Summer of 1946, Montreal. When Jackie Robinson stepped out onto the field for the Montreal Royals, he became the first Black man to break the colour barrier in professional baseball. For one of the first times, Black Montrealers felt seen and heard in their city. By the next year, however, Jackie had moved on to play for the Major Leagues in the United States, leaving in his wake a white-majority public that had co-opted Jackie’s success into the narrative of a post-racial city. By way of a letter to the titular figure, Henri Pardo’s Dear Jackie is an endearing portrait of Black life in Montreal. Spacious, poetic, and shot in black and white, the film is an ode to the people of Little Burgundy—Montreal’s historically Black neighbourhood—whose history and legacy of community-building in the face of segregation and racist urban renewal policies mirrors those of many Black communities across North America, including Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver. -DB