Abstract

An existing five storey building in Old Montreal has an exposed wall revealing a remarkable history of contributions from at least five building states, the earliest of which was constructed in the eighteenth century. Using the framework of semiotics as proposed by Charles Saunders Peirce (1839-1914) and Jacques Derrida’s (1930-2004) exploration of the parergon, this thesis examines aspects of the wall relative to its history, in relation to the presentation of official narratives and national identity, as well as to the experience of an Anglophone Montrealer’s personal history and identity.
Archival sources such as those of the City of Montreal, Adhémar and the Ministère des Resources naturelles et Faunes, along with the Bibliothèque national and ArchivesCanadaFrance.org, provide the historical basis for the reconstruction of the development of this site, a wall that only in its latest form is exposed in such as way as to inspire this research. Works by Andreas Huyssen, Alain Gordon, M. Christine Boyer, and Pierre Nora form the basis of the question regarding the building of national narratives as they relate to the quarter of Old Montreal. This thesis culminates in a better understanding of my own experience as a fifth-generation, bilingual English Montrealer in a predominantly Francophone city.