Our Lady of Mile End is Sarah Gilbert’s first book

Writer Sarah Gilbert (Faculty, English) was born in the United States, grew up in Winnipeg and lived in Ottawa before moving to Montreal. For the last three decades, the Mile End neighbourhood has been her home, and she chose it as the place where she would raise her daughter.

“The Mile End is a real muse. It is a very dense neighbourhood with a lot going on,” she said in an interview with Dawson’s Communications Office. “I had acquired tons of content without noticing it.”

Our Lady of Mile End (Anvil Press, 2023) is a collection of short stories about “gentrification and displacement in a once affordable area that is feeling the squeeze of social and cultural transformation.

“The overlapping lives—of girls and women, tenants and landlords, neighbours and strangers, the old generation and the next—chart the tensions and affections among people living in a community that has turned into a destination,” reads the description on the website of Anvil Press.

Sarah wanted her daughter to grow up somewhere where she knows the neighbours. When she had her baby, she had “a free pass to talk to anyone,” she said.

The fictional book project grew out of a blog Sarah created called Mile Endings in 2008. That project was journalistic and through it, Sarah documented the endings of neighbourhood businesses and characters and some of the new beginnings of the neighbourhood in transition.

The Mile End is still a real community, Sarah says, citing density and walkability as important factors in fostering community. Neighbourhood gathering spots, like the cafés, the library, the local grocery store and the school, are also important.

“I watch the neighbourhood by walking around,” she said. “There are neighbours who know each other and send their kids to the same school up the street and there are a lot of artists. There are people you see regularly who you may not know but they are part of your personal landscape.”