Located in an elegant old 1905 public baths, the Écomusée du Fier Monde benefits from being an important part of its subject: local working class history.

The building goes back to an era when 75% of locals in this Centre-Sud neighbourhood didn’t have their own bathroom, making it a particularly important local venue.

Inside, displays cover the last 50 years of local history: a story of a poor hard-scrabble city centre neighbourhood, which hit the skids during postwar de-industrialisation

This was also an era when the neighbourhood became known as Les Faubourgs (the outskirts) and when the building of the Grande Bibliothèque Nationale helped revitalise things.

Aside from the local history, there’s also quite a bit on recent Quebec history too - with the focus very much on social problems: including marginalisation of the disabled; domestic violence; gay rights.