The Daily UbuntuThread 03 · Racialized but Human · September 25, 2026
Montréal-Nord, at the heart of the first wave
In the spring of 2020, Montreal's Blackest and poorest neighbourhoods were the hardest hit by COVID-19.
1 · The scene
May 2020, a kitchen in Montréal-Nord. A patient care attendant comes home from her night shift. Before kissing her children, she leaves her clothes in a bag by the door, as she does every morning.
Her neighbour from the third floor has left a container of soup on the landing, with a note: "For you, to keep going." No one applauds her from the window. But someone in the building has noticed.
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
COVID-19 in Montreal's racialized neighbourhoods
In the spring of 2020, the first wave hit Montreal hard. A CBC News analysis published in June 2020 compared COVID-19 cases in the island's neighbourhoods against 24 socioeconomic factors. The strongest link? The one between the case rate and the proportion of Black residents. Montréal-Nord, home to a large Haitian community, then had 2,911 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest rate on the island.
It is not the virus that chooses by skin colour. It is living conditions: many essential workers, especially in health care, who cannot work from home; housing too small for multigenerational families. At the time, Quebec did not publish data on patients' origins, which made these inequalities harder to see.
On the ground, organizations such as Maison d'Haïti, Parole d'excluEs and Hoodstock sounded the alarm, surveyed residents and demanded more resources. In October 2021, a public health study confirmed that disadvantaged neighbourhoods had twice as many cases and deaths as well-off ones. Listening to the people on the ground is also a way of caring.
3 · The voice
“We kept saying it, and no one was listening.”
4 · The question
Who around you kept the city standing during the pandemic, and how can we tell them today that we saw them?
Sources
- CBC News, "Montreal's poorest and most racially diverse neighbourhoods hit hardest by COVID-19, data analysis shows," June 2020. www.cbc.ca
- Radio Canada International, "COVID-19 : quartiers pauvres et racialement diversifiés de Montréal plus touchés," June 12, 2020 (in French). www.rcinet.ca
- CBC News, "The pandemic exposed Montreal's inequalities, and residents say it's time to tackle root causes," October 2021. www.cbc.ca
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
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