Empty lots and the sad stories that often sit behind them: Lachine teen burns in curtains

   Empty lots in a city are like a missing teeth in a mouth.
   There's a story of failure behind each gap.
   In many cases a tragedy took place that claimed lives and buildings. Owners either didn't have insurance cash or the heart to rebuild.

     This parking lot on 18th Ave. near the water in Lachine, was where a young girl died by fire at a building that once stood at 38 18th Ave.  
   Simone Barbarie, 15, dropped her ring and sought to find it somewhere near the curtains.
   This was in Feb. 1928.
   She had no flashlight so she lit a match or candle to see better in her search.
   That match lit the curtains up and she got entangled with them.
   She rolled around shouting in the snow out front before dying.
    The story merited a five paragraph article  underneath a similar report of a six-year-old who was badly burned while lighting a cigarette oat his home on Casgrain Street.

Tough times in Lachine 

  Lachine was going through tough times in those years as the Great Depression forced a lot of people to go into default on their properties and the municipality became owners of many homes in the area, particularly along St. Catherine, 18th, 34th and 36th. They rented the units out at prices that they kept lowering just to keep them full in 1934. 

Another haunting death

   A decade after the poor girl burned to death, another teenage girl died in a similar haunting manner.
   On Sept 4, 1938 an unidentified girl was seen standing up to her knees in the waters at the foot of 18th Ave.
   She was dressed normally. When a man and wife went into the water to get her out, she allowed herself to get taken away by the rapids. They sought her in a rowboat but it was too lately, her aquatic suicide was done.