her daughter—the mother of the lot—while the grandpa, in the same style of plaid shirt mine loved to wear, sat next to the teenager whom I assumed was the middle musketeer, both their necks above the forty-five angle.
People were starting to get agitated.
Changes in light were now evident—changes that, as a photographer, I’d been paying close attention to since the start of the day.
At 2:48 pm I wrote in my pad: “Hazy. Dusty. ATMOSPHERIC.”
At 3:10 pm, light felt oddly diffused, “As if the sun has been concealed in waxed paper.”
Shadows got languid. And I started to feel a sense of elevation. As if finally about to reach the apex.
Longer Shadows, Sharper Edges
The history of Place Royale is extensive and very well recorded. In no way, shape or form is it my goal to flesh it out, but as part of the narrative of European settlements in North America, the square aligns with narratives of inequality and migration to which I do relate.
As someone who spends a lot of time walking around the city, and thinking about the spatial relationships we establish with its history, I see in Place Royale a monolith that’s been graffitied over centuries with the public memories that, to this day, feed the myths and imaginations of the Montreal I call home.
Archaeological excavations in the area have been routine since 1979. Four years in, an undisturbed prehistoric midden was discovered beneath the grounds of the plaza.
To protect it from danger, the five-foot-high granite platform that we see today was built.
Vestiges of early aqueducts; traces of palisades, the foundations of an inn; several pottery objects and the last remnants of a huge water fountain are now part of the permanent exhibition of the PAC museum—where Place Royale’s dark history is not really on display.
After much squinting and head tilting, I spot a small pillory in the far corner of one of their early 19th-century maquettes.
Nowhere to be found, though, is there a formal mention of the blaze that reportedly consumed forty-six Old Port buildings in 1734—an event that we’d agree would mark a before and after in the landscape—nor of the Portuguese enslaved woman, Marie-Joseph Angélique, who was unfairly blamed, processed and publicly humiliated right here on the premises of the square—and then taken down St. Paul Street to be hanged.
Judicial punishments in 18th-century New France followed European models. Penalties ranged from public humiliation to burning at the stake.
Profanity, for example, would call for a stint at the pillory.
Theft, prostitution, desecration, concealment of pregnancy, slander, adultery by a woman, rape, murder or arson would be punished with more complex measures, like flogging or even “the branding of la fleur de lys” (Boyer).
In his 1987 book La Vie Urbaine en Nouvelle France, André Lachance paints a vivid portrait of an execution that would have unfolded in Place Royale, at least once a year:
“The executioner and the criminal climb backwards, one after the other, up the ladder leaning against the gallows while the confessor, holding a cross, speaks the last words of comfort and exhorts the condemned to repent. Then, the executioner attaches the two ropes with slip knots previously passed around the condemned's neck to the arm of the gallows. Finally, the executioner pushes the condemned into the void.” (p.28)
[Translated with the help of AI]
As one of the main marketplaces in the city, Place Royale was also reserved for chattel slavery.
“From the mid-1600s until the beginning of the 19th century, over 4200 [enslaved people] were imported and sold in Québec, primarily as domestic servants and labourers” (Alston-O’Connor, p.14).
From this total, aboriginal people—known as panis—also made up a big percentage.
According to Alexandre Lapointe, anthropologist and staff member of the PAC museum, slave auctions at Place Royale started in 1765.
In 1785, “two auctions were held” (Trudel). But, in the early 1800s, the practice waned down considerably.
Down the Path of Totality
It is very, very difficult to put into words what I experienced during the total eclipse, in part because, for most of us, this was the first time down the path of totality.
To this day, in conversations with friends, I liken my ecliptic experience to what it would have felt like living inside a Velázquez or Goya painting, parallel universes where the honesty of the light only comes forward after embracing the darkness beneath.
A sense of elevation took over me. As if hanging by an invisible thread.
Overwhelmed, I started to weep uncontrollably.
Such beauty can only be felt—all through every fibre. The mere thought of describing it feels like a betrayal.
Inching towards totality, in the diamond ring delineating the black moon—Baily’s beads as the experts call it—I saw the golden hoops my grandmother wore as earrings.
At that very moment, I knew I wasn’t alone; I don’t mean physically, but spiritually.
Inside, I was boiling, and at 3:27 pm, the kettle finally whistled.
I’m convinced that that afternoon, on that platform, where the first Aboriginals started the fire that would eventually awaken the spirit of Tiohtià:ke; where so many have looked up to the sky with tears in their eyes, gripping their flesh when faced with the void, hoping and praying for their dreams to begin, somehow, I held hands with another realm.
I said I wanted a collective experience.
Turns out, I got more than what I bargained for.
Notes
Alston-O’Connor, Jessa. (September 2010). What Lies Beneath: Erasure and Oppression at Place Royale, Montreal. Department of Art History, Concordia University. When I decided to write about my experience with the total eclipse, it was partly because, for events of such great magnitude like this, I think writing about them is supremely important for archival purposes. And I don’t presume this will end up in a museum or whatever, but it’s somehow soothing to think that in a distant future—maybe in 2022 or whenever it’s supposed to align again with Montreal—someone will get to read these lines and say, Hey, I can get behind that. Of course, a complete history of the square would require extensive research but I had set a deadline of max a week. Jessa’s dissertation became my booklet. I tried to contact her for comment, but it was impossible to reach her within the time limits. I read she’s a professor in the Art History department of Langara College in Vancouver. I’m happy for her students because I can tell she’s passionate about her work.
Boyer, Raymond. Les Crimes et les Chatiments au Canada Francais du XII au XX Siecles, Montreal: le Cercle du Livre de France, 1966.
Cooper, Afua. The Hanging of Angelique. Georgia Press, 2007. Reading Afua’s book opened me up to a whole new way to engage with the history of Montreal, it inspired me to keep looking for the stories hidden behind the corners of my city.
Champagne-Beaugrand Denyse. Le Procès de Marie-Josèphe-Angélique, Libre Expression, Montréal, 2004.
Jamieson, J.B. Place Royale: A Prehistoric Site from the Island of Montreal. Ontario Archaeology, no. 47, 1987. Consulted at McGill University, Montreal. After visiting the museum exhibition, I was left extremely curious about the lives that walked these same roads. Reading an index of the objects found during the 1980s archaeological excavations offered an imaginary window into their inner worlds and daily lives.
Lachance, André. La Vie Urbaine en Nouvelle France. Montréal, 1987.
Lapointe, Alexandre and Labrie, Marie-Rose. While visiting the museum, I couldn’t find any details about the square’s enslavement history, I’m forever grateful to them for offering me their knowledge and guidance. And for redirecting me to some of the books listed in these notes.
Miles, Tiya. All That She Carried, Random House, New York, 2021. This is the book that I’m currently reading and, like Afua’s, it also has made me reconsider the way my writing engages with the hard face of history. I wouldn’t say this book is directly linked to this bibliography but, since it has greatly influenced my sensibility toward topics like some included in this essay, I thought it would be prudent to honour it.
Trudel, Marcel. Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage, Véhicule Press, Montréal, 2013.