Joseph-Clermont Mathurin sells the street magazine L'Itinéraire on the streets of Montreal. Credit: Photo by Kaia Sand
There’s something quite vibrant about L’Itinéraire, the street magazine in Montreal.
Maybe it’s the graphically striking magazine covers (“There’s our magician,” editor in chief Josée Panet-Raymond said when graphic designer Carla Braga walked into the newsroom).
Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. This column represents her views."Spotlight on Street Papers" features newspapers from around the International Network of Street Papers.
Maybe it’s the location, an apt combination of Montreal’s media district and services for people experiencing homelessness near the Village, an LGBTQIA2S+ neighborhood marked with a painted rainbow streaming down the street. Raymond explained that until the 1960s, the neighborhood smelled of molasses from nearby factories.
Maybe it’s that the word for “vendor” in French is the beautiful word “camelot” — or the lively participation of the camelots, some of whom write for the magazine in formats ranging from small testimonials about their sales posts to feature-length articles. Several participate in internships with media partners.
Maybe it’s the General Assembly, an annual gathering of vendors involved in governance that I sat in to observe, desperately trying to translate the chatter about the budget on my phone. Or the multilingual atmosphere led by French, with English and First Nations languages.
Or maybe it’s the fact that, despite being 30 years old, L’Itinéraire is still trying new things.
L’Itinéraire runs a plant-filled cafe at its main location but launched an innovative project further north in Cabot Square where many First Nations people spend time. Cabot Square is near a hospital where people sometimes travel from First Nations reserves farther north for medical care, ending up stranded in Montreal.
The idea for the Round House Cafe was developed by the city government, transforming a round park structure into a cafe with a nearby cargo container as the seating area. Marilou Maisonneuve manages the social enterprise, which includes two phases.
In the first phase, First Nations participants pick up shifts by the day, getting paid in cash at the end of the shift. As they go deeper, they enter a more intensive program that supports them in getting identification cards, bank accounts, housing, resumes and leads for jobs.
The cafe has a powwow menu based on a First Nations staple bread, bannock, and purchases Indigenous-created products when possible, including a coffee roasted by a father and son of the Mohawk nation.
“We always develop recipes with participants,” Maisonneuve said. “It’s one of the fun things we do in the cafe. In this way, participants bring a bit of home to Montreal — maybe traditional knowledge, maybe a quirk of family.”
On my day at the Round House Cafe, I ate my bannock bread and sipped coffee in the cargo container. Strung with lights overhead, the little dining area had plenty of outlets where people could charge their devices. I flipped through recent issues of the magazine. One explored the theme of teeth. Another featured Inuit singer Elisapie in an iridescent dress. I was reminded of how street papers are all connected when I saw a photo of Street Roots reporter Jeremiah Hayden, featured for his recent reporting on the U.S. Supreme Court case opening up the criminalization of homelessness.
Visiting Montreal?
Carry $3 in Canadian currency to buy a magazine, published twice-monthly.
Plan your lunch around visiting the Round House Cafe in Cabot Square.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
