Good Reads - French Canadian Sources: A Guide for Genealogists

A six-year collaborative effort of members of the French Canadian/Acadian Genealogical Society, this book provides detailed explanations about the genealogical sources available to those seeking their French-Canadian ancestors.

Good Reads - A People's History of Quebec

Revealing a little-known part of North American history, this lively guide tells the fascinating tale of the settlement of the St. Lawrence Valley. It also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who traveled, mapped, and inhabited a very large part of North America, and “embrothered the peoples” they met, as Jack Kerouac wrote.

Connecting everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a people, this book sheds new light on Quebec’s 450-year history––and on the historical forces that lie behind its two recent efforts to gain independence.

About the Author:
Jacques Lacoursière is one of Quebec's most notable writers. He is the author of the five-volume Histoire populaire du Québec, which has been a bestseller since the first volume was published in 1995. He lives in Quebec City, Quebec. Robin Philpot is a writer and translator who lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Good Reads - A Distinct Alien Race

In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope. Books and newspapers floated the conspiracy theory that the immigrants seeking work in New England's burgeoning textile industry were actually plotting to annex parts of the United States to a newly independent Quebec. 

Vermette’s groundbreaking study sets this neglected and poignant tale in the broader context of North American history. He traces individuals and families, from the textile barons who created a new industry to the poor farmers and laborers of Quebec who crowded into the mills in the post-Civil War period. Vermette discusses the murky reception these cross-border immigrants met in the USA, including dehumanizing conditions in mill towns and early-20th-century campaigns led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Eugenics movement. 

Vermette also discusses what occurred when the textile industry moved to the Deep South and brings the story of emigrants up to the present day. Vermette shows how this little-known episode in U.S. history prefigures events as recent as yesterday’s news. His well documented narrative touches on the issues of cross-border immigration; the Nativists fear of the Other; the rise and fall of manufacturing in the U.S.; and the construction of race and ethnicity.

Available nationwide.

Mile End - The Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace - 1866

The Crystal Palace was an exhibition hall built for the Montreal Industrial Exhibition of 1860, originally located at the foot of Victoria Street (one block west of University) between Sainte-Catherine and Cathcart Streets, then relocated to Fletcher's Field. It was used for temporary exhibitions, and in winter, housed an ice skating rink.

The building was designed by Montreal architect John William Hopkins. It had an iron framework, a tinned barrel-vaulted nave and two galleries, each twenty feet wide, extending all the way around the interior. Its design was inspired by The Crystal Palace in London. Its main facades were of iron and glass. Its side walls were of white brick with rose-coloured contrast, with the iron and wood elements painted to match the brick. Its bays were subdivided by three arches, with only the centre arch glazed. Constructed in 20-foot modules, the Crystal Palace was intended to be 180 x 200 feet, but was constructed with shorter transepts, reducing its dimensions to 180 x 120 feet.

The Industrial Exhibition displayed agricultural and industrial products from the then British North America. The displays ranged from minerals, native woods, seeds and grains, preserved birds and fish, oils and foodstuffs to textiles and leather goods, furniture, clothing, machinery, iron work, tools and crafts. As part of the exhibition the Art Association of Montreal, the future Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, organized a display of Canadian art. The Prince of Wales visited Montreal that year and officially opened the exhibition.

The Prince of Wales at Opening Night 1860

The large open space of the exhibition hall was suitable for other uses. In later years, the hall would house a natural ice skating rink in the winter, and was one of the first indoor skating rinks in Canada. The skating rink was used by McGill University students to play ice hockey and the rink is the site of the first known photograph of ice hockey players in hockey uniforms, taken in 1881.

The rink also housed the Crystal Skating Club and Crystal Hockey Club, more commonly known as the Montreal Crystals which played men's senior-level amateur hockey in the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada.


In 1878 it was dismantled and moved to Fletcher's Field, part of which is now known as Jeanne-Mance Park. In July 1896, the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire, as London's original Crystal Palace would be. The site of the Crystal Palace, between Mont-Royal Avenue and Saint-Joseph Boulevard, was developed for housing a few years after the fire.

The original downtown location later was home to the Palace Theatre, a movie house, and today contains an alley named Ruelle Palace.

Mile End - United Dairy

This charming building, built in 1933, bears witness to the past presence of many small dairies in the area. The development of the dairy processing activity is explained by the proximity of the railway coupled with the dramatic growth of the urban population in the early 20th century.

From the late 19th century Quebec agriculture specializes to milk production. Due to urbanization, industrialization and the development of transport, this activity is no longer simply a rural activity, it is also developing in the city. Milk becomes an industrialized product destined to supply cities.

United Dairy received the milk from the countryside along the lines of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Laurentians and Montérégie, and then transformed it. Inside the building were bottling and pasteurization, butter making, bottle washing and storage.


Robert Brettschneider, of Polish Jewish origin, arrived in Canada in 1926. He brought the following year his wife Bessie and his younger brother Osias. In 1930 Robert Brettschneider founded with Jacob Rottermund the dairy United Dairy. It will have a short and eventful story.

The dairy starts in rented premises, a backyard house at 5244-5246 Casgrain Avenue. In 1933, it moved to a new custom-built building. However, constantly struggling with the authorities and with the complaints of its competitors (for example, selling milk to a distributor below the official price of the Dairy Commission, use of glass bottles belonging to other dairies, change in the fat content in milk, and even the sale of shares of the dairy without going through a securities broker), the United Dairy is condemned in court repeatedly: in April 1938, the newspapers echo his nineteenth sentence, with a fine of $ 1,000. The dairy declares bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

Robert Brettschneider does not admit defeat: he incorporates (only) a new company, the Snowdon Dairy, in September 1938. He can stay in the former premises of the United, thanks to a friend who buys the building in the sale of bankruptcy, selling it to him a few years later. The dairy will do business until it is closed in 1954 - a time that is the height of the Jewish migration from Mile End to Snowdon. From 1953 to 1958, the building also housed the offices of a milk distributor, North End Milk Distribution, apparently the last activity related to the dairy industry in this building.

During his retirement, Brettschneider serves as president of the congregation Shomrim Laboker, recently moved to a modern building in the Snowdon neighborhood. He oversaw two mergers with other congregations in 1957 and 1959. He also got involved in other projects such as a clothes shop with a son and real estate investments with a son-in-law, to whom he sold the building of the old Dairy in 1963. He died in 1966, leaving behind his wife, five children, and his brother's family.

Mile End - The C.P.R Hotel

The Canadian Pacific Railway Company’s fame stems, in part, from the construction of prestigious grand hotels between 1888 and 1930 designed to attract affluent tourists to spectacular sites served by the railroad. Inspired by the castles of France’s Loire Valley, they became icons of the Canadian landscape, including Château Frontenac in old Québec, Toronto’s Royal York and the Banff Springs Hotel in the Rocky Mountains. Less well-known is the fact that Mile End once had a hotel, much more modest in scale, which was known for many decades as the C.P.R. Hotel – although it was never part of that company.

While the structure exists no longer, the hotel sat on a site at the northeast corner of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Bernard Street for over a century, a few steps from the Mile End train station located a bit farther east on Bernard. The station, opened in 1876, created a new hub of activity in what had been a completely rural area. Previously, travellers and neighbourhood residents patronized hotels located at the other Mile End intersection, further south, where Saint-Laurent meets Mont-Royal Ave. The history of the C.P.R. Hotel is closely related to that of its founding family, the Hogues. Two interviews with family members, spaced about 50 years apart in time, provide information.

— Weren’t you once a hotelkeeper?
— Yes, I built the C.P.R. hotel, located at the corner of Bernard and Saint-Laurent streets, in 1878. In those days, there were no sewers, no sidewalks and of course no street lamps. My business was in a rather empty spot. To the north, I had no neighbours up as far as the land where the Institut des Sourds-Muets is located,2 where an Irishman lived at the time.
— And to the south?

— Not so peaceful as on the north side, I had no neighbours to the south until Laurier Street. But there was a shack around Saint-Viateur Street, where a guard manned the gate leading out of the city. The gate was managed by the Turnpike Trust, which charged an outbound toll that varied according to the type of vehicle.

In May 1985, La Presse journalist Gérald Leblanc found Télesphore Hogue’s grandson, Martial Hogue. At the time he was 77 and described himself as a poet-painter and a “professional outsider” who was born and grew up in the neighbourhood. The short interview revealed very little new about the hotel’s history, although the journalist called Martial Hogue “inexhaustible” about the subject, as well as about the tailor shop belonging to his father. 

But the article did provide a unique photograph of the building in its heydays. The old hotel which had been the pride of the Hogue Family was about to disappear. A fire completely destroyed it seven months later, in the early morning hours of January 5, 1986, in the middle of a snowstorm. Today, more than a quarter century has gone by, and the land on which the C.P.R. Hotel once stood is still vacant.

Mile End - Church of St. Michael the Archangel

Perhaps the most recognizable architectural symbol of Mile End is the Church of St. Michael the Archangel of 1914-5, on Saint-Viateur Street at the corner of Saint-Urbain. 

The church, designed by Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne, was built for an Irish Catholic community, as expressed by omnipresent shamrock motifs; yet the overall style of the building is based on Byzantine rather than Western architectural traditions. 

Even more striking, the church has a slender tower that resembles a minaret. The building has been shared since 1964 with the Polish Catholic mission of St. Anthony of Padua, which officially merged with the parish of St. Michael in 1969 to form the current parish of St. Michael's and St. Anthony's;masses are celebrated in Polish and in English.

At the turn of the last century there was something of a migration of Irish-Canadian working people from their overcrowded Point St. Charles and Griffintown haunts north into Mile End. In 1902, the Catholic archbishop of Montreal, Mgr. Paul Bruchési, gave his approval for a new parish to be created. The first mass was said upstairs of a fire hall at Laurier and Saint-Denis that no longer exists. Their first small church building was on rue Boucher near there; it no longer exists.

By 1914 the growing parish decided it needed something bigger and grander. In July of that year excavations began. Work stopped briefly when war broke out that autumn, but resumed in April 1915, and the church was ready to use by that December. The price tag was $232,000 and the church could hold 1400 people.

This information comes from a booklet published in 1927 when the parish was already 25 years old. The text describes, and images show, that the dome and the cap on the tower were both decorated with patterns, and the massive façade with the words Deo dicatum in honorem St. Michaeli and a smaller motto on a banner over the doors. Those flourishes are gone, but carved shamrocks are still part of the façade, a nod to the time when the parish was pretty well a monoculture, with priests called McGinnis, Fahey, McCrory, Walsh, O’Brien, Cooney and O’Conor and church wardens Keegan, Gorman, Dillon, McGee and Flood.

Also, unusually, there’s no mention of bells, and no evidence that the tower ever contained any: unlike most church towers it’s closed all the way to the top.

Mile End Station

Mile End Station before expansion in 1913

The new C.P.R. station at Mile End

The first Mile End station building was erected in 1877 on the east side of Saint-Laurent Road, near what is now the intersection of Bernard Street.

A much larger station was built in 1911 it closed in 1931, when service was moved to the new Park Avenue Station (Jean-Talon), and was demolished in 1970 to make way for the Rosemont–Van Horne viaduct.

Mile End

Nineteenth-century maps and other documents show the name Mile End as the crossroads at Saint-Laurent Road (now Boulevard) and what is now Mont-Royal Avenue. Originally, this road was Côte Sainte-Catherine Road (heading west) and Tanneries Road (heading east). It is probable that the name Mile End was inspired by the East London suburb of the same name. 

Contrary to popular belief, the place is not precisely a mile away from any official marker. It is, however, a mile north along Saint-Laurent from Sherbrooke Street, which in the early 19th century marked the boundary between the urban area and open countryside. (Several decades later, the Mile End train station near Bernard Street was situated coincidentally one more mile north along Saint-Laurent from the original crossroads.)


Mile End was also the first important crossroads north of the tollgate set up in 1841 at the city limits of 1792. From the crossroads to the city limits the distance was 0.4 miles (0.64 km). The city limits were located 100 chains (1.25 miles or about 2 km) north of the fortification wall, and intersected Saint-Laurent just south of the current Duluth Avenue.

As early as 1810, there was a Mile End Hotel and tavern, operated by Stanley Bagg, an American-born entrepreneur and father of the wealthy landowner Stanley Clark Bagg. The earliest known published references to Mile End are advertisements placed by Stanley Bagg, in both English and French, in The Gazette during the summer of 1815. He announced in July: "Farm for sale at St. Catherine [i.e., Outremont], near Mile End Tavern, about two miles from town...". On 7 August, he inserted the following:

STRAYED or STOLEN from the Pasture of Stanley Bagg, Mile End Tavern, on or about the end of June last, a Bay HORSE about ten years old, white face, and some white about the feet. Any person who will give information where the Thief or Horse may be found shall receive a reward of TEN DOLLARS and all reasonable charges paid. STANLEY BAGG. Montreal, Mile End, August 4, 1815.

A photograph of 1859 shows members of the Montreal Hunt Club at the Mile End tavern.

The road variously known as Chemin des Tanneries (Tannery Road), Chemin des Carrières (Quarry Road), or Chemin de la Côte-Saint-Louis led to a tannery and to limestone quarries used for the construction of much of Montreal's architecture. 

The village of Côte Saint-Louis (incorporated 1846) sprung up near the quarries, its houses clustered east of the Mile End district around the present-day intersection of Berri Street and Laurier Avenue. 

It was to serve this village that a chapel of the Infant Jesus was established in 1848 near Saint Lawrence Road, on land donated by Pierre Beaubien. In 1857-8, the chapel was replaced by the church of Saint Enfant Jésus du Mile End. 

The church, made even more impressive by a new façade in 1901-3, was the first important building in what would become Mile End.

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - Z is for ?

Church of Canada - X is for St. Francis Xavier

 

 

 

                  

The Irish catholic Churches of Quebec - V is for Saint Veronica

St Veronica’s Parish was founded on January 17th, 1958.

Construction of the  church began in the year 1962 at 1300 Carson Avenue, and opened for services in 1963. Before the church was built, mass was celebrated at what is now known as the ’ Gentilly Elementary School'.

The first mass was celebrated on May 4th, 1963 by Rev. Norm Griffin and the church was blessed on Sunday September 8th, 1963 by Cardinal Paul Emile Leger, the official completion date.

The 25th Anniversary Mass was celebrated on May 1st, 1983 by Archbishop Paul Gregoire.

The 50th Anniversary Mass was celebrated on September 14th, 2008 by Cardinal Jean Claude Turcotte. 

The Irish Churches of Quebec - R is for Church of the Recollets

Following the authorization of the Récollets to settle outside Quebec , with the appointment of Mgr. Jean-Baptiste de La Croix Chevrieres of Saint-Vallier in 1688, the order moved to Montreal and undertook the construction of a church to be opened in 1693. It would be the work of brother Didace Pelletier who also led the work of the convent of Trois-Rivières . It is located on the quadrilateral of Notre-Dame , Sainte-Hélène , Récollets and Saint-Pierre streets .

A monastery is added to the church in 1705. The master builder of the site is a man named Pierre Couturier. New works were undertaken in 1713 for the façade of the church with the sculptor Jean Jacquié dit Leblond. A fence is built in 1722.

In 1760, after the capitulation of the colony , the church was ceded to the British occupier. It serves as a barracks until 1792, while the goods of the Récollets are sequestrated around 1810.

In 1818, the expansion of Montreal, with the construction of St. Helena Street, led to the demolition of the west wing.

The Sulpicians also settled in the old church in 1831. They enlarged and embellished it by adding a portal taken from the old Notre-Dame church demolished in 1829. The church was then used to worship Catholics Irish who use it until 1847. Become a school, the site is finally destroyed in 1867. 

The interior décor including the church altar was preserved and moved to the church of Notre-Dame des Anges on Lagauchetière Street. 


The latter building later became the church of the Chinese community; it still exists to this day.

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - P is for Cote St. Paul

The Verdun, Côte St. Paul district has been
another bastion of the Irish community since the 1870’s. 

Located next to “The Point”,the region catered to the mid-income dwellers, among them the immigrants from

various European nations including the Irish, Scots and the British. 

Montreal. Address: 1558 Avenue of the Church. 

The registers of this parish opened in the year 1874, date of the arrival of the first resident parish priest. 

Canonical Erection: December 10, 1875. Civil Erection: December 24, 1875. 

The territory of this parish has been detached from the parishes of Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries , Saint-Pierre River and Côte Saint-Paul.  

The parish was put under the patronage of St. Paul probably because of its neighborhood with the parish of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs-de-Verdun , formerly known as "Village of the Saint-Pierre River".

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - L is for Our Lady of Good Council

(1879) – Rev. M. Campion, Rev. P.F. O’Donnell, presiding. 

Located at 724 Craig Street East in south central Montréal, 

This Irish church was somehow associated with Saint Bridget, another parish of the same district of Faubourg Quebec. Our Lady of Good Counsel was located at the corner of Craig (St-Antoine) and Panet Streets.


At the Archives, the church records can be found under Notre Dame du Bon Conseil.

The parish of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil was first erected under the name of "Sainte-Marie-de-Montréal", for the English-speaking Catholics of the parishes of St. Bridget , St. Vincent de-Paul , Saint-Eusebe , Saint-Pierre and part of Sainte-Catherine. 

The registers of the parish opened in the year 1881. Canonical erection: December 20, 1879. The canonical decree erecting this parish was published in the Official Gazette. On the occasion of the blessing of the church, the parish was put under the patronage of Notre-Dame-du-Bon- Advice. 

Today it includes English-speaking Catholics from the parishes of St. Bridget , St. Eusebius , St. Peter and St. Vincent de Paul. Pop. 2,255.  

The parish closed in 1984, and the church was demolished.

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - K is for Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha is first Catholic saint of North America’s indigenous peoples.

For the first time in history, a member of the indigenous population of North America has been canonized by the Catholic church. Kateri Tekakwitha was a young Mohawk woman who lived over 300 years ago. Her admirers attribute special powers to her.

Hundreds of members of the Mohawk nation and other indigenous peoples file past a tomb in the Catholic church in Kahnawake,  an Indian reservation near Montreal. Silently, they kneel to pray at the grave of a small Mohawk woman who lived over 300 years ago and did not grow older than 24. Her name is on the tomb: Kateri Tekakwitha.


“Everybody is proud of her,” says Audrey Diabo, a resident of Kahnawake who came to the church with her elderly mother. “Ever since growing up as a kid, everything is always Kateri. She was a Mohawk and we’re going to pray to her.”...more

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - J is for Saint Joseph

     

In the city of Montreal. Address:
1967 rue Saint-Jacques. Saint-Henri district. 

Canonical Erection: July 2, 1867. 
Civil Erection: February 23, 1875    

The territory of this parish has been detached from Notre-Dame-de-Montréal. 

The city of Saint-Henri was incorporated December 28, 1876. 

The parish has long been called "Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries". 

This name of tanneries comes from the fact that at the beginning of this parish, tanneries were opened by Messrs. Lenoir dit Rolland. 

During its canonical erection, the parish included the villages of Délisle, Saint-Augustin, Ferme Saint-Gabriel, Saint-Pierre River and Saint-Henri-de-la-Côte-Saint-Paul, where built the church: hence the name of Saint-Henri, given to the parish. Pop. 10.675.  

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - I is for Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Borough: Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grace

Address: 4455 West Broadway Street, Montreal 

Opening records: June 24, 1917 





History: 


In the city of Montreal. Canonically erected on June 16, 1917 for the English-speaking Catholics of the parishes of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens. The parish registers open in the year 1917. 

This parish is served by the RRs. PP. Jesuits at Loyola College, 2001 Sherbrooke Street West. It is for this reason that the parish was placed under the patronage of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. Pop. 650. (Source: Magnan, Hormisdas, Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Parishes, Missions and Municipalities of the Province of Quebec, 1925


In 1896, Loyola College was founded by English-speaking Canadian Jesuits. It was the English-speaking section of Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal and split off to become its own institution.

In 1917, the parish of St. Ignatius was started for the local English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish population in the area. Masses were held on the campus of Loyola College.

In 1964, Loyola High School separated from the college. In 1966, a new church was built as a separate structure apart from the college. In 1968 discussions begun to merge Loyola College with other colleges. This resulted with the creation of Concordia University on 24 August 1974.

In 1982, Loyola High School moved to new building and the Jesuits handed over administration of the church to the Archdiocese of Montreal who continue to serve the parish.

The Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - G is for Church of the Gesu - Saint Mary

Photo - Jean Gagnon own work

When one tends to think of religious institutions, one thinks of tradition and stability. More often we don’t realise that its long tradition is rooted in its history and its involvement in society, and that the simple look of a building can speak a lot about its time period and the people that would have attended its services. The Church of the Gesù is one such religious institution.

The Church of Gesù was built in 1865 by Patrick C. Keeley. The church is named after the same church in which the founder of the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, is buried. Following the traditional Baroque style architecture that was propagated by the Jesuits, the church has the vivid ceiling decorations and its general curved structure. It was designated as an historical monument in 1975 by the provincial government and a heritage building in 2012.

Right next door to the Church of Gesù is its Centre of creativity, whose ambition is to combine the spiritual with the artistic. The Centre of creativity was formerly Sainte-Marie College, the first Jesuit educational institution in Montreal that would educate the likes of poet Émile Nelligan, engineer Lucien L’Allier, and novelist Hubert Aquin. Its amphitheatre opened to the public in 1923 and has always been in constant usage since. Later closed because of a merger with UQÀM in 1969, the amphitheatre remains in constant usage. Crowned by La Presse as the place with the optimal acoustics in Montreal, the Centre of creativity welcomes over fifty thousand visitors a year for festivals such as Just for Laughs and Francofolies.

One hundred and fifty years is no small anniversary, and to celebrate, the institution has a series of events coming up this month. First up is an organ concert given by Régis Rousseau performing Yves Daoust’s “A concert for organ and band” on January 31. Then, in February, we have an evening with Ivy and Mykalle Bielinski starting at 7:30 pm on February 19. This particular presentation, 18$, is presented with the help of Montréal en lumière and consists in an original presentation of poetry and music entwined together. 

If you want a more permanent reminder of the celebrations, the institution has two interesting gifts for you: the first, a podcast called The Gesù from 1865 to today that you can take anywhere, thanks to a download onto your Android or iPhone. The podcast has images and music that immerses you into the culture and history in the church. Secondly, the Gesù will be publishing a commemorative book about the church later this month. Published with the help of the Archives of the Jesuits in Canada, Le Gesù: 150 ans d’une église will appear later this month.

Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - E is for Saint Eusebe-De-Vercelli

In the city of Montreal. Address: 647 Fullum Street. Sainte-Marie district. 

The records of this parish begin in the year 1897. 

Canonical erection: August 14, 1897. The canonical decree erecting this parish was published in the Official Gazette of 1897.

The parish's territory, detached from the parish of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul-de-Montréal , is bounded by Sherbrooke, Hâvre, Lalonde-Nord and De Lorimier Streets. Vercelli is the name of a strong city of Italy. Pop. 10.017.

(Source: Magnan, Hormisdas, Historical and geographical dictionary of parishes, missions and municipalities of the Province of Quebec, 1925.