BACK RIVER

Sonia Bazar’s body of work presented in BACK RIVER is named for Montreal’s oldest standalone Jewish burial site: the Back River Cemetery. Established in the 1880s in the Montreal neighborhood of Ahuntsic, the cemetery is one of the earliest resting places for first-generation Jewish migrants to Canada. Built upon swampland and founded for a growing immigrant community, the cemetery today holds a peculiar and enigmatic place in the city’s landscape. 

Following the peak of its use in the 1930s and 1920s, Back River came close to abandonment in the late 20th century, followed by renewed interest to restore the historic site in the 1990s by the Jewish community. Still in use today for community burials, many of which are indigent, Back River’s flood-prone terrain combined with climate change make maintenance and conservation an ongoing struggle. Montreal’s urban growth has also been shaped by the cemetery. Its two sections – the old and the new – are bisected by rue Sauvé, with the Sauvé Metro station at the centre of the intersection that cuts through the site; the Metro line itself was built directly beneath the Back River in the 1960s.

The cemetery’s physical fragmentation and mired landscape mirrors its story, which remains relatively unknown by the local Jewish community or by Ahunstic’s majority French-Canadian and newly-arrived immigrant residents. Sonia Bazar’s work ruminates on the challenges of solving the puzzle surrounding the cemetery’s founding, evolution, and near-abandonment. With the artist’s own family members buried at the Back River, piecing together knowledge of this space becomes an act of personal archiving and placemaking. However, absence and scarcity of information about the Back River Cemetery remain a core part of its story and the memory of its occupants.

Through research-creation using archival sources and oral histories, Bazar invites us to become part of the cemetery’s contemporary archive as she reimagines its 140-year history through photography, installation, and sculptural work.