Established in the 19th century, St. Anne's ward occupied the entire southwest area of Montreal. It was known as an Irish neighbourhood.
From Faubourgs to Ward
The ward originally consisted of two faubourgs, or suburbs, that had sprung up in the 18th century. The Faubourg des Récollets (also called St. Joseph) was located just outside the fortification gate adjoining the Récollet property. Running through the faubourg was St. Joseph Road (the future Notre-Dame Street), which later became Upper Lachine Road. Lying between the St. Martin River to the north and the Petite Rivière to the south, the faubourg had virtually reached its occupancy limit by the start of the 19th century.
Experiencing less rapid growth in the 18th century, the Faubourg Sainte-Anne, located further south, extended over a larger area where urban development did not begin until the early 19th century. It was crossed by the other road leading to Lachine, Wellington Street. The St. Gabriel farm was situated here. The southern section of this faubourg has long been known as Point St. Charles, a name still associated today with this area of southwest Montreal.
The incorporation of the City of Montreal led to the creation of municipal wards, including St. Anne's ward, which absorbed all of the former Faubourg Sainte-Anne as well as the southern part of the Faubourg Saint-Joseph in 1845. The ward was then bounded by St. Joseph Street (Notre Dame Street) to the north, McGill Street to the east, the St. Lawrence River to the south and the limits of the City of Montreal established in 1792 to the west.
The ward's history is intertwined with the major installations that were built there. The construction of the Lachine Canal in 1825 and subsequent work to expand it provided many unskilled labourers with employment. The building of the Victoria Bridge, which was completed in 1859, was also a source of jobs. Beginning in 1847, Montreal's first large factories were set up along the canal to take advantage of the hydraulic power generated by the locks. Like the Grand Trunk (future CN) railway shops, they turned St. Anne's ward into an industrial, working-class area. During the 1960s and 1970s, the closing of the Lachine Canal, the relocation of most industrial activity to other parts of Montreal and to the suburbs, and the building of highways led to the ward's decline.
Griffintown? Point St. Charles?
St. Anne's ward encompassed a number of different neighbourhoods, including Point St. Charles in the southwest, Griffintown in the northeast and Victoriatown in the southeast. Victoriatown disappeared in 1964 when work for Expo 67 was done.
In the last decades of the 20th century, one area of St. Anne's ward gradually came to play an increasingly important role in the collective memory of Montreal's Irish community. Formerly the Nazareth fief belonging to the McCord family, Griffintown owed its name to real estate developer Mary Griffin, who divided it into lots in 1804. Originally located between Mountain, William, Des Soeurs-Grises and De la Commune streets, its imagined territory extended beyond these initial boundaries. Factories and adjoining residential areas sprang up there beginning in the 1830s.
Point St. Charles is the name that was given to all of the former St. Anne's ward, the area between the Lachine Canal and the St. Lawrence River, at the end of the 20th century. Having progressively lost its industries, it evolved into a residential neighbourhood that saw renewed development beginning in the late 1990s.
An Irish Fief?
Contrary to popular belief, St. Anne's ward (and especially Griffintown) was not a solely Irish area. While a large proportion of its inhabitants (up to half in 1871) were of Irish origin, between a quarter and a third were French-Canadian, and others were English or Scottish. Moreover, the people who lived there accounted for only a third of all those of Irish stock in Montreal.
Nevertheless, St. Anne's ward played a major role in the history of the Irish community. During the great famine of the 1840s, thousands of people left Ireland to try their luck in the New World. Mostly poor, illiterate and from rural backgrounds, many of these unskilled workers settled in St. Anne's ward, finding jobs as workers or labourers at the nearby docks or factories.
During the first half of the 19th century, a steady flow of immigrants fuelled population growth in St. Anne's Irish community. This geographic concentration explained the inauguration, in 1854, of Montreal's second Irish church, St. Anne's, which became a parish in 1880. It also explains why this part of Montreal has long been represented municipally, provincially and federally by politicians of Irish origin.
Beginning in 1870, however, a number of factors contributed to the relative decline of this community. Immigration from Ireland dropped precipitously, while the social and geographic mobility of the city's Irish population resulted in some residents moving to other areas of Montreal, other regions of Canada or even to the United States.
In the 1920s, Italian and Eastern European immigrants settled in the area. In 1960 most of the people in Griffintown were of Italian or Ukrainian origin. By the early 21st century, the majority of residents of the former St. Anne's ward were French-speaking, living alongside people of all different backgrounds, some of whom had Irish roots. These Irish Montrealers, with their rich heritage, help to maintain the memory of the Irish character that used to be so strong in this neighbourhood.
A Working-Class Neighbourhood
In the 19th century, living conditions in St. Anne's ward were hard, especially because of the epidemics that struck Montreal. Being next to the river, the area was also frequently hit by flooding, with sewage and waste ending up inside the dilapidated houses, fostering the spread of mould, infections and disease. In the 20th century, these major scourges were better controlled, but the sorry state of the housing became even more evident.
An essentially working-class ward, St. Anne's was also the scene of a number of strikes. Fed up with their conditions, workers would down tools in an effort to force their employers to make improvements. In contact with fellow countrymen living in the United States, some Irish workers helped to spread trade unionism in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada.
In 1970 St. Anne's Church had virtually no more parishioners and was torn down. The demolition tolled the death knell for the Irish presence in the neighbourhood. A park on the site where the church used to stand is a reminder of the Irish community's history in an area that has been left to go to seed.
References
BOILY, Raymond, Les Irlandais et le canal de Lachine : la grève de 1843. Ottawa, Leméac, 1980, 207 p.
CROSS, Dorothy Susanne, « The Irish in Montreal », Master Thesis (History), McGill University, 1969, 308 p.
BENOIT, Michèle and Roger GRATTON, Pignon sur rue : les quartiers de Montréal, Montreal, Guérin, 1991, 393 p.
LINTEAU, Paul-André, Histoire de Montréal depuis la Confédération, Montreal, Boréal, 2000, 627 p
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Monday, July 16, 2018
Dawes Brewery
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| Year unknown. 9 of the 31 Black horses owned by the Dawes brewery in Montreal. The stables were in Griffintown |
Entrepreneur Thomas Dawes founded the Dawes Brewery in 1811 on the banks of the Lachine Canal.
When he died, his two sons, Thomas and James, took over the company. When James died, his two sons went into business with their uncle Thomas. One of these two grandsons, Andrew James, eventually assumed ownership of the company and became president of National Breweries Ltd., a group of breweries including the Dawes Brewery.
This company was the first in Canada to employ the telegraph, using it to communicate between its Lachine facility and offices downtown.
A true family business, the company continued to be run by other descendants (including Norman J., Kenneth T., and Donald) between 1921 and 1952, although the brewery shut down its Lachine operations in 1927.
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| 1943-1944 sign atop of Dawes brewery on St-Maurice St. |
After that, the buildings were used for various purposes: a candle factory, the sale and repair of household articles, and now a museum. The Maison du Brasseur (Brewers home), Vielle Brasserie (Old Brewery), and Pavillon de l'Entrepot (Warehouse) now make up the Guy-Descary Cultural Complex.
Photographs courtesy of Roger Albert and Griffintown Memories on Facebook
Friday, July 6, 2018
Apocalypse for a horseman
FOR 40 YEARS, Leo Leonard has been operating the Griffintown Horse Palace. But a redevelopment plan for the area would turn his property into housing and commercial space.
Leo Leonard at his Griffintown stable on Ottawa St., with horse Rocky in the background. “People say I should turn the place into a zoo and charge admission,” he says.
During the Second World War you could hire a calèche to take you up to Mount Royal for $5. Today, if you can find a driver willing to make the four-hour return trip to the mountain, it would cost about $300.
“When I began driving in 1942, it was another era,” said Leo Leonard. He has owned the Griffintown Horse Palace on Ottawa St. for 40 years.
“Back then there were 62 carriages at Dominion Square outside the Windsor Hotel and another 25 outside the gates of McGill. Today, there are only 35 calèche drivers’ permits, and all the drivers are down in Old Montreal.”
The price of a calèche ride is $45 for a half-hour, $80 for an hour. Competition is stiff.
Horse-drawn carriages are an anachronism in the 21st century, and their future, as well as that of Leonard’s stables just south of the École de technologie supérieure on Notre Dame St. W., is up in the air.
The Southwest borough has designs on Leonard’s property, one of the last in the area to house horses.
A redevelopment plan unveiled in October for the neighbourhood has the stables, tack house and corral earmarked as an area for office and commercial space, and affordable and subsidized housing.
Inspired by Toronto’s Distillery district, an industrial area that was transformed into a gentrified neighbourhood, urban planners see Griffintown as an ideal site for redevelopment.
Heritage Montreal’s Dinu Bumbaru says while he wel- comes development in the area, razing the stables would be a mistake.
“They are not a great monument,” he said, “but they are the only remnants to remind us that the driving force behind the metropolis was the horse.
“There is room in the city’s heritage policy to keep Leonard’s stables, and perhaps integrate them into a … network of Montreal memory to remind us it is the unheralded blue-collar workers who make a great city.”
Leonard was born in Goose Village and raised in Griffintown. He is 81.
Known as Clawhammer Jack, he is probably one of the last residents to have lived and worked in the neighbourhood for eight decades.
His permit to run his stable has a grandfather clause that states he can keep horses on the property as long as he owns it.
Leonard concedes, however, developers are eager to acquire his land, and perhaps the time has come for him to sell.
“I’ve always been in the horse business, but now I’m fed up with the industry,” Leonard said.
“People say I should turn the place into a zoo and charge admission,” he said with a chuckle.
Leonard bought the stables, which date from 1862, for $15,000 in 1967 when the city ran the Ville Marie Expressway eight blocks to the east, and people moved out of the neighbourhood.
He won’t say how much he wants for the property, which contains residential units, a tack house, a barn for eight horses and a small exercise corral.
“I’m not supposed to talk about anything, but, yes, agents have been coming around to talk to me about selling. We’ll see what happens,” Leonard said.
In addition to his property, he says, real estate agents are looking at a nearby scrapyard and an old paint shop next door.
Should he sell, Leonard isn’t sure what he’ll do if he no longer has horses to look after.
“I won’t go live in Florida, that’s for sure,” he said. “You’ll never catch me on a plane.”
Leo Leonard at his Griffintown stable on Ottawa St., with horse Rocky in the background. “People say I should turn the place into a zoo and charge admission,” he says.
During the Second World War you could hire a calèche to take you up to Mount Royal for $5. Today, if you can find a driver willing to make the four-hour return trip to the mountain, it would cost about $300.
“When I began driving in 1942, it was another era,” said Leo Leonard. He has owned the Griffintown Horse Palace on Ottawa St. for 40 years.
“Back then there were 62 carriages at Dominion Square outside the Windsor Hotel and another 25 outside the gates of McGill. Today, there are only 35 calèche drivers’ permits, and all the drivers are down in Old Montreal.”
The price of a calèche ride is $45 for a half-hour, $80 for an hour. Competition is stiff.
Horse-drawn carriages are an anachronism in the 21st century, and their future, as well as that of Leonard’s stables just south of the École de technologie supérieure on Notre Dame St. W., is up in the air.
The Southwest borough has designs on Leonard’s property, one of the last in the area to house horses.
A redevelopment plan unveiled in October for the neighbourhood has the stables, tack house and corral earmarked as an area for office and commercial space, and affordable and subsidized housing.
Inspired by Toronto’s Distillery district, an industrial area that was transformed into a gentrified neighbourhood, urban planners see Griffintown as an ideal site for redevelopment.
Heritage Montreal’s Dinu Bumbaru says while he wel- comes development in the area, razing the stables would be a mistake.
“They are not a great monument,” he said, “but they are the only remnants to remind us that the driving force behind the metropolis was the horse.
“There is room in the city’s heritage policy to keep Leonard’s stables, and perhaps integrate them into a … network of Montreal memory to remind us it is the unheralded blue-collar workers who make a great city.”
Leonard was born in Goose Village and raised in Griffintown. He is 81.
Known as Clawhammer Jack, he is probably one of the last residents to have lived and worked in the neighbourhood for eight decades.
His permit to run his stable has a grandfather clause that states he can keep horses on the property as long as he owns it.
Leonard concedes, however, developers are eager to acquire his land, and perhaps the time has come for him to sell.
“I’ve always been in the horse business, but now I’m fed up with the industry,” Leonard said.
“People say I should turn the place into a zoo and charge admission,” he said with a chuckle.
Leonard bought the stables, which date from 1862, for $15,000 in 1967 when the city ran the Ville Marie Expressway eight blocks to the east, and people moved out of the neighbourhood.
He won’t say how much he wants for the property, which contains residential units, a tack house, a barn for eight horses and a small exercise corral.
“I’m not supposed to talk about anything, but, yes, agents have been coming around to talk to me about selling. We’ll see what happens,” Leonard said.
In addition to his property, he says, real estate agents are looking at a nearby scrapyard and an old paint shop next door.
Should he sell, Leonard isn’t sure what he’ll do if he no longer has horses to look after.
“I won’t go live in Florida, that’s for sure,” he said. “You’ll never catch me on a plane.”
Sunday, July 1, 2018
O Canada!
History of Canada Day
Canada’s national holiday is celebrated on July 1.
Canadians across the country and around the world show their pride in their history, culture and achievements. It’s been a day of celebration, where many festivities are held across the country, since 1868.
The Creation of Canada Day
July 1, 1867 : The British North America Act (today known as the Constitution Act, 1867) created Canada.
June 20, 1868 : Governor General Lord Monck signs a proclamation that requests all Her Majesty’s subjects across Canada to celebrate July 1.
1879 : A federal law makes July 1 a statutory holiday as the “anniversary of Confederation,” which is later called “Dominion Day.”
October 27, 1982 : July 1, “Dominion Day” officially becomes Canada Day.
The Celebrations Start
July 1, 1917 : The 50th anniversary of Confederation. The Parliament buildings, under construction, are dedicated to the Fathers of Confederation and to the courage of Canadians who fought in Europe during the First World War.
July 1, 1927 : The 60th anniversary of Confederation. The Peace Tower Carillon is inaugurated. The Governor General at the time, Viscount Willingdon, lays the cornerstone of the Confederation Building on Wellington Street.
From 1958 to 1968 : The government organizes celebrations for Canada’s national holiday every year. The Secretary of State of Canada is responsible for coordinating these activities. A typical format includes a flag ceremony in the afternoon on the lawns of Parliament Hill and a sunset ceremony in the evenings, followed by a concert of military music and fireworks.
July 1, 1967 : The 100th anniversary of Confederation. Parliament Hill is the backdrop for a high-profile ceremony, which includes the participation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
From 1968 to 1979 (with the exception of 1976): A large multicultural celebration is presented on Parliament Hill. This concert is broadcast on television across the country. The main celebrations (called “Festival Canada”) are held in the National Capital Region throughout the month of July. These celebrations include many cultural, artistic and sport activities and involve the participation of various municipalities and volunteer associations.
From 1980 to 1983 : A new format is developed. In addition to the festivities on Parliament Hill, the national committee (the group tasked by the federal government to plan the festivities for Canada’s national holiday) starts to encourage and financially support the establishment of local celebrations across Canada. Start-up funding is provided to support popular activities and performances organized by volunteer groups in hundreds of communities. Interested organizations can make a request to the Celebrate Canada program.
1981 : Fireworks light up the sky in 15 major Canadian cities, a tradition that continues today.
1984 : The National Capital Commission (NCC) is given the mandate to organize Canada Day festivities in the capital.
2010 : Festivities on Parliament Hill receive a royal treatment when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh join the festivities to celebrate Canada’s 143rd anniversary.
2011 : Their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, participate in Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill on the occasion of Canada’s 144th anniversary.
2014 : Canadian Heritage organizes the 147th Canada Day celebrations. As we approach Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017, the government has given the Department the mandate to organize Canada Day festivities in the capital.
2018: Happy 151st Anniversary, Canada!
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