Shoni Town serait ouvert au public large du quartier dès le 1 septembre. J'ai écrit un grosse osti fil (ou 🧵) sur le sujet, mais dans ma maternelle, l'anglais. Ça commence ici: https://shoni.town/@nauss/110980705623402054

#introduction #intro
#Shoni #ShoniTown #Montreal

Well, Montréal Centre-ville – an organization that principally serves to drive tourists to restaurants in various parts of downtown #Montréal – has renamed this place, which has been known as Shaughnessy Village for a long time, #Shoni. They have plastered the neighbourhood with this new 5-letter word

Thomas Shaughnessy, who was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1853, used to live in the house where the Canadian Centre for Architecture is. He was the president of Canadian Pacific and he was made a baron by the British government in 1916. Personally, I don't think we NEED to use this guy's name for our neighbourhood. It is simply the case that this has been the most common name for our neighbourhood for a long time (which is incidentally why I often say things like "Canada" or "America" even though there's a strong case that we should indigenous names for different parts of this continent or the landmass as a whole)

"Shoni" is certainly much easier to spell, to say, and to type, and so that its value – both for the people with Montréal Centre-ville, but potentially for us too

I don't think Montréal Centre-ville's rebranding campaign has been in my best interests as a renter or a resident of the neighbourhood. I am happy for the people at the marketing agency, who need to pay their mortgages or whatever, but I don't necessarily love it when the sidewalks are jampacked with people from other parts of town, or tourists from the United States or whatever, who've come to my neighbourhood to party. The name "Shoni" sounds a lot like #Homa, which is how land speculators and businesspeople rebranded #Hochelaga as part of what a lot of people would call #gentrification

But I'm not scared of a word and I don't think anyone can copyright it. Plus it's short!