The author obtained a Ph. D. in Social Anthropology at the New School for Social Research, in New York (1980) and has completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Jewish Studies Department of McGill University (1988-1991). He has held several administrative positions in the Québec government in recent years (1993-2004) and is currently director of the Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa since July 2004.
Pierre Anctil has written several books on the Montreal Jewish community, among which, Le rendez-vous manqué, les Juifs de Montréal face au Québec de l’entre-deux-guerres (1988), Tur malka, flâneries sur les cimes de l’histoire juive montréalaise (1997) and Saint-Laurent, Montreal’s Main (2002). The author has also translated in French the memoirs of Yiddish Canadian writers Israël Medresh, Simon Belkin and Hirsch Wolofsky (1997-2001) and the poetry of Jacob-Issac Segal (1992). He is currently working on a translation of the literary memoirs of Montréal Yiddish poet Sholem Shtern.
Susan D. Bronson
Susan D. Bronson is an architect specialized in heritage conservation and history with 25 years of experience. She is also a professor at the School of Architecture of the Faculty of Urban Design at the Université de Montréal, where she teaches mostly in the M.Sc.A. en Aménagement program, Conservation of the Built Environment option. For over three years, she has worked with her students on documenting the history and architecture of different sections of the Main. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Boulevard Saint-Laurent and a founding member of the group Mile End Memories. Having lived beside the Main for more than 25 years, she has witnessed firsthand the multiple changes that characterize its recent past.
Bernard Vallée
Bernard Vallée has been involved for over 30 years in a variety of social movements, including housing rights advocacy, popular education, and the preservation of Montreal’s urban heritage.
He is currently coordinator of educational programmes with L’Autre Montréal, a non-profit educational group that provides the general public and organizations with alternative guided tours of the city. The tours are a way of disseminating information about urban history, awareness of heritage, and analysis of social issues.
St. Lawrence Boulevard is an important part of his life as an immigrant, activist and teller of urban tales.