Holding the Main • Tendre La Main
In 1987, The Main: Portrait of a Neighborhood celebrated tolerance and the urban immigrant experience around Montreal's Boulevard Saint Laurent. This 2025 reimagining investigates belonging, identity and memory in a globalized world.

In 1987 The Main: Portrait of a Neighborhood was published and quickly sold out. The critically acclaimed project celebrated the communities around Montreal’s Boulevard Saint Laurent and contributed to the eventual designation of “The Main” as a Canadian heritage landmark. In 2017 to celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary, the author was invited to re-imagine the original book. Returning to his former neighbourhood, his new book weaves old and new photographs with texts and archives, inviting us on a journey into his creative process to reflect on questions of home, identity, time, memory, and the evolving urban landscape, and asking: in a globalized world where people and cities are in constant movement, what happens to places and memories? Can we go home again?