Success Stories

Vivre en Ville: Saint-Henri

Documentation of the history of the Saint-Henri district

The Saint Henri district story began in 1685 when Jean Mouchère settled at Coteau Saint-Pierre near the St. Pierre River, an ideal location for his tannery. Over the next two centuries, Saint-Henri attracted commerce and industries settling near the Canal Lachine.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Saint-Henri agglomerated to Canada’s growing metropolitan city of Montreal. The 1910s and 1920s proved to be a time of steady expansion for Saint-Henri. New enterprises and services were established to support the growing working population of nearby factories and industries. The positive economic climate of the previous decades sharply halted in the 1930s when it was hit by the hardships of the Great Recession. Many factories closed and buildings were abandoned. Today, many examples of 19th century architecture remain in the neighborhood.

The Vivre en Ville: Saint-Henri Web site documents the history of this Montreal district by featuring a digitized portion of the archives from the Saint-Henri Historical Society which have holdings of over 50,000 archived photographs, objects and documents. The Web site was produced under contract to the Canada’s Digital Collections (CDC) program, which is funded by the federal Youth Employment Strategy.

Vivre en Ville: Saint-Henri showcases 500 photographs on a variety of interests such as sports, leisure activities, transportation, labour force, private life, celebrations, education, religion, culture and commerce. There is also a section of photographs depicting typical Saint Henri World War II era scenes as described by Quebec author, Gabrielle Roy, in her novel Bonheur d’occasion.

With the help and supervision of Nicole Cloutier at the Saint Henri Historical Society, eight young adults were brought together to digitize material and design web pages. Some students had acquired web design experience while working on previous CDC projects, while others had relatively no computer, let alone web design, experience. The team pooled together their different expertise and a unique exchange of knowledge and skills unfolded. Two students had formal graphic design training and taught the others some of the basic principles. Others had a solid grasp of HTML programming and passed on their skills to other team members.

Nicole Cloutier said she was “impressed by the student’s creativity and imagination. They all had great and innovative ideas to make the site interesting and attractive, and they were a very capable team - autonomous and motivated,” exclaimed Mme Cloutier.

In addition to acquiring a creative work experience, the students also became acquainted with the Historical Society’s collection and the importance of preserving old photographs. In turn, some members of the Historical Society discovered the exciting possibilities of Internet technology to increase their collection’s availability and visibility.

The students worked in tandem with the Historical Society. Mme Cloutier believes “that it is this close collaboration which made this project possible. In fact, the members of the Historical Society are very proud of the Internet site Vivre en Ville and we are very aware that the success of this project is largely due to the students’ keen interest and dedication.”  

Visit the Canada's Digital Collections World Wide Web Site at http://collections.ic.gc.ca