Urbania rewrites Queb culture

Cover from Urbania‘s current issue.

Many anglo-Montrealers can be a little gun-shy when it comes to francophony in Quebec, dodging exposure in favour of the safety of English. But there’s much more to Quebecois culture than chanson, its pantheon of obscure celebrities and a passion for circus and hyphenated names — and Urbania can help you find it.

“Anglophones live in Quebec, but they don’t always know francophone culture,” Urbania’s  Editor in chief Catherine Perreault-Lessard tells me. “I think it’s a good introduction.”

Founded in 2003, the quarterly magazine fêtes its 10th anniversary this summer. Urbania is written mostly in French (although they did recently publish an anglophone issue with several English pieces), offering a window into an edgier side of francophone life, written in a fresh, young voice.

We talked not long after the Best of MTL poll results came out, and it was refreshing to see a French-language revue take the No. 1 Best Magazine title from our mostly anglophone respondents.

“We were on the shortlist for Best Magazine in Canada, and we didn’t get the prize,” she says. “We saw the results on the weekend after, and it was a prix de consolation. We were pretty happy to see this.”

The current issue is street-themed, exploring street art calligraphers Garbage Beauty, a profile on different street foods from around the world and numerous other meditations on what “street” culture means to urban life.

Meanwhile, the team is at work at an innovative concept for the next issue, turning the magazine into a think-tank to explore students’ ideas for improving our city. The project, entitled Imaginez Montréal, has 10 students take residence in Urbania’s offices, each tasked with coming up with 100 ideas to solve the city’s problems, as well as a series of open-mic nights where the public can share their solutions, in the run-up to the next municipal election.

“At first we were really Montreal-centric, and now we’re starting to talk more about what happens in the world,” she explains. “But what we want to do is tell stories. I mean, we’re storytellers, and there’s not a lot of storytelling in the French culture. It’s really present in the anglo culture, but we’re trying to bring this aspect of anglophone into francophone culture, and to share the stories of ordinary people.” ■