Eric Vellend creates a sheet pan supper of roasted sausages with fall vegetables and parsley sauce on October 22, 2015. JENNIFER ROBERTS FOR THE GLOBE AND MAILJENNIFER ROBERTS/The Globe and Mail
There have been many effective calls for social revolution over the course of human history; it's unlikely "Smash the Sausage Makers" will ever join their number.
No one is required to be on board with artisanal charcuterie, but last week in Montreal a self-proclaimed band of masked anarchists loudly stormed a specialty grocery store in St-Henri, a neighbourhood in the city's southwest.
They robbed food counters – mostly fancy sausages – daubed shop windows with obscenities and slapped on manifesto-like stickers in protest against the gentrification of an archetypal working-class borough.
It isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened in St-Henri or elsewhere. And windows have been shattered at hip new addresses in many Canadian cities. In 2013, vandals targeted several new restaurants and other businesses in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
True, income inequality exists in Canada; people can be forgiven for believing it's growing. Lower-income earners are being squeezed out of neighbourhoods in the country's major centres; Montreal, long a city of renters, is becoming a town of condo owners.
A lot of those units are in and around St-Henri; class-based anger simmers. If only its latest and most spectacular expression had been channeled appropriately! This target, one of many hit in the area in recent weeks, was ill-chosen.
The people behind Ils en fument du bon – the boutique in question – are not charter members of the bourgeoisie. In fact, some of them grew up nearby. They are part of a decade-long culinary and economic renaissance in the area that should be celebrated. Thankfully, it generally is.
Those who decry urban renewal, or gentrification – an unsuitable term, there being no new emerging gentry in Montreal – should try to remember it is a symptom, not the malady. It shouldn't be treated with random sacking of locally owned businesses staffed by plainly terrorized employees who work for hourly wages.
Neighbourhoods change for all sorts of reasons: economic forces, demographic shifts and city planning. There may be reasons to complain, but let them be constructive. May those who senselessly ransack shops be prosecuted for their crimes.