Hochelaga

Since the last boneheads (neonazi skinheads) were run out of the neighbourhood around 2008, the neighbourhood of Hochelaga had once again become a little paradise for bums like us, for punks, for counter-culture overall. It is a multicultural neighbourhood where we feel good, where everyone speaks to each other easily and where there is a lot of solidarity… Since the return and the multiplication of racist groups in Quebec since 2016, our neighbourhood hasn’t been immune but continues to resist and hold itself well! ...

A few minutes after the business closed, a surveillance camera captured a masked individual writing some hardly flattering graffiti. For the owner, Stéphane Allard, there is no doubt that it was a planned, anti-gentrification action. “You see four individuals pass by with a backpack. Then you see a masked person write hateful graffiti”, explains Mr. Allard, who estimates he lost an entire day of work. ...

About a year ago, the good citizens of the neighborhood were indignant about an attack against Electric Kids, whose front window was sprayed with purple paint which we can still see traces of today. Tonight, we decided to attack other businesses on rue Sainte-Catherine – three furniture design boutiques, a real estate office, and a yuppie hair salon. If this is the strategy we use, it’s not just to make those who support and participate in the gentrification of Hochelaga talk about it. We want to do more than just raise our voices, to be more than indignant when faced with this movement that slowly chases us from the neighborhood. Rather than being satisfied with just smashing their windows, we decided to spray the interior of the design businesses with paint to ruin their merchandise. It’s a matter of directly effecting these owners, and not just the facades that protect them. ...

After having participated in what was called as a demo against the police in Hochelaga on Thursday April 14th, we had the urge to share some reflections outside of our living rooms (towards yours perhaps?). First off, we were fucking excited to see a flyer circulate that was calling for a neighborhood demo in Hochelag’. We want to be able to participate in moments of struggle in the neighborhood and not only downtown and/or in demos called on Facebook. ...

A demonstration of around 30 masked people took the streets of Hochelaga on the night of Thursday, April 14. Police were attacked with fireworks and molotovs. There were no arrests.

Last night, we destroyed the windows of Antidote, Mâle Bouffe, Electric Children (which was also sprayed with paint), and attacked the businesses of the Place Valois. This morning, flyers were thrown in the metro stations Préfontaine, Joliette and Pie-IX and at the Place Valois explaining the attacks of the night before. Flyer: During the night of February 25, 2016, some businesses in Hochelaga were attacked. We smashed the windows and threw paint everywhere. ...

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It was on June 2, ten days before the opening of his restaurant on rue Ontario, that the owner noticed that a large rock had been thrown through a window of his business. ...

The local employment centre of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve was vandalized, over the night of Thursday to Friday, in Montreal, when white and red paint was thrown on the buildings façade and the windows were broken. A passerby called 911 around 5:40 am to communicate the dammages to the building on rue De Rouen. Upon arriving at the location, police also noticed the interior had been ransacked, affirms the spokesperson of the SPVM, Jean-Pierre Brabant. ...

We heard through the media that on the night of November 26 to 27, yuppie businesses in Hochelaga were once again attacked. The restaurant Le Chasseur and the Le Valois, In Vivo and Bagatelle bistros windows were smashed and graffiti was painted. Here is a leaflet left behind, taken from media and which we’ve translated from french: You and your collaborators of gentrification, you come here, in Hochelaga to rot us with your 25 bucks table d’hôte, your crap condos and your hip businessman ideals. It seems quite obvious that your not welcome here. Your presence makes us want to vomit. We know the song too well. Under your cheerful young entrepreneur and unscrupulous airs, your only goal is to colonize our neighborhoods and adapt them to your interests. You have big cash and the cops for your SECURITY and that’s how you plan to succeed. Well you better get the fuck out of here because we want nothing of your sanitized world. ...