Most of the streams that used to exist are no longer visible to the eye because they have been buried under concrete, diverted or piped into sewers.
But we can still hear them.¹
To most Mile End residents, the Bain Saint-Michel or “Bain Turcot” is a site of mystery. A circular, stained-glass window captures the eye of those passing on the street, and inside there is a bath. Those who notice the dilapidated Beaux-Arts building are likely unaware of the history that exists within its walls, a history that is representative of the ever-changing city that surrounds it.
Before the bath’s construction in 1909, the Industrial Revolution brought new concerns about hygiene due to the denser urban population and strain on existing infrastructure. With these concerns, various strategies emerged among settlers to manage water flow as a way to sanitize the city.² The settler government in Montreal colonized the Saint Lawrence River, obstructing the natural path of the water and molding it to fit its infrastructural and economic needs, disregarding the livelihoods of Indigenous communities. Between 1883 and 1933, the city constructed 23 public baths.³ Among them, the Bain Saint-Michel was built to provide water access to the French-Canadian, British, and Irish working classes, as well as other European migrants, during a time marked by disease and the increasing densification of population.⁴
During this period, 75% of domestic dwellings lacked a bath or shower.⁵ The Bain Saint-Michel was part of the city’s first phase of public bath construction and was built in the Mile End which has long been a “passing through” neighborhood for new immigrants in Montreal.⁶ Antisemitism and white Christianity dominated the city at the time the Bain Saint-Michel was built, while the neighbourhood became home to members of the Hasidic Jewish community predominantly leading up to and following the end of the Second World War.⁷ At the time, women were largely excluded from the social sphere, and were only able to gain access to the public baths from organizing and pressure from workers' rights groups, feminist groups, as well as the medical community.⁸
In the first ten years of its existence, about 1,500 people used the Bain Saint-Michel each week, brought together by its offering of running water.⁹ However, the settler’s perspective that water is meant to serve, sanitize, and be controlled had only recently been implemented within public infrastructure. The development of hydro-electric projects on the stolen land did great harm towards the health and livelihoods of Indigenous communities, polluting the water they depended on, displacing them from their land and disrupting their lifestyles.¹⁰ The centrality of water within Indigenous perspectives can be seen in the statement "Water is Life" that resonated through Indigenous-led movements in recent years, including Idle No More and used in opposition to proposed pipeline constructions.¹¹ As Dorothy Christian of the Secwepemc and Syilx Nations of British Columbia writes, “human beings are roughly two-thirds water, and the Earth’s surface is roughly two-thirds water. We are part of the hydrological cycle, not separate from it.”
Just as water connects all life, communal bathing has, throughout history and across cultures, brought people together to coexist in their most vulnerable form. From the sentō in Japan, to the lakȟóta sweat-lodge of Indigenous North America, which serves not just as a form of physical contact but also a ‘purification rite,’ various forms of the public bath have put people in contact who may not have otherwise shared space.¹² Though nudity is taboo in many cultures today, this kind of exposure to other bodies can bring many benefits. Research has shown that participation in naturist activities can lead to more positive body image and self-esteem, which contribute to greater life satisfaction.¹³ Yet, today, the way bodies are perceived is often a monolithic production of pixels on a screen.
Over the last century, the use and target populations of the Bain Saint-Michel have changed and the neighborhood around it has transformed many times over. Shifting to function as a community space for sporting events and swimming lessons in the 1950s and later as a creative space in an increasingly gentrified part of Montreal, the bath has played an evolving role within the Mile End. Various arts organizations have occupied the space since it closed as a bath, and the creatives who used the space as an outlet to share their art with the surrounding community called attention to both the bath’s vacancy and its potential.¹⁴
In 2020, the Bain Saint-Michel is closed, and many of those passing by wear masks. Montreal, the worst hit Canadian city during the 1918 influenza pandemic, is again, one century later, the nation's epicenter of COVID-19 cases.¹⁵ It is a distanced moment in a new time of disease, and the concept of naked strangers’ bodies bathing side-by-side seems especially impossible. Most bathe in private, lacking the exposure and communication with others that communal bathing once provided. But in this time of community efforts to mitigate the spread of disease, public hygiene is once again viewed as a question of public good. Though society is socially distanced, matters of hygiene continue to transform from individual acts to collective ones.¹⁶
The upcoming transformation of the Bain Saint-Michel into a creative and community-centered space for artists, city residents, and visitors requires an understanding of the various intersections that exist at this site. While art feeds and instructs the mind, it can also function as a “seedbed for gentrification.”¹⁷ Repurposing urban spaces through the cultural sector often contributes to an erasure of histories and a marginalization of communities that have long resided in these spaces. In creating a space that seeks to strengthen community, we must understand that a public space does not necessarily guarantee a positive contribution to the community. As Felice Yuen writes, “leisure settings are complex. [...] They carry both the possibility to create community and potential to normalize and exacerbate the oppression and marginalization of others.” Atelier Céladon intends to occupy the Bain Saint-Michel through consideration of the plural histories that have contributed to the complexity of this site and its surroundings.
Until then, the bath continues to wait, and the water, undetected and underground, continues to flow.
—Marie Saadeh
¹ Dorothy Christian and Rita Wong, “Untapping Watershed Mind,” in Thinking with Water, ed. Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod, and Astrida Neimanis (Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013), pp. 232-254, 239.
² In the mid 19ᵗʰ century, an article published by La Minerve revealed the high numbers of livestock that shared the city with Montreal residents, creating hygiene concerns among the public and pushing the government to address the issue. As Dagenais writes, “thus modified and distributed, water becomes the preeminent method for cleansing the city, alleviating urban problems and improving the quality of everyday life. Guided as well by engineers – those architects of the ‘sanitary city’ – municipal politicians got down to the business of developing extensive water supply and sewer systems.” See Michele Dagenais, “The St. Lawrence: ‘A Superb Instrument to Be Developed and Moulded,’” in Montreal, City of Water : an Environmental History, trans. Peter Feldstein (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), pp. 48-69, 50.
³ Justin Bur et al., Dictionnaire Historique Du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montréal, Québec: Écosociété, 2017).
⁴ Gabrielle Désilets, “Consuming the Neighbourhood? Temporary Highly Skilled Migrants in Montreal’s Mile End,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, February 2020, pp. 1-18, 5.
⁵ “Bain Généreux,” Bain Généreux - Écomusée du fier monde (Écomusée du fier monde.).
https://ecomusee.qc.ca/collections/collections-ecomusee/le-bain-genereux
⁶ Justin Bur et al., Dictionnaire Historique Du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montréal, Québec: Écosociété, 2017).
⁷ “Menashe Lavut,” Museum of Jewish Montreal.
http://imjm.ca/location/1644
⁸ Yves Desjardins, Histoire Du Mile End (Québec, Québec: Les Éditions du Septentrion, 2017).
⁹ “Bain Saint-Michel,” Bain Saint-Michel - Montréal (Images Montréal).
https://imtl.org/edifices/Bain-Saint-Michel.php
¹⁰ Ian Austen, “Canada’s Big Dams Produce Clean Energy, and High Levels of Mercury,” New York Times, November 11, 2016.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/canada/clean-energy-dirty-water-canadas-hydroelectric-dams-have-a-mercury-problem.html
Carrie Furman, “Methylmercury Poisoning: Another Gift from Hydro-Quebec?,” Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, June 2000; Ronald Niezen, “Power and Dignity: The Social Consequences of Hydro-Electric Development for the James Bay Cree,” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne De Sociologie 30, no. 4 (1993): pp. 510-529.
¹¹ The phrase was popularized on a poster designed in 2016 by the Métis visual artist Christi Belcourt. See Sakihitowin Awasis, “Keep It in the Ground!,” Canadian Art (Canadian Art, August 7, 2017).
https://canadianart.ca/features/keep-it-in-the-ground
¹² “Inipi - The Rite of Purification,” Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.
https://aktalakota.stjo.org/seven-sacred-rites/inipi-rite-of-purification
Jamie Mackay, “Why We Need to Bring Back the Art of Communal Bathing,” Aeon (Aeon Media Group Ltd, August 26, 2016).
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-we-need-to-bring-back-the-art-of-communal-bathing
¹³ According to Keon West’s study, naturist activities are experiences where “one is communally naked in the company of non-intimate others who typically have non-idealized bodies.” See Keon West, “Naked and Unashamed: Investigations and Applications of the Effects of Naturist Activities on Body Image, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction,” Journal of Happiness Studies 19, no. 3 (2017): pp. 677.
¹⁴ Arts organizations that have occupied the space include l’Agence TOPO, articule, le Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark, CRCI/ mineminemine, le Centre de diffusion d’art multidisciplinaire de Montréal DARE-DARE, la Centrale galerie Powerhouse, les Ateliers Quartier général, les Filles électriques, Infinithéâtre, PI2 (Regroupement des créateurs de Saint-Viateur Est), RAIQ - le Regroupement des arts interdisciplinaires du Québec, la Sala Rossa + Festival Suoni per il popolo + Casa del Popolo and Viva! Art Action. See “Historique,” Bain Saint-Michel.
https://www.bainsaintmichel.com/historique
¹⁵ Susan Goldenberg, “Killer Flu” (Canada's History Society, September 11, 2018).
https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/arts-culture-society/killer-flu
¹⁶ Nolan Boomer, “Book Club: The Architecture of Bathing and a Sensual Relationship to Space,” PIN-UP Magazine (FEBU Publishing LLC).
https://pinupmagazine.org/articles/book-review-architecture-of-bathing
¹⁷ Vanessa Mathews, “Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrification and the City,” Geography Compass, 4 (2010): pp. 672.