Coolopolis sets you straight again

Nice old picture, from the National Archives, and credited to the Department of National Defense (copyright expired). The caption is interesting, too -- and dead wrong!

British tank "Britannia" taking part in the Victory Loan Parade on Sherbrooke Street, Montreal, Canada, 1917.

Nice try, DND, but there's no place on Sherbrooke wut looks like that. This street is way too skinny. So where is it? McGill St.? Craig? Still doesn't click. There are no easy clues among the buildings. Turns out they're all gone now, anyway. But wait! The text on the water tank gives it away (click and read). Just a peek at a handy Lovell's directory for that year pinpoints the site of the parade as St. Antoine St. (West), looking east towards St. David's Lane and beyond.

(Listing by address above, and by name below.)

Here's a little corroboration from five years before in the Witness, preserved by none other than that brilliant scrapbook maniac, E.Z. Massicotte himself. It's obviously the same site, photographed from almost the same vantage point.


Here's the site today. A really nice place, if you happen to be a car. Tanks again, Mr. Drapeau. As for DND's sense of direction: we just hope our soldiers in action receive better coordinates than this.