Boy oh girl , did we ever love the lanes, playing kick the can and stando , used to have sheds that held coal in the old days , and the back stairs , what are your memories of the back lanes and sheds, Jimmy
THANKS for stopping by, I do my best to acknowledge when someone leaves a comment,you do not have to be a member here & everyone is welcome. Ps: This site is monitored but not actively posting on a regular basis. Mostly these are stories & some photos saved from a defunct site known as Verdun Connections which was on MSN Groups initially then on a social network called Multiply.
19 comments:
And many other things in those sheds use your immagination
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I can remember the shed on Claude St. just reeking of spilt heating oil (kerosene ?) from a drum we kept there. The floor boards must have been saturated with the stuff. Looking back, what an incredible fire hazard it was.
Hi Banjo4141 I can Remember the sheds wreaking of a lot of things ......Fire Hazards (yes sir) .......but Health Hazards .......most definitely..........hahahaha Nothing like a Real Hot Humid Verdun Summer to elevate the odour level in some of those old sheds.......and how about the ones with missing steps.....you had to know your way around that's for sure.........
some people ran business out of these sheds, between gertrude and evelyn near regina was a blacksmith shop that kept horses there. terrible for rats and smell in the summer but my dad got all his fertilizer for the garden for free. patsy
Thanks for the photos Guy. Believe it or not, we used to play
softball in a vacant lot, in the lane, between 1st and 2nd Avenues. The
lane was very near Wellington (between the Verdun Avenue and Wellington
sections of 1st and 2nd Avenues.) I've been back there, 50 years later, and
was amazed that we played ball in that tiny spot.
Denis Toal, 2nd Avenue from 1936 until 1950
We used to have a "rag man" who had a horse-drawn wagon and he used to go up and down our laneways in Ville Emard. He used to call "Guinilles" and the women used to bring out old clothes and material and he would haul it away. Not sure if he paid for the rags, but this would occur about once a month. This was back in the early 50's. We used to call him the "guinney-0" man. The horse just seemed to know where and when to stop.
I didnt live in Verdun - I lived in West end between Guy and LaMontagne above St. James. We had a guy who used to go up the back lanes and yell r-aaaa-ggs le guinilles. Coal man used to deliver - my grandmother made us count to make sure we got 20 bags when she ordered a ton of coal and the garbage man - we had this huge hook and pulley on very thick rope and lowered our garbage in cans from 3rd floor to ground. During the summer the pedler would come up the street with fruit and veg - corn 12/$1, scissor and knife sharpening, also milk and bread with horse drawn carts - my sister and I were terrified of the horses especially the ones that came up the sidewalks in winter plowing - I think the guys who worked those plows loved to scare the crap out of us kids they came galloping so fast unlike the breadman and milkman's old horse who was docile.
wow that was a great storie , please tell us more .so i may show my kids as to now and then .
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In highschool (1958-62) typing was one of my courses. The room was set up with about five rows across, and perhaps six desks in each row. We learned on standard typewriters (not electric) on which the letters had been removed from the keys. Try making six copies of a letter with carbon paper without a typing error. Almost impossible I remember, but I sure learned to erase pretty fast. The biggest shock came when I went out into the 'real' world.....The Bell Telephone Company of Canada (on Beaver Hall Hill). There on my desk sat an electric typewriter, boy thought I had died and gone to heaven. Also, we didn't have photocopiers, and if many copies were required, we typed on a "stencil" and put it on a machine (sorry having a senior moment here) I think it was called something like Multigraph (bet there's members out there who recall what it was called). And to think this was only about 43 years ago! Now it seems everybody has a pc on their desk.
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mimeogtaph or gestatner. I remember turning the crank to produce the Annex's newsletter. We've come a long way baby!
oooops! (typing was not and is not my forte) That should have read mimeograph
Well MggieMck it's been a longtime since I've heard the name Gestetner......I once worked for 'Gestetner Duplicators' on Pare St in Montreal one street north of Jean Talon......We drove the Decarie Expressway every AM & afternoon home..... The first Copiers (to Rival Xerox) was the Gestetner C-10 copier ,......we were amazed at being able to run off all kinds of copies 'electronically' ......The Ink & Toner were the expensive items ,cause people have to keep on buying new ink (like some of today's printers) However I suspect that less than a half ounce of ink in today's cartridges for $25 ( to re-fill one) or 70 & 80 bucks for avg cartridges ,,,,,,,,there all still getting rich...that's why the printers are getting cheaper but not the re-fill........something 's never change.........but your right we've come along way...........Have Fun & Remember Verdun....
sorry MggieMck..........Alex I'd like to buy a Vowel., let's see How about an 'A' ..........ya...ya....ya That's it,.......an 'A' M'A'ggieMck (your typing must be contagious............hahahahahah hopes it's not a virus)
Hi Les F.........the name Gestetener comes to mind. What years and for how long did you work there? I think we might have a mutual friend from way back. Thanks. Mac
I remember our exams were run off on a alcohol machine - and first job I had for Williams & Wilson on Inspector Street we had a girl that I had grown up with operating what they called a banda machine - you typed on a stencil and if you made a mistake you had a special knife to scrape it off the back and you cut a small piece to stick behind it and retype - voila fixed. I was the secretary for the order department so you had to be very careful if you erased the front that you scraped off the back immediately.
Hi Banjo, Did you live on Claude St.? I was born on Claude St. 4045 but the civic address has since been changed to 4043. Reg Paine
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