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Photo by Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette Files

Whenever an incident involving anti-black discrimination occurred in Montreal a couple of decades ago, a reporter had at least a dozen active black community organizations to call upon for comment.

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In fact, before the reporter had time to flip through her Rolodex — we are talking about the ’90s — several of the leaders of those organizations would have already called the newsroom to offer a comment, or announced a press conference or a rally.

There was the Black Coalition of Quebec, the Black Community Council of Quebec, the Jamaica Association, La Maison d’Haiti, Also Known As X (AKAX), the Federation of Organizations of Trinidad and Tobago of Quebec, the Congress of Black Women, Montreal Association of Black Business Persons and Professionals, the Quebec Board of Black Educators, and many more.

And though most of those organizations still exist, at least on paper, they are less vocal, less active and, one could argue, less relevant to young black Montrealers than they were a decade or three ago. Some groups, like the Montreal chapter of the Congress of Black Women of Canada, have simply disappeared, although that organization still has eight functioning chapters in Ontario, for example. Others limp along, underfunded and unnoticed, still run by the same people who founded them decades ago.