These images were shot at the base of the St. James Cliff at around St. Remi and St. James, it's the hill one block south of the Vendome metro, it separates St. Henri (Turcotte village area) from NDG (St. Raymond's parish area).
My father made some cash off this cliff. One day - I'm guessing around 1960 - he read in the paper that a kid died slipping down the cliff. So Gravenor called CN and offered to buy the land at the top of the cliff for one dollar. The strip of land was literally one foot. The CN liked this offer because if anybody else died, my dad would get sued rather than them. So he became the owner of a 12 inch slice of land at the top of a cliff that extended quite some distance.
This was around the time that Place Ville was being built and much excavation was taking place downtown. Builders needed a place to dump the dug up soil. So my dad arranged to have it dumped at the edge of his one foot strip.
So with every dumping of land, the one foot strip extended slightly. He must have somehow had the right to do this because presumably every truckload of dirt would also swallow up land beneath the hill.
Soon the one foot strip became much larger and he had literally made land. He then rented the land out to commercial businesses, used car lots, car washes, marine laundry and so forth and had a steady revenue stream from that.
Beneath the hill was a lively neighbourhood known as the St. Elizabeth du Portugal parish largely populated by Italians. The church by the same name was built in 1956 and demolished earlier this year.
The adjacent St. Raymond's area also became an Italian neighbourhood, so perhaps many of the Italians from below the hill moved up the hill in the way people from the Point eventually moved to Verdun and continued west. The area is also known for the Home Depot, the Louis Cyr statue, and the former home of the Dubois brother crime clan.
These photos are from Andrea Mancini taken from a now-defunct site run by former resident Peter Raimondo who later moved to Brossard.
Well, If you were paying attention to the blogs of SOME of your readers you would have known about this a loooong time ago :P. Fascinating story though, and that was no small role in the history of the official "ecoterritory" called the Falaise Saint Jacques.
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