Abstract

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the urban conservation group Save Montreal actively opposed the city’s high-modernist redevelopment. To date, their efforts have been studied within the context of heritage preservation and its contribution to evolving notions of local identity. While Save Montreal was undoubtedly concerned with the retention of structures considered historically significant its members did not characterize themselves as heritage preservationists. Rather, I argue that Save Montreal’s membership constructed their organization and campaigned so as to challenge the means and process by which development occurred in the city centre. My use of oral history as a primary method of analysis reveals the socio-economic and political motivations of the group while also serving to democratize urban history. Oral history also represents a valuable means by which to understand and contextualize urban conservation movements. While local in operation and outlook, Save Montreal’s 1973-1985 activist period paralleled postwar grassroots conservation movements in other North American cities.