Saturday, February 7, 2009

Church Ave. (De L'Église) in 1905

Here is a photo of Church Avenue looking south (Towards the river), possibly from Bannantyne or Verdun, dated the 30th of December 1905. You can faintly see the handwritten date on the lower right hand side. It is mentioned that it is a dirt road with wooden sidewalks. Also, notice that there is no traffic and no vehicules except for what seems to be a city watering tank, notice the hose under the tank going into the tree, surely horse driven. Looks like a deserted Western movie scene.

Guy

4 comments:

Ken McLaughlin said...

Might be the old City Hall building sticking up on the left?

Ken M

Les F said...

That's a good call Ken, I'd say your right.sure looks like a familiar steeple like tower.

Guy Billard said...

Ken,
I think you may be right. I had not noticed it and usually I'm pretty observant. Check out my photo albums no. 8 and 16 and the steeple does seem to be the same. That would mean that the photo was taken from Verdun avenue.
Guy

Guy Billard said...

I would like to add more details on the history of Verdun pertaining to this photo. In my photo album no. 8 on fire stations, you will see a 1910 photo of the City Hall/Firestation on Church (Albums No. 8 & 16) so it appears that it also exhisted in 1905, the date of the above photo. I have noted down to find out the date it was constructed. I have also noted on old maps (Album No. 6) that originally De L.Église avenue was named Pavillon, no doubt after the Pavillon wich was situated at the corner of LaSalle (Album noi. 29) were Verdun was founded in 1876. Verdun was in its infancy at the beginning of the 1900s. There was the Queen's Park (Album No. 31) at the next street wich covered the area of Galt, Bannantyne, Willibrord and Wellington (Some history books say it went as far as LaSalle) and beyond that there were few houses and mostly farms. The population at that time was approximately 2000 wich was concentrated from Pt St Charles (Atwater - Henri Duhamel - Route 15-20 - Chaplain Bridge) to Church.
Guy