This year the Bookfair is hosted at the CEDA, a Montreal-area community centre, as well as the nearby Georges-Vanier Cultural Center. Both venues have a policy of no alcohol or other drugs and we ask all participants at the Bookfair to respect this.

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair collective actively strives to create an accessible event. We aim to avoid replicating the barriers in society that exclude and marginalize people. Consistent with our principles, we organize the Bookfair in a way which attempts to challenge exclusions deriving from the main forms of social oppression. We are also attentive to less acknowledged, but no less real, barriers to participation, such as allergies.

Concretely, our current measures to create an accessible event include:

• providing free childcare;
• making the event safe for and welcoming to children and their parents;
• providing translation between English and French;
• free admission;
• requiring journalists to ask before they take pictures;
• assuring wheelchair access to main floor events at the CEDA (the upper floors, where some workshops are held and art displayed, are not accessible to wheelchairs) and being  willing to move workshops to wheelchair accessible rooms upon request; our second venue, the Georges-Vanier Cultural Center, is wheelchair accessible, and will host workshops;
• making the event free of smoke (including around entrance ways) as well as nuts, and perfumes/scents, in order to enable an event that’s kid-friendly and accessible to people who might have allergies, including allergies that are life-threatening;
• providing a space free of animals (except for helper animals such as guide dogs);
• a policy of zero tolerance for racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic and other oppressive behaviors;
• providing gender-neutral washrooms;
• and, attempting to accommodate specific requests relating to access communicated in advance.

Where access depends on the behavior of other participants, we will take steps to communicate and enforce access guidelines, and ask that Bookfair participants concerned about accessibility do the same. All of our attempts to equalize access are made within the limits of current resources and therefore may not be perfect. However, we welcome suggestions for improvement and will do our best to implement these.

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The Anarchist Bookfair takes place in two buildings, which are across from each other:

i) the CEDA (2515, rue Delisle), an adult education and community center based in Little Burgundy/St-Henri, site of the Bookfair for the past 9 years;

ii) we also use the Georges-Vanier Cultual Center (2430, rue Workman) across from the CEDA, which is an entirely wheelchair accessible space.

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PUBLIC AND ACCESSIBLE TRANSPORT

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair venues are a few flat blocks from metro Lionel-Groulx. General information about this metro station is available online here: http://www.stm.info/english/metro/a-m36.htm#Lignes

This metro station is wheelchair accessible (there is an elevator to both platform levels). This will only be useful if you are coming from one of the 6 other wheelchair accessible metro stations (Montmorency, de la Concorde, Cartier, Berri-UQAM, Henri-Bourassa or Côte-Vertu). Please note that all of these stations are along the orange Line of the system.

Lionel-Groulx Metro is also a major hub for buses. The following buses stop at Lionel-Groulx Metro during the regular daytime schedule. Beside each is a link to the online schedule. On the schedule, wheelchair accessible buses are marked by a star ( * ).

78 Laurendeau – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo78.htm
108 Bannantyne – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo108.htm
173 métrobus Victoria – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo173.htm
190 métrobus Lachine – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo190.htm
191 Broadway/Provost – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo191.htm
211 Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo211.htm
221 métrobus Lionel-Groulx – http://www.stm.info/english/bus/geomet/a-geo221.htm

The STM also has a service called “ParaTransit”. To see if you are eligible for this service, or to learn more, call 514-280-8211 or consult their website:http://www.stm.info/english/t-adapte/a-index.htm