Built in 1854, it was Montreal’s second English Catholic church after St. Patrick’s (1847). Whereas the “lace-curtain” Irish around St. Patrick’s consisted of merchants, skilled workers and professionals, St. Ann’s parishioners were known as “shanty Irish” -- unskilled labourers employed in factories, in construction or on the docks.
The population of Griffintown began declining after World War II and, in the early 1960s, the municipality decided that Griffintown no longer had a future as a place for people to live. It was rezoned as industrial commercial in 1963 and, in 1967, approximately a third of the neighbourhood was demolished to make way for the Bonaventure Expressway.
Having lost most of its parishioners, St. Ann’s Church was torn down in 1970. A few years ago the City of Montreal ‘restored’ the foundations of the church and today the site is a park with benches instead of pews.
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