I was in for a set of long days! L'Île-Saint-Denis was quite far from our hostel. It is notoriously difficult to get to and from the island, in fact. One of the main issues we would face while working on this project. Thankfully we visited in late spring, so it wasn’t overly cold, or cold at all by Canadian standards.

We were briefed on conditions on the island before we got there, and we faced a number of issues going in. We were told the neighbourhood itself was dangerous, and not to go around taking photos of people (women specifically). For the final output of the project, we weren’t allowed to tie anything to any specific racial identity.

France has a different view on demographics than we do in Canada. In Canada, we approach differences in culture with the idea of a mosaic. We’re a country of immigrants and First Nations. We’re all different, and it’s just something we’ve all grown up with. There’s some uglier sides to this mentality unfortunately, but for the most part we all get along. France however, is still reeling from the horrors of the late 1930s. The government has deliberately refused to collect racialized data on the census, and so we were left without any typical resources we would have in understanding the identity of the locale. We were however, encouraged to explore the island in our groups. Apparently, the “right people” knew we were there and knew we would be poking around. We were given a larger tour and shown exact places not to go.