In 1969, the Canadian government expropriated 97,000 acres of farmland and forcibly displaced 10,000 people from their homes to build the airport of the “future”. The vastness of the confiscated territory, made up of excellent agricultural land, reflects a disproportionate ambition and a clear disregard for the people who lived there. The steamroller of the 1960s advanced without mercy on the achievements of the past. Inaugurated in the 1970s, Mirabel Airport never met with the success it was expected to have. Too far from Montreal and difficult to access, the airport was for a long time reserved for international flights before its terminal was finally demolished in 2014.
Fifty years later, artist Isabelle Gagné, a Mirabel resident herself, proposes a (re)interpretation based on archives of what remains of the memory of these places through digital means, of what remains today of the evacuated land and of this airport now dedicated to commercial aviation.
