Historic Black community centre in Montreal to get new life

For decades, many in Little Burgundy's Black community have dreamed of rebuilding the historic Negro Community Centre. Now, those dreams are one step closer to reality.

"Having somewhere that people can feel safe, people can organize, people can learn, it'll be immeasurable," said Jared Roboz, who heads the group pushing to re-establish the NCC.

Earlier this month, the City of Montreal informed Roboz and his organization, The Centre for Canadians of African Descent (CCAD), that it had purchased the vacant lot where the NCC once stood, intending to hand it over to the community eventually.

The City will hold the land for as long as it takes for the CCAD to develop a project that includes social housing and a community centre, said Benoit Dorais, borough mayor of the Sud-Ouest, in a phone interview.

"They can count on the lot," Dorais said. "They can also count on the support of the borough."

For nearly 70 years, the NCC was an institution in Little Burgundy, providing critical after-school programming for Black students and support for aspiring Black entrepreneurs.

"When I was growing up," said historian Dorothy Williams, who herself attended the NCC, "Blacks came in, they took that long trek in from the South Shore, from the North Shore, from the West Island to come into the NCC because they knew it was a place where their children were safe. It was home."

The centre was where Jazz greats Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones learned to play piano. There were sports teams, dance classes, a library, and a lunch program.

The Negro Community Centre in Montreal provided after-school programming for Black students and support for aspiring Black entrepreneurs."We need to re-establish that sense of community," Williams said. "That hub of what the centre represented."

In the 1960s, many homes in Little Burgundy were destroyed to make way for the construction of the Ville Marie Expressway. The NCC, which relied on community funding, started to struggle and eventually closed in 1989.

For nearly 70 years, the NCC was an institution in Montreal's Little Burgundy neighbourhood.

Efforts to reopen the centre started immediately, but the building fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished in 2014.

"I grew up in Little Burgundy, so I'm a bit biased," said Roboz as he read the commemorative plaque adjacent to the vacant lot on Coursol Street. "But, I always said Little Burgundy has this spirit to it that I couldn't quite put my finger on."

"I like to believe that it's just remnants of the NCC," he said. "There's something special about this neighbourhood, and I think this is it."

At 30 years old, Roboz was not even born when the centre closed down. Still, growing up in Little Burgundy, he would walk past the crumbling building and wonder what it would have been like to be a kid during its heyday.

He now finds himself able to reimagine the historic site for the next generation while honouring the NCC's rich legacy in the community.

Jared Roboz is leading the group pushing to re-establish the NCC"To have something material to work towards just goes to show how important community activism is," he said. "You might not be able to change the world, but you can change the world for the people around you."

The group is in the very early stages of planning the new centre, which will likely take years to develop and build. When it does reopen, Roboz says, it will be under the new name, the Centre for Canadians of African Descent.