Creativity, Conviviality, and Care: The Shift from Private to Public in Montreal’s Notman Garden

Résumé

This essay explores gender, aging, and the shifting line between public and private in Montreal’s “Notman Garden”. Located in the historic Milton-Parc neighbourhood, the garden behind the stately neoclassical house at 51 rue Sherbrooke Ouest was an integral part of St. Margaret’s Home, a palliative care facility that housed older women (and their pets) for almost a century. My 2019 oral history research-creation project on this garden led to interviews with women gardeners who helped to shape this green space into a garden for elderly women, as well as with activists who then fought for almost 30 years to protect that garden from development. In 2019 I exhibited my project in Milton-Parc at a moment when the garden’s future was uncertain. While the garden had just obtained official protection from the city, it was not yet clear whether its gendered history would survive. My work proposes that the shift from private garden to public space can and must account for the histories of women, aging, and care that are central to this garden's story.