Big Milk Bottle getting saved .maybe the Cows are coming back two or (too) ...lol

Montreal's iconic Guaranteed Pure Milk bottle, currently covered in rust and graffiti, is about to get a makeover, thanks to Heritage Montreal and several soon-to-be-announced sponsors.

Scaffolding is going up around the bottle and work is expected to start by the end of the month on cleaning and repainting the structure, Robert Turgeon, chairman of the board at Heritage Montreal, told Metropolitan News. Turgeon said Heritage Montreal expects to announce the cost of the project and the names of sponsors in late September. The work should be completed by the end of October, he said.

On the scaffolding, workers have installed signs that read SauvonsLaPinte.com, which sends people to a Facebook page about the project.

 

From Heritage Montreal's file on the bottle (before it found sponsors to pay for its restoration):

The Guaranteed Pure Milk dairy plant, a remarkable Art Deco building which attests to the presence of the milk industry in the heart of Montreal, was built in 1930. It supports a water tank shaped as a giant riveted steel quart of milk 10 metres tall built by Dominion Bridge of Lachine. The milk bottle is almost a poetic emblem of the downtown area, a naïve architectural element which contrasts with the more monumental features of the neighbourhood.

The Guaranteed Pure Milk dairy plant and its milk bottle bear witness to the past presence of the agro-processing industry right in the heart of the metropolis as well as a reminder of the traditional means of delivering milk.

Shut down in the 1990s and used as a site for shooting TV series, the building faces an even more uncertain future with the arrival of the E-Commerce Place. Promoters would preserve only the façade of the building. What will happen to the milk bottle? Moreover, the bottle is suffering from lack of maintenance; the metal is rusting, and its appearance has been affected.

Héritage Montréal intervened as part of a coalition to request that the E-Commerce Place project pay greater attention to its urban environment, and in a manner less devastating to the site’s heritage. Industrial heritage continues to be a subject of concern by the organisation, which wishes to embark on a specific protection project for the milk bottle.

- Andy Riga

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     Restoration underway,..............HF&RV

Saint Joseph's Oratory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzrW56G32z8

A Really Cool Place

Does anyone remember the Verdun Ice House situated on Beurling near Woodland way before Champlain Blvd existed. Set back in the field this Big Black Barn Like Building stored the ice for Verdun ice boxes before the fridge came along.I must admit I never saw it but my husband told me he would help the iceman deliver the ice to the houses in Verdun.

Maybe Guy would have pictures of this Verdun Landmark? It must have been a very important building in that time. Pauline

PS

Does anyone remember the ICEMAN????

 

 

 

Fish Watching in Lasalle

Who remembers the   aquarium almost at the end of LaSalle Blvd. in Ville LaSalle? They had about 6 to 8 cement pools about 3 feet deep outside and inside there were more pools but I can’t remember how big it was inside. The outside pools from what I can remember were approximately 8ft W x15 ft L   they were loaded and I mean loaded with big Black Fish maybe carp? They must have weighted 30 plus lbs. and about 4feet plus long. I wish I asked questions back then but we were just interested in watching these big fish swim around in their crowed space. We always went on a hot summer night. I guess by the time we came back  the house had cooled down enough to sleep.Does anyone know why they were there and what did the do with all those fish.It must have been very expensive to keep all those fish. Pauline

Verdun Gardens

Who remembers the Gardens in-between Beurling and Champlain, at the foot of Allard? Way before VCHS was built. My mother rented so many square feet from the city and planted vegetables and flowers and nourish them until it was time to harvest them. Needless to say kids will be kids and you could guess the rest. Do you remember them and did you ever visit that space when you were a kid? Your secret will be safe with me. Pauline

LaFontaine Park

 

Lafontaine Park is Plateau Mont-Royal’s biggest park. A 40-hectare gem of traditional park landscaping, it includes two linked ponds with a fountain and waterfalls, the Théâtre de Verdure open-air venue, the Centre culturel Calixa-Lavallée, soccer and baseball fields, pétanque, a dog park, picnic areas and playgrounds, wading pools, several pieces of memorial statuary and many trees including numerous imposingly huge poplars. Bike paths run along the park’s western and northern edges. In wintertime a large section of the pond is cleared for skating with the park chalet functioning as changing room and snack bar; there’s also a hockey rink. The park has a lot of squirrels, including occasional albino ones, but it’s so much a true city park that there’s absolutely no semi-wild forested areas left. On old maps, the terrain of the park is sometimes marked as Logan’s Park. In 1845 James Logan rented some of the land to the federal government, which used it for a military shooting range, but in 1889 the city started working on landscaping and layout. Gradually acquiring neighbouring pieces of land, by 1909 the city had created a sizable park which it named after Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine (1807-1864), an author of many of the political reforms that led to the confederation of Canada after his death. In the 1950s, a modernization of the park saw the removal of the park keeper’s house and the greenhouses and the installation of the open-air theatre. For many years one of the park’s most noted attractions was the Jardin des Merveilles children’s zoo, but it was closed in 1989. The 1990s saw the addition of two new belvederes and a very beautiful colonnade running southwest from Rachel Street. Lafontaine Park remains a tremendously popular spot, especially on weekends in the summer. Although the Plateau has become a prosperous neighbourhood, many of its houses and flats have no yards or gardens; the park affords a lot of people a chance to sit on the grass and stroll under the trees. Most of the park’s neighbouring streets are residential, but on the south side, Notre-Dame Hospital and the main municipal library hold out an institutional boundary along Sherbrooke Street. Rachel Street, on the north side, has a few small businesses including the Maison des cyclistes, well positioned at the axis of two bike paths; it has a caf챕 open to all. But the park is close enough to Saint-Denis Street and the Gay Village to ensure that no visitor has to languish long without a drink, a coffee or a bite to eat. To get to Lafontaine Park you can take the 14, 24 or 29 or walk east from Sherbrooke metro station. It is also very accessible to cyclists. There are some small parking lots near the Centre culturel, accessed via Calixa-Lavall챕e, but this is really not a destination most people will need to drive to. Steve

Verdun Photo Collection

Click on the link to view an online photo collection of Banks, Schools, Churches, Public Buildings and Streets of Verdun.

http://www.imtl.org/montreal/borough/Verdun.php

The Black Rock

This is an article I happened upon while researching Verdun History. An interesting piece by David Fennario. The link is also posted in our "links" section.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1997/081497/cover.html

 

Mount Royal Cross

An article in today's Sympatico/MSN homepage

Canadian Press

http://travelcanada.sympatico.msn.ca/Montreal+beacon+to+religious+past+shining+brightly+again+atop+Mount+Royal/Home/ContentPostingNS.aspx?isfa=1&newsitemid=15239016&feedname=CP-TRAVEL&show=True&number=5&showbyline=False&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc 

 

Here is a photo we took after a very long walk around Mount Royal on our recent visit: