‘Private’ Acts in ‘Public’ Spaces: Parks in Turn-of-the-Century Montreal

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
‘Private’ Acts in ‘Public’ Spaces: Parks in Turn-of-the-Century Montreal
Abstract
The author charts the dynamic increase in park development in Montreal between 1855 and 1912 (from less than 12 acres to 827 acres) by examining the process by which the rural park and its corollary, the neighbourhood park, became inscribed with particular values: capitalism, patriarchy, female propriety, domestic harmony, and bourgeois (hetero)sexual morality. She looks at how two particularly disenfranchised groups, the vagabond and the “improper” courting couple, class-, gender-, and age-specific constructs who embodied economic disorder, social unrest and moral chaos, were ideologically and physically removed from parks. The author argues that a space constructed as a domestic enclave for families generally and mothers particularly, their use of the “public” park in “private” ways represented a direct attack on the very notions inscribed in this space.
Book Title
Power, Place and Identity: Historical Studies of Social and Legal Regulations in Quebec
Place
Montreal
Publisher
Montreal History Group
Date
1998
Pages
129-149
Language
en
URL
Citation
Schmidt, Sarah. “‘Private’ Acts in ‘Public’ Spaces: Parks in Turn-of-the-Century Montreal.” In Power, Place and Identity: Historical Studies of Social and Legal Regulations in Quebec, edited by Tamara Myers, Kate Boyer, Mary Anne Poutanen, and Steven Watt, 129–149. Montreal: Montreal History Group, 1998. https://web.archive.org/web/20041107144538/http://www.ghm-mhg.mcgill.ca/publications/ppi/schmidt.html.
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