Happy Birthday "le gros bill" The Gentleman of Hockey & a Class Act Jean Beliveau Turns 80

Lasalle Airport 1930 -----Mirabel or Dorval It Is Not------ but it is Lasalle

                                                                                                                                          click the photo to enlarge it                                                     My most recent email reply from Dan Brown, just a few moments ago ,has given us a look at what the closest thing to an airport from the co-ordinates I supplied for the area.Here is a copy of the email reply

Hi Les,

I have done a search for Lasalle Airport based on the map and coordinates you gave me. I have attached a list of photos that cover the area where the airport should be. I have attached a sample scan of one of the photos from 1930. The only evidence of an airport are the small white airplanes parked in the field. There doesn't look like there is a runway of any sort (although, a flat grassy field often works). Let me know if you're interested in any of the photos.

 

Regards,
Dan

..and the I's Have It........ Irene ,Eye of the Huricane..all in all Montreal is getting a Bath

         Well no where near as bad as the pre-hype storm(although sadly for some families, 11 deaths were attributed to the storm),there is a lot of soggy places along the eastern seaboard,.some damage (as expected,but less than predicted---that's always good when that happens. It seems Montreal will get some rainy weather,....

MONTREAL - Montreal got a rare taste of the effects of a tropical storm Sunday as the forefront of Hurricane Irene blew into southern Quebec in the early afternoon, bringing high winds, heavy rains and power outages.

As much as 60 to 100 millimetres of rain was forecast to fall within a few hours, and gusts up to 100 kilometres an hour were expected. By 1:30 p.m., 19,000 homes were without power on the island of Montreal, Hydro-Québec reported.

The hurricane, which was downgraded to a tropical storm as it swept over the northern New England states, was so vast it brought heavy rains to Montreal by noon while the main force of the storm was still several hundred kilometres south and several hours away.

Environment Canada issued a wind warning for Montreal and the surrounding area on Saturday, saying residents should brace for northeasterly gusts up to 100 kilometres per hour on Sunday and into Monday in a corridor from Montreal toward the lower St. Lawrence. A rainfall warning was added on Sunday morning.

By the time the brunt of Irene hits Montreal on Sunday afternoon and evening, it will likely be downgraded again, but will still bear the effects of a tropical storm, Environment Canada meteorologist René Héroux said.

“By the time it reaches Quebec it will just be a massive low pressure system, like a massive storm,” Héroux said. “But the characteristics of the tropical storm will still be there - the moisture, the humidity and so on. It’s no longer a hurricane or tropical storm, but the effects will be there.”

Normally it’s eastern Quebec, the north shore region and the Gaspé that feel the effects of hurricanes and tropical storms sweeping up the east coast, but Irene is a rare extreme weather system that is blowing up the St. Lawrence Valley corridor and passing over Montreal, the Mauricie, Quebec City, Saguenay, Charlevoix and the lower St. Lawrence, Héroux said. The effects of the storm were expected to be less strong in the east, although as much as 50-80 millimetres of rain were forecast in those sectors.

Quebec’s public security ministry counselled residents to keep a close watch on weather reports and secure items in their yards like patio chairs and umbrellas that could become dangerous airborne projectiles in the gusting winds.

Public Security Minister Robert Dutil said emergency crews are already are on alert with plans of action in case of need.

He urged Quebecers to have on hand sufficient supplies for 72 hours, including water, non-perishable food, a manual can opener, battery-powered radio and flashlight.

At Pierre Elliott Trudeau International airport, many flights arriving from or leaving for the northeastern U.S. were cancelled Sunday morning. Passengers were being urged to check their flight status before heading out the airport.

Public security officials were keeping a close eye on smaller rivers Sunday that could overflow their banks due to the heavy rainfalls, said spokersperson Annik Bouchard. On Monday focus would switch the larger rivers fed by smaller waterways swollen by rain and the runoff from mountainous regions already saturated from record rainfalls earlier in the season.

Eleven deaths in the U.S. were attributed to the effects of Hurricane Irene as of Sunday afternoon. Hydro-Québec was sending 120 technicians to New Hampshire on Sunday to help with electricity problems forecast for the state

.............

Griffintown Construction Project

Phases 2 and 3 of the Griffintown project has been announced at a cost of 261 million dollars. This follows the announcement of the first phase at a cost of 475 million dollars. The 3 phases will include 2103 condos, one ALT hotel of 154 rooms, 300,000 sq ft of office space and 328,000 sq ft of commercial space

This follows the announcement of a megacomplex of 650 million dollars near the Lachine canal. Since the beginning of august there are 54 cranes in operation in Montreal, the largest since expo 67 and the olympic games.

Guy

 

A Cartographical History of Griffintown

     

A Cartographical History of Griffintown (1860 to 1949)
Griffintown in 1879
This 1879 map shows exceptional detail. Note that St-Gabriel Street is renamed to Ottawa after this city becomes the capitol of Canada. Kempt Street is renamed to Young. The Collège de Montréal, which occupied the area between William and College streets, is replaced by Hay Market Square and divided lots. The rivers/streams shown in the 1859 map are all absent. A tramway line of the Montreal City Passenger Railway Company appears along St. Joseph Street (present-day Notre-Dame). The Dow and Co. Brewery and Distillery occupies an entire block just off of Chaboillez Square. The cold storage facility, built around 1860, exists to this day.
Griffintown in 1890
By 1890, Basins 3 and 4 are completed near the intersection of Guy, William and Ottawa streets. They provide additional mooring space for ships and encourage the development of warehouses and other shipping industries in the vicinity. St-Joseph Street, the northern artery of Griffintown, is renamed to Notre-Dame. The Ottawa Street M. E. Church (corner St. Ann) is replaced with a Gazometer linked to the New City Gas complex. The row houses which exist on present day Mountain Street (then McCord) appear on this map opposite St. Ann's Church and Seminary.
Griffintown in 1907
Prevalent on this map are the tramway lines which run across Notre-Dame and Wellington and up McCord and McGill. College Street is renamed to St-Paul and the former college grounds are nearly completely developed east of the Hay Market. The first electrical substation in Canada, Montreal Light Heat and Power's "Poste Centrale-1", is built just north of Wellington between Prince and Queen. It was renamed "Poste Adélard-Godbout" in 2007. The Northern Electric Company complex is built opposite Basin 4 in 1906, and also exists to this day.
Griffintown in 1914
The Montreal and Southern Counties Railway terminus near the intersection of Wellington and McGill appears on this map. Starting in 1909, rail service on this line connected St. Lambert via the Victoria Bridge. By 1916, service reached as far as Granby. The area adjacent the Wellington Street Bridge is transformed into Gallery Square. The Phoenix Bridge and Iron Works Limited complex is shown occupying an entire block along Wellington between Colborne (now Peel) and Shannon streets. This company would provide the iron beams for the ill-fated Quebec Bridge.
Smith Street and CN Viaduc in 1940
Griffintown is sliced in half by the Canadian National Railways viaduct connecting the Victoria Bridge with a new downtown terminus: Central Station. Although expropriations and groundwork would commence between 1930 and 1933, the project was suspended for five years due to economic conditions, and would only be completed in 1943. The Wellington Tunnel replaced the 1893 swing bridge. Built as part of the public works effort of the Depression, the tunnel was the first of three under the Lachine Canal. Streetcars and automobiles ran through four tunnels. The approach to the tunnel was from Square Gallery which would be completely transformed. Wellington Street did not connect directly with the tunnel. Instead, Smith Street was widened and extended to connect with Wellington.
Griffintown in 1949
This map shows the completed CN Rail viaduct which decimates two blocks between Dalhousie and Nazareth streets, and cuts Hay Market Square in half. The completion of the viaduct and Central Station in 1943 rendered the Bonaventure Station terminating at Chaboillez Square obsolete, and it would be demolished in 1952. Notice that several buildings on the South side of the intersection of Ottawa and Shannon streets are absent. This is the result of the worst air disaster on the island of Montreal: on April 25th, 1944 a Liberator bomber crash landed shortly after takeoff from Dorval airport. 15 people were killed. The Henderson Barwick and Just Equipment Supply Co. buildings, which still stand today, appear on the Smith Street extension on opposite sides of Colborne (present-day Peel Street

..and now for something ,completely different-----Griffintown (theatrically speaking)

        A new tour of Griffintown ?

MONTREAL - Ask 10 Montrealers where Griffintown is and chances are you’ll get 10 vastly different answers.

It’s an oft-forgotten place, though historians insist its rich past merits just as much attention as its far glitzier Old Montreal counterpart.

Now, a German theatre collective has made it its mission to introduce Montrealers to Canada’s first industrial district in a truly innovative way.

Forget about old-fashioned guided tours and stuffy museums, Turbo Pascal’s “Talking the walk in Griffintown” offers a decidedly different approach: a one-on-one theatrical journey, where six local actors take turns winding a spectator through streets, across parks and over ruins.

Claude Maufette stood on the corner of Ottawa and Queen Sts. Tuesday night, unsure of what to expect as he waited for a performer to usher him through an area he knew little about.

“Everyone is talking about Griffintown, I don’t really know what it is,” he said. “I don’t really know about the history. I’m excited to discover more.”

A mysterious young woman with piercing blue eyes and a short black wig soon appeared and whisked him away.

Fresh from her own exploration, Juliette Patterson, a local activist striving to preserve Griffintown’s heritage, beamed as she praised the masterminds behind the project.

“Even though I know the neighbourhood really well, I was just delighted by the experience of discovering the place anew, really as if I had never been there before,” said Patterson. “All of a sudden, I just saw the city in a different way.”

The tour sheds light on a once-bustling neighbourhood. Longtime residents like to tell stories of a time when O’Connells and Dowlings lived around the corner and everyone gathered at St. Ann’s parish for Sunday service.

The glorious greystone church has since been razed and a neighbourhood once home to more than 30,000 Irish immigrants is now inhabited by only a few hundred people. Vacant lots have become desolate relics of the area’s flourishing past.

“Ah, a parking lot, that must mean we’ve arrived,” an actress tells a participant. “Griffintown is mostly parking lots. Ten thousand spots in all.”

Another stop along the tour is the home of Judith Bauer, a woman hailed by many as Griffintown’s unofficial mayor.

“Before I started looking at the neighbourhood in the period leading up to when I moved here (in 2004), I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about the history,” she said.

She has since more than made up for it, fervently fighting to protect that history. She’s co-founded the Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown, challenged politicians and developers at public consultations and organized events to introduce Montrealers to this unique neighbourhood.

“We spend so much of our time going from A to B and not really paying attention to what’s in between,” Bauer said. “I think anything that makes people have a closer look at where they live is wonderful.”

That’s precisely what Mechtild Manus, director of Montreal’s Goethe Institut, a German cultural centre, set out to achieve.

She discovered the avant-gardist Berlin-based Turbo Pascal two years ago and immediately dreamed of exporting their novel theatrical city tours to Montreal.

They chatted back and forth and finally met last February in a lively Berlin bar. Two hours and a few bottles of French wine later, “Talking the Walk in Griffintown” was born.

“I’m the one who suggested Griffintown,” Manus said. “I think it’s a real treasure Montreal has with all the history. History of the industrial past of Montreal, history of the various groups of immigrants who came to Canada.”

Eva Plischke, a member of Turbo Pascal, was instantly intrigued by this tiny neighbourhood where space and time intersect in the shadow of downtown skyscrapers.

“When walking around in Griffintown, you always have fragments of different times,” she said. “There are so many plans about the future and you can talk a lot about the past, but at the moment, it’s kind of in transition.”

She and her partner Veit Merkle didn’t get to see much of Montreal. They hopped off the plane and came straight to Griffintown, knocking on doors and chatting with residents, history buffs and condo developers to dig up anything they could about this unusual place.

“We did a lot of research, walked around, interviewed people,” Merkle said. “From this we developed the text, which is now showing Griffintown through different levels. By the stories (the actors) tell, the audience has a chance to get a new view of the city map, see places where they maybe haven’t been, hear stories they might not know.”

The result is a deeply intimate and reflective journey through history, corruption and emotions. As they discover Griffintown’s unpolished story and soul, participants are escorted through layers of tension, excitement and nostalgia.

“You learn to trust the process,” Patterson said. “It’s like going on a roller-coaster: you have to trust that the thing’s not going to break.”

If you’d like to go for a ride, call 438-998-0930 or purchase a ticket ($25) at Transit Kitchen on the Palais des Congrès main floor from 10 a.m. to noon, or at the Darling Foundry from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The one-hour walk will be happening Thursday and Friday night from 5:50 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Make sure to bring comfortable shoes and an open mind.

............Oh well everyone has to make a buck, However my guess is you would have seen more 'character actors' in Griffintown many moons ago,.....as well as some 'bad actors too'.....but nevertheless they were all 'real characters'  Anyway a walk thorugh the old Griff would be interesting I would think...........and there worse things than getting to see that gal in the pictures legs..................hahahahah         HF&RV

Main's Pastry

                                          Had to laugh when I opened my email today , I recieved a link  showing me this double photo (side by side) showing Main's Pastry across the street. It so happens that what goes around  comes around, that's my Mom (almost 91 these days) standing infront of my oldmans Oldsmobile......  small world ,since I posted those years back...............hahahahah  We lived right beside the Savoy at one point,neat to see our pics being 'lifted'  'er borrowed as Mr Gravenor used to like to say. She will get a kick out of seeing these again.

 

Verdun's almost-pristine stretch of the St. Lawrence river near George O'Reilly park is one of the cleanest beaches in the country.

          First Question......................has this reporter ever been out of Verdun  let alone across the country).............hahahaha I will admit that Verdun's waterfront has come a helluva long way since the Verdun I grew up in,....but 'cleanest in the country' ?????  I would still be somewhat hesitant to jump in the river ,....knowing it's history. However it is great accolades for our old Verdun.

Verdun's almost-pristine stretch of the St. Lawrence river near George O'Reilly park is one of the cleanest beaches in the country.

here is the full story where I came across the above statement: From the CTV site Aug 23,11

MONTREAL — The World Wildlife Fund has come up with a listing of the cleanest -- and the dirtiest -- shorefronts in Canada.

Here in Quebec the most and least littered areas are just a few kilometres away from each other.

Verdun's almost-pristine stretch of the St. Lawrence river near George O'Reilly park is one of the cleanest beaches in the country.

Every year the WWF organizes a coast-to-coast cleanup of beaches and tabulates the results.

At George O'Reilly park in 2010, volunteers picked up an average of 2 kg of trash ever kilometre, less than anywhere else in the province.

Ann Vezina visits the park as often as she can to drink in the view, and she enjoys the cleanliness.

"Oh this is, it's inspiring," said Vezina.

When CTV visited the park there was no litter to be found, despite the heavy foot and wheeled traffic.

The borough says it is honoured by the distinction, but says the shore doesn't clean itself.

"For the past 15 years we've had 500 volunteers take part in an annual shoreline clean up," said Gilles Baril.

It's a different story 20 km northwest in Pierrefonds, where Riviere a l'Orme has the dubious distinction of being the dirtiest place to be on the beach.

That's where 750 kg of litter had accumulated in 2010.

"Mainly cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bags--and people know that they shouldn't be leaving without them and that they should pick them up but year after year we find them on our shoreline," said Marie-Claude Lemieux.

Overall the cleanest beach in Quebec still has a long way to go to catch up with the front runners in Ontario, Alberta and BC where less than 400 grams of trash were left to sit on the beach.

The worst in the country? The WWF says Sydenham Lake in Kingston, Ontario was covered in a stunning 5 metric tonnes of garbage.

                        http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110824/mtl_beaches_110824/20110824/?hub=MontrealHome

 

                       Have Fun and Remember Verdun..............