The Land We Stand On

4281 blvd St-Laurent is the HEART of Montreal

In honour of our placement, we begin with a pause.

Before every gathering at Ralia, before every meeting, before every welcome, we stop. We recognize where we are.

You are on the lands known as Tiohtià:ke, “where the group divides.”

That is the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) name for Montreal. Traditional and unceded territory, where many nations have met, traded, and built communities for thousands of years.

Long before the city you are exploring, the village of Hochelaga was here with its longhouses and cornfields. A thriving community. Jacques Cartier arrived in 1535 and renamed the mountain. Ville-Marie (now our Montreal old port & downtown) was founded in 1642 on these lands. The colonial story begins there, but Montreal still holds the story of Hochelaga and you will see one of our boroughs still has its name.

The name for the greater Montreal and the island, Tiohtià:ke, has also not stopped being true. Montreal is a city of underlying divides. French and English. Settler and Indigenous. Third generation immigrants and new. Our Saint-Laurent blvd is in the middle. La Maison Ralia sits in the middle of the middle, which we call the HEART.

We honour the past so we can design the future with care.

We end with an intention for the future we formed in our HEART.

Our intention is to be a connector in our city.

*Fun fact: we first named our building CONNECTIONS (you will see the name in a sculpture out front!). We did this to encourage connection and build the future we want to be part of.