The Search for Missing Friends

 

I found a book called The Search for Missing Friends, Vol. I I think the price was $3, it’s a fat book, over 600 pages compiling the advertisments placed in the Boston Pilot of Irish immigrants looking for friends and loved ones. Now I see Boston College has inventoried these listings and have placed them in a searchable database.

“THERE WAS A TIDAL WAVE of Irish immigration to North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Some came to escape political upheaval, famine, and poverty, while others simply hoped to start a better life in the new world. During this time, formal communication was by the written word, but an international postal system was just emerging, making it difficult for those who had immigrated to keep in touch with those they had left behind. The result was that many of those in Ireland had no idea where their relatives and friends might be. Many new Irish Americans simply became “lost” to those who cared for them.”

You may view the database here.

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Five Roses Flour Refinery

 

Five Roses Flour Refinery, graphite and
coloured pencil on Mylar, 2011 by G. Scott MacLeod.

 

Though not original, the illuminated sign on this building is a landmark well known to locals and visitors. Seen by travellers entering and leaving Montreal by train, boat and automobile, these 15-foot high familiar red letters flash 'Farine Five Roses' in 22 second cycles.

According to the Farine Five Roses Project, it was in 1946 that Ogilvie Flour Mills Co. Ltd. opened the New Royal Mill but their original sign, installed in 1948, flashed 'Farine Ogilvie Flour'. In 1954, Ogilvie purchased Lake of the Wood Milling and changed the sign to read 'Farine Five Roses Flour'. In response to the new signage laws in Quebec, in 1977 the word 'flour' was removed from the sign.

Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) bought the company in 1993-1994. When ADM sold the Farine Five Roses brand to Smuckers in 2006, Smuckers promptly shut off the sign. Due to a public outcry against Smuckers for pulling the plug on this much-loved sight, the sign was later turned back on and still flashes today.

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan-Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved