Griffintown Soundwalk

I went to do the soundwalk on a beautiful, sunny Thursday afternoon with a group of soundwalk classmates. At first, we were not too excited about this assignment, as we were already frustrated by our troubles with finding the starting location. We had accidentally walk

ed up a hill in the completely wrong direction only to realize that Griffintown was on the very other end of the Peel. Being slightly bitter by the time we actually started the soundwalk assignment, it was hard to get into the excitement of the assignment. We had no idea what the point of this walk was, why we were doing it, or how it related to sound class.

Things changed when the people on the tracks began to tell their stories. I immediately became absorbed in the history and energized about the idea of this walk. It reminded me of when grandparents tell you stories about their childhood and you are forming a picture in your head, only in this case you don’t have to worry about the image because you are surrounded by it. I found that this gave me more freedom to focus on my other senses such as sound. Since I was actually immersed in the setting and u

sing what I saw to picture the past, I still needed to imagine the sounds, which was more difficult than one might think. This is because the speeding cars and large trucks of today are much different than the noises that would have been carried out in the exact same location many years ago. Back then, I imagine horse hooves on cobblestone, children laughing and running in the streets, and adults having friendly chats as they pass by each other on their way to work or the store. Today Griffintown is very abandoned and there are loud cars rather than horses, which changed the imagery of the stories told in the soundwalk.

I enjoyed many of the stories that were told. You could really feel the emotion in the storyteller’s voices as they recounted the stories from their past. For example, when the man told stories of hanging off of the edge of the brewery or getting candy bars from Lowney Chocolates, you could hear the joy in his voice from remembering his mischievous childhood days. This also meant you could hear the sadness in their voice when they spoke of memories that were not so cheerful. For example, the story of the church being torn down was clearly emotional for the storytellers, which was a

strong indicator of how much they loved that church and how much it was apart of their life in Griffintown. One of my favourite stories was the one about the plane crash. I found it so fascinating that every single narrator could remember exactly what he or she were doing at the time of the crash right down to the detail of the colour of the pot they were picking up when it happened, “I picked the teapot up, it was a green teapot.” It reminds me of the way that everyone remembers exactly what they were doing when 9/11 happened. This story was interesting to listen to and I found that I was listening to every person tell their side of the story word for word.

The sound effects that were implemented into the tracks were very helpful when it came time to appreciate the value of each location in Griffintown. They accompanied the narratives very well as they emphasized the feeling that storyteller really wanted you to feel. Every once in a while, it was nice to stop and take in my own present day sound effects just to contrast to how lively Griffintown must have once been. Even though looking at Griffintown from a present day perspective is interesting because it makes you curious as to how people went about their everyday lives in this community, the narrative does an extremely great job of helping you realize that it was a bittersweet place to live. It was wonderful, yet it was a difficult place and time to live in. For example, I really liked how it was a small community where everyone seemed to know everyone. In part 8 one of the women explained how, “the women used to hang out the window, like this, and talk to each other.” I thought this painted a great picture of the beauty of everyone knowing each other. Yet, the poverty is also clearly noted and reminds us of how lucky we are today.

Overall, I thought this walk was extremely interesting, exciting, and entertaining. It was very educational as I learned many things about the little, deserted community of Griffintown, as well a lot of history about Montreal. I also liked how for once, when a story is being told, you are actually immersed into the setting of the story and the imagery you need to create is already taken care of. This leaves room for the imagination to explore the possible sounds that could have taken place and compare them to the sounds of today. Besides the sounds provided through the headphones, much is left up to the imagination depending on where you are looking, what you are focusing on in the area, and what you are thinking about. This was one of the most interesting assignments I have yet to do, and I feel that I have learned a lot from it.