Kahnawake before 1955

Courtesy: Sonny Joe Cross

Story told by Sonny Joe Cross

There’s a little house on the map named Tom Jacobs. Right behind that, by the river, there was a Manhattan beach, they called it. It was my brother’s place, William Cross The River. He had a dance hall for weddings, and he would sell hotdogs, hamburgers, chips. Young people would go there and sit at a table and listen to the jukebox. They had a jukebox there and you put a nickel or a dime in it. 

These buildings were there from the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Then, the government came along and took them all away.

I was maybe 20 years old. You see those houses there, people had a chance of buying them. Somehow they were bought and taken away and brought on this side of the river. The other houses that couldn’t be moved, they destroyed them. I was 20 years old, but I was in Brooklyn. I was having a family then and I didn’t come back here till the seaway was put in there.

In the public collection of the Indian Affairs and Northern Development’s annual report for 1957, the report depicts employment opportunities for Kahnawa’kehró:non as a result of the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. (Courtesy: Government of Canada Collection)