1. The Monument-National in the City
2. A Community Under Threat in a Changing World
3. The Early Years: the Monument’s "Open Arms"
4. The Monument-National and the Women’s Movement
5. The Monument-National: A Breeding Ground of New Ideas and a Multiethnic Cultural Centre
6. On Stage at the Monument: Innovation and Avant-Garde
7. On Stage at the Monument: Eclecticism and Popular Success
8. The Long Slide Downhill
9. Renaissance: Rebirth, Centenary

5. The Monument-National: A Breeding Ground of New Ideas and a Multiethnic Cultural Centre

For almost sixty years, the Monument-National served as an important centre of continuing education. Started in 1895, the “cours publics du Monument” trained tens of thousands of people in engineering, law, accounting, hygiene, physics, the arts, history, and literature. Later key institutions like the École polytechnique, the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, the École des beaux-arts and the Conservatoire d’art dramatique, all had their origins in the Monument-National. The "Monument" was also the first home of the domestic science school, founded by the "Dames patronnesses" in 1904 to teach women the basics of hygiene, dietetics and household and financial management.

The Monument-National’s action program — and through it, that of the Association Saint-Jean-Baptiste — also fostered the labour movement by housing a host of workers’ groups representing all sectors of the economy — commercial clerks, factory employees, salesladies and so on. In this role, the Monument-National contributed to the rise of unionism in Québec. It was with a similar rationale, that the Monument also helped the emergence of mutual help societies at a time when banks were refusing to lend to the less well-off. In fact, the cooperative movement in Montréal started at the Monument-National.

By virtue of its location, large auditorium and the many social and community organizations that it housed, the Monument-National was an integral part of all the far-ranging political debates that marked Québec right up to the early 1960s. From Honoré Mercier, who delivered his last speech in 1893, up to Pierre Bourgault in 1966, the voices of all the great orators of Québec and Canada resonated in the Monument’s main hall.

The Monument also hosted the first Canadian Jewish Congress in 1919, and served as a speaker’s platform for dominant personalities on the international scene, like David Ben-Gurion, the future prime minister of Israel.

The Chinese, Syrian, Italian, Black and Irish communities all, from time to time, benefited from the Monument-National’s hospitality and support, as did the Jews for whom the Monument was the main Jewish community centre in North America outside New York. In this way, the Monument established itself as one of the first and most important multiethnic community centres in America.