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|  The Accès culture network’s program in boroughs all over Montreal Parallel exhibitions and activities will take place in 2011 and 2012 in boroughs all over Montreal while the Lost Neighbourhoods exhibition is presented at the Centre d’histoire. The common theme is the memory of neighbourhoods, their waterfronts, and their built heritage. The following exhibitions and activities are only offered in french.Découvrir le passé au présent : au cœur du Vieux-Saint-LaurentNovember 19, 2011 to January 23, 2012 Borough of St. Laurent Centre des loisirs de Saint-Laurent 1375, rue Grenet 514 855-6110 This exhibition presents unique places that influenced the course of the history of St. Laurent. Some 30 photographs bring back the years between 1950 and 1980, taking us through the landscape of St. Laurent during this crucial period, showing us how the borough’s territory developed and what these lost neighbourhoods have become today. In collaboration with the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, with citizen participation by Yves Ouellette, who directed the project. In collaboration with the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec and the support of M Yves Ouellette, chargé de projet. Le pont-tunnel Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine : une œuvre moderne sur les traces du passéMay 28 to September 4, 2011 Borough of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles Presented by the Atelier d’histoire de la Longue-Pointe. During the 1960s, the construction of Lafontaine Tunnel caused the disappearance of part of Longue Pointe, a community whose origins date from the French regime. Learn more about the history of the village, its industrial development and communication routes as well as the impacts of the tunnel’s construction, a true engineering feat. Pointe-aux-Trembles, d'hier à aujourd'hui : un patrimoine à préserverPermanent exhibition Borough of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles Presented by the Atelier d’histoire de la Pointe-aux-Trembles. The destruction by fire of 60 homes in the village of Pointe-aux-Trembles in 1912, the Convent of the Nuns of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in 1922, and Montreal’s oldest church in 1937, along with the effects of the two World Wars and the Great Depression, all contributed to the impoverishment of the community of Pointe-aux-Trembles, and diminished the quality and quantity of its housing. A comparison between about 60 archival photographs of heritage buildings and recent photographs of these same places will show visitors whether the buildings have disappeared, made over, or preserved. Au bord de l’eau, au fil du temps Borough of Verdun Borough City Hall Centre culturel de Verdun Centre communautaire Elgar The waterfront, that fascinating window on the river, has always been a defining part of Verdun -- a pole of attraction, an unforgettable scene, and an undeniable asset. In a conversation, anyone who knows Verdun will mention the presence of the St. Lawrence, the park along the shore, and the opportunity for strolling that it offers. The waterfront has never failed to make a strong impression. Presented by the Borough of Verdun, the exhibition Flow of water, flow of time tells a story, takes us on a voyage, and pays tribute to this legendary stretch of shoreline. It was here that the famous Maison Nivard-de-Saint-Dizier, one of the oldest houses on the Island, was built in 1710. The site has yielded evidence that previously, it had been occupied by First Nations peoples. At the beginning of the 20th century, wharfs and pavilions appeared along the shore, and a ferry boat even made the crossing between Verdun and Laprairie. Then, in the 1930s, when Verdun was in the midst of a period of rapid growth, the Auditorium and the Natatorium, two structures whose reputation needs no further comment, were built. In the 1960s and 70s, major landfill projects reconfigured the waterfront. From 1985 until today, tree-planting, landscaping, and accessibility have continued to make the waterfront an irresistible magnet. ActivitiesVisite commentée du territoire de Saint-LaurentSunday, October 2, 2011, at 2 p.m. In the framework of Les Journées de la culture, the Borough of St. Laurent invites the community to take a bus tour to discover aspects of the political, religious, social, economic, and institutional history of Old St. Laurent. This guided tour presents the evolution of the occupation and planning of the community as well as the figures who stand out in its history. Presented by l’Autre Montréal. Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent : une belle page d'histoire théâtraleMonday, January 23, 2012, at 7:30 p.m.This presentation of an important chapter in the history of Quebec theatre is a survey of the 15 years of activity of theatre company Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent. From 1937 to 1952, under the direction of Father Émile Legault, this group attracted many of Quebec’s best-known artists, including Georges Groulx, Jean Coutu, Jean-Louis Roux, Félix Leclerc, Jean Duceppe, Thérèse Cadorette, Lionel Villeneuve, Jacques Létourneau, Bertrand Gagnon, Gabriel Gascon, Charlotte Boisjoly, Hélène Loiselle, Jean Gascon, Guy Provost, and Jean-Pierre Masson.
Media contact for the boroughsKarine Cousineau |
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.
Monday, June 27, 2011
More on the Lost Neighbourhoods Project
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Montreal Lost Neighbourhoods
here is an article about it:
A series of black and white photographs on display at the Centre d’histoire de Montreal in Old Montreal’s Place d’Youville captures a stark moment in our city’s history.
In effect, they are photographs of a crime scene. The crime? Monstrous "urban renewal" and "slum clearance" projects, which, starting in the 1950s, displaced an estimated 25,000 Montrealers from their homes and neighbourhoods.
Some photographs have a creepy feel. Before the streets were torn up and homes and business demolished, city bureaucrats ordered that photographs be taken and carefully numbered so that the devastation could be carefully documented.
Today we know those areas through what stands in their stead.
The giant parking kiosk that is the CBC-Radio-Canada building was once a thriving neighbourhood of 5000 people called the Faubourg à m’lasse – the molasses neighbourhood, named for the aroma of refining sugar at the giant refinery a few blocks east.
It was also the edge of Montreal’s infamous red-light district, which was also destroyed, displacing another 4000 or so.
The third area was a working class Irish neighbourhood called Goose Village. Now it’s the entrance to the Bonaventure Expressway and the site of the since demolished Autostade, a 25,000 seat stadium built to showcase 1967 World Fair events. It also was a massive parking lot for Expo 67.
DRAPEAU VS. DUPLESSIS
The projects didn’t happen without a bare knuckle fight between Mayor Jean Drapeau and "le Chef," Premier Maurice Duplessis, who saw Montreal’s ambitious young mayor as a threat to his supreme power over the province. In their biography of Drapeau, Brian McKenna and Susan Purcell captured the story.
While Drapeau was mayor, he had to face a hostile council, many of whom were allied to Duplessis. Their leader was Paul Dozois, Minister of Municipal Affairs in Duplessis’ cabinet, who was also on Council, leading the "slum clearance" faction at City Hall.
"The tension was palpable in September 1954 when Duplessis made a Saturday morning visit to city hall to review the state of the housing project. Police posted at the main door had been told to escort the premier to the mayor’s office, where Drapeau waited anxiously.
Instead Duplessis slipped in a side door and bypassing Drapeau’s office, went straight to the executive committee room.
Duplessis took Drapeau’s chair and sent for the outfoxed mayor.
During a tense two-hour meeting, Drapeau stood his ground and said finally: ‘The project will not be built as long as I am mayor!’
Duplessis looked at Drapeau and said the solution to the impasse was obvious."
THE PRICE OF URBAN RENEWAL
The 1957 election that unseated Drapeau was the most vicious in the city’s history. Duplessis hired an army of goons and even ordered the provincial police to steal ballot boxes. Drapeau was defeated and the Habitations Jeanne Mance, which Drapeau rightfully described as a "barracks," were built, much to the distress of city planners since.
These pitched battles went on in cities across the Western World. In addition to razing neighbourhoods, highways like the Ville-Marie Expressway and the Decarie trench sundered communities beyond repair. The damage was mortal to American cities like Detroit – Canadian cities like Montreal and Toronto survived the amputations.
For the first time in history, more of us live in cities rather than in the country. The hope is that proximity will mean more sustainable living and less waste. Protecting and greening existing city neighbourhoods, and building high density housing, are the answer. No more "urban renewal" and mega projects.
Lost Neighbourhoods
At Centre d’histoire de Montreal (335 Place d’Youville)
To March 25, 2012 http://hour.ca/2011/06/23/bloke-nation-montreals-lost-neighbourhoods/
................You have until next March to see this exhibit:
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Bruins Win Stanley Cup
........Congrats to the Boston Bruins. ( I hate saying that.....hahahahha ,as I have a few friends who are & always have been Bruin Fans.........)
this is Boston's 6th Stanley Cup
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Old Stone House
As previously mentioned, The Old Stone House (Maison Nivard de Saint-Dizier) has been converted into a museum wich will be officially opened on the 28th of July and important dignitaries will be present. Several cultural activities will be held over several months following the inauguration and here is the schedule:
28th of July: Opening, Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal (O.S.M.) Hon. George O'Reilly Park
13th of August: Reconstitution of french, indian, voyageur camps, ancient music.
20th of August: Archealogical animation 13h and 15h
27th of august: Boardwalk historical circuit, 10h to 12.30h. Starting point to be advised.
10th of september: Same as above.
11th of september: Fairy tale, Michel Faubert, animator 14h
17th of september: Fairy Tale, Jocelyn Bérubé, animator 14h
18th of september: Gallant tu perds ton temps, 14h
24th of september: Historical circuit on the boardwalk, 10h to 12.30h. Starting point to be advised.
24th of september: Florent Vollant, 14h
1st of October: Fairy tale evening, Éric Michaud and Jacques Lacoursière, 20h
22nd of October: FAiry tale evening: Francis Désilets, 20h
Following is Rohinton Ghandi's article on the Old Stone House:
The Old Stone House of Crawford Park - Always a Party, Always a Smile - May 9th, 2010
SouthWest Corner - R. Ghandhi
It was chilly cold night in the dead of winter, a night of frost warnings and of sheer black ice covering the streets. The old stone house, near the corner of Lasalle Boulevard and Crawford Bridge Avenue, continued to sit in an almost eerie silence amongst a blanket of early-rising stars on a Saturday evening. With all four of its shuttered windows and its one main door closed, the Old Crawford Park Legion (No.202) stood as a lone dark silhouette along the riverfront side of the boulevard. Only as you neared its tiny covered entryway, would you start hearing any sounds or whispers from the earlybirds that had already arrived to decorate and setup. In the freezing cold night air, people throughout Crawford Park were carefully making their way by car or by foot to their favorite local "clubhouse", warming its stones from within. Soon the place would be filled to capacity, with coats removed, greetings shared, and dinner served, the place was just about to get red hot!
The Old Stone house is divided into two levels, the floor level was the main dining and dancing area, while a U-shaped stairway would take you upstairs to the bar area. You could not help but notice the picture frames that were hung with pride across the inside of the A-framed roof, as you passed through the single aisle between the rows of long horizontal tables in the bar’s eating area. All the while, being helloed and greeted at almost each table from those you knew, as you waited in line for the bar. For some, this would be their favorite place for the night, preferring the buzz of excitement around the bar over the spin of the dance floor below.
As the lights were dimmed and the dance floor cleared, the old stone house took on a warm, cozy cabin-like feel, as we all excitedly awaited the first song to open the floor. Glen Miller’s "In The Mood" would usually kick off the night by getting everyone up on their feet, quickly followed by Sinatra’s "New York, New York" which kept them there. The music would then take the dancers on a journey from the swinging years of Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, to The Andrews Sisters’ "Bugle Boy of Company-B", with a dash of Scottish and Irish Rover tunes thrown in for good measure. The dance floor cleared and refilled between songs, as if people jumped aboard when hearing the first notes of their own personal favorites. The Fifties arrived with the American Graffiti sounds of "Rock Around the Clock", "At the Hop" and of course Elvis’s "Hound Dog". Even a polka made a splash, before an ABBA tune carried the floor into a line-dancing scene, ending with a group "Hokie-Pokie" that usually had people in stitches.
As the diversity of music drove the crowd, the different music types themselves provided an almost endless variety of accompanying dance styles. Then came the karaoke portion for those daring to take the microphone in hand, including a cameo from a well-loved regular singing and sipping his way through the words of "Tiny Bubbles".
The music continued its tour into regimental songs, provoking the same pride yet tear-felt sadness from these men and women who had once fought our great wars together. Within the mist of their eyes, we could see their remembrances of those who had fallen beside them, and of the hope they represented…the hope of a country.
The Sixties arrived with the Motown sounds of Diana Ross, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Martha and the Vandellas "Heatwave", as "The Locomotion" chugged people along through the Beatles, into the early seventies. Tony Orlando and Dawn, the Captain and Tenille, Sonny & Cher, and the sounds of Elton John would bring us back to the station, as the current day hits of Micheal Jackson punched their way into a smaller, younger crowd. That little old house soon became a furnace from the dance floor up. Finally, revellers would take the Chattanooga train home, while gesturing a train whistle’s pull-cord, singing "won’t you Choo-choo me home", as they danced their way out the door.
Those parties were always the highlights of our times here in Crawford Park. Music filled the air, and dance became our common denominator, allowing us to share in our different ages, languages, and cultures together, all in the name of fun. As the conductor of some of these musical journeys, this writer can definitely say they were worth the trip.
The Old Stone House rests quietly along the shoreline at 7244 Lasalle Blvd., with no life within its walls for many years now. For those who remember the joys we shared and of how this place was once a part of us, we know that we will always be a part of its history, within its stones and mortar, long after we are gone. As there are still nights, when strolling past the old house, that we can almost hear the sounds of Glen Miller, the laughs of the crowds, and see a welcoming glow in the doorway…a glow now extinguished.
During that wonderful time, we took comfort in knowing that we had a place where we could always be ourselves, where we were treated with equal respect, and where we were always greeted with a smile…places now rarely found within our Southwest Corners.
Rohinton Ghandhi
Remember this View
Remember this view,in Verdun. We grew up with clotheslines ( a rare thing to see today)
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Montreal(henge).had to be a slow news day.
Or the No. 55, or any mode that takes you north up the broad boulevards of the Plateau to cross-street Mount Royal Avenue, where you can bask in the mystic grandeur of Montrealhenge. This Sunday, the setting sun will roll down into perfect alignment with Park Ave., framed by the apartment buildings and souvlaki joints as though by design, and ragtags from the mountain will gather in priestly and priestessly communion. Their minds will travel back through the eons to share in Uni Consciousness awe, the numinous moment with the life-giver — and their iPhone cameras.
It happens every summer, just before and after the solstice (June 21). Like many intriguing/trendoid urban phenomena, this one was first codified in the epicentre of city-consciousness and urban self-regard, Manhattan. I first stumbled into Manhattanhenge earlier last decade, when innocently crossing Houston St. on the Lower East Side just after 8 p.m. caught me in a vermilion eye-burst of setting sun. It was completely unexpected, and therefore doubly breathtaking.
As near as can be ascertained, the Manhattanhenge phenomenon was first named in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. With the New York gift for New York PR, Manhattanhenge has become a "thing," justly so given the imposing architecture of spires lining any east-west street you cross, the Sun falling perfectly between the pillars, blazing through its red sky-god spectrum.
On May 30 this Memorial Day weekend, thousands of people streamed out to wait for the ideal moment in the arc to photograph it, from good locations (14th St., 23rd St., any major lateral one, or on any well-located rooftop terrace), clumped together like paparazzi, all shooting the same cosmic celeb. Dozens stood in the middle of 42nd St., cursed at by unspiritual taxi and bus drivers.
"Henge" as a word is actually a back-formation from the real one, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, erected some 4,500-5,000 years ago by the — wait, you've been there? Were you enrobed? Were you inspired by the Spinal Tap homage, when the 18-inch (and sadly, not 18-foot) Trilithon tragically descended to the stage between the dancing dwarfs? Remarkably, despite the global fame of the World Heritage site, a million annual visitors, multiple major excavations and ceaseless study and rumination, the archeological brain trust is still not completely sure what it was.
A temple, a grave monument, an astronomical calendar, a computer, altar of human sacrifice? Stonehenge experts Professor Tim Darvill, of the University of Bournemouth, and Professor Geoff Wainwright, of the Society of Antiquaries, recently stated it might have been a "neolithic Lourdes," for pilgrims seeking healing (from the BBC).
And these modern Sunday pilgrims - are they PAGANS (once referred to as People Against God And Niceness)? How pagan are we? How much of the Druidic hoodoo can be folded into a kind of metropolitan magic to make this bigger than it is? At most, some may indulge in a casual neo-pagan element in our motley new age spiritual quiltery, whatever residual component in our cosmically aligned warlock brain that is ineluctably drawn to otherness. Otherwise, it's curiosity-seekers, photo buffs and people who like the pretty.
Given our own inability to fix a definite meaning to the Ur-Henge, one wonders — what will future civilizations, the next-millennials, misread into this? That we aligned our downtowns and our skyscrapers for mystical purpose? That there was dire purpose behind the plotting of the carpet stores and the high-rises? Hopefully not. As a friend once said, "If aliens had landed in Montreal in the 1970s, they'd have thought Supertramp was the Beatles." A mistake worthy of human sacrifice. Chant it with me: choooooommm.
So fire up the tripods for our own local Henge, which can be added to the growing pile of Torontohenge and Chicagohenge and who knows, Reginahenge.
Of course, ours has characteristic peculiarities specific to the city, given Montreal's inherently supernatural elements and construct.
Yes, many cities have neo-pagans and LARPs (Live Action Role Players) gambolling through their parks playing Goth, practising Wicca and chanting to Celtic Frost. But only one city has both a Henge and a 100-foot illuminated cross erected to fulfil a spiritual vow. It can only enhance the experience as you train your lens up Park Ave. And frankly, during the summer, almost any sunset viewed from Park Ave. is Henge-worthy. That, and the fact that, given the layout of the city's uptown grid, in Montreal, the sun sets . . . in the north.
Montreal Gazette
markjlepage@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Boardwalk
I have found a couple more old photos of the boardwalk wich I have added to my album no. 5. These photos where taken from the Messager Centennial Edition of December 15th 1976. Verdun was founded in 1876. Since the boardwallk was paved at the beginning of the 40s, these photos would have been taken prior to that period. I recall having walked on the "real" boardwalk in my youth.
Guy
